I hope you understand that this post was not meant to say that we should just wily-nilly hire anyone from any background. I don't agree with that, and I don't believe any of our readers or the great commenters on here would agree with that, either. My point to this post was that what makes the communications profession such a wonderful, vibrant and fulfilling career is that unlike the banking, or finance or law industries, not all of us come from – or are required to – certain pedigree backgrounds or certain degree programs.

It really does take all types. My friend, TJ, said it really well in one of the earlier comments that in this business, because we are always dealing with clients from various industries (yes, even as far flung as circus balloon makers), we need to have professionals who have backgrounds in professions other than just communications or public relations – but, of course, have the career experience and insight to understand the profession – that will be able to best understand the client's needs.

So, let me ask you this: If you were hiring for a position for an account with a client that was working in say, the gourmet culinary industry, which rookie would you rather hire: Someone who came straight from a great PR education program but knows next to nothing about the culinary arts, or a seasoned professional with little PR experience, but who spent years as a freelance writer for Gourmet and some other culinary pubs and has been dabbling in PR for the last year or so?

Me? I'd go with the latter. It may be a bit of a risk, but in the end, I think my client is going to feel a lot more comfortable knowing their is someone on his PR team who truly understands his business.

I am in a hiring position and 99 out of 100 times, I'd hire (and have) someone with PR experience over someone who comes from somewhere else.

Sure people from other professions can learn and gain experience, but they are already behind the curve and don't have many PR REAL WORLD experiences (screw the text book) to fall back on–I also HIGHLY prefer traditional PR people than those that came out of media as by and large media people are good at writing and media relations and don't have the experience of doing the countless other tasks (this is a whole other subject).

I also knew when I started school that I wanted to be in PR, but that also led me to other paths, namely adding German and European Studies onto my major list, which still gives me a diverse background for a communications profession, although it was reached in a different way from the other stories.