6 free templates for teams hiring PR help without a PR department: paid, agency, media relations, digital PR, unpaid for-credit, and nonprofit. Download as DOCX.
The first public relations intern I ever supervised sent a pitch on her third day. It was a good pitch. It also described a product feature we had not announced yet, to a reporter who had been asking about that exact feature for a month. Nothing bad came of it, but only because the reporter was decent about it, and the fault was entirely mine: my job description said the intern would support media outreach and said nothing at all about who presses send.
That is the gap in almost every public relations intern job description you can copy online. They list duties in the abstract, they never state the boundary, and they skip the two decisions that actually carry consequences for a small employer: whether the role is paid, and who approves anything that leaves the building.
The six templates below fix both. Each one names the work as concrete output, lists what the intern does not do, and states the classification plainly. At FirstHR we write these for teams that hire communications help without a communications department, so the rest of the hiring template library follows the same pattern.
TL;DR
A public relations intern researches, drafts, and measures, while a named employee approves anything that goes to a reporter. At a for-profit company a paid internship is the safe default: unpaid is lawful only when the intern is the primary beneficiary under a seven-factor test. Paid interns are non-exempt, hourly, and overtime-eligible. Six templates below, downloadable as DOCX.
What a PR Intern Actually Does
A public relations intern does research, drafting, and measurement under supervision. The four jobs that repeat everywhere are building and maintaining the media list, drafting releases and pitches for review, monitoring coverage into a weekly clip report, and preparing the briefing documents that make an interview go well.
None of that requires a spokesperson. All of it produces visible output a generalist can review, which matters because the person hiring the intern usually runs marketing or the whole company rather than a press office. The setting changes the details more than the title does.
In-house at a small business
The intern reports to a generalist
There is no PR department. The intern supports a marketing manager or the founder, and the posting has to say who reviews the work, because unsupervised outreach is the failure mode here.
PR agency
Several accounts at once
Interns sit across multiple client teams, log time to accounts, and sign a confidentiality agreement before day one. Crunch weeks make overtime tracking a real obligation, not a formality.
Nonprofit
Press, donors, and community
The same intern touches media, fundraising, and program storytelling. Consent and privacy matter more than anywhere else, and nonprofit status does not exempt you from wage law.
For-credit academic placement
The learning plan is the job description
Structured around a syllabus and a faculty sponsor. Unpaid is only defensible when the intern is genuinely the primary beneficiary, and academic credit alone does not settle that question.
Write Duties as Outputs, Not Verbs
Compare two lines. First: assist with media relations activities. Second: maintain the media list with outlet, beat, contact, and last touch, and deliver a clip report every Friday. The second one tells a student what they will be able to show at the end of the term, tells you what to review on Friday afternoon, and is impossible to fake. Every duty in these templates is written that way on purpose. If a duty cannot be stated as something that exists at the end of a week, it probably belongs to someone with more experience.
What Belongs in the Posting
An internship posting does four jobs: it tells a student what the term looks like, it filters people who cannot write, it protects you legally, and it closes the candidate against every other internship they are considering. Most postings do only the first. Here is the full inventory.
The parts students read first
Term dates, weekly hours, and whether the schedule bends around classes
Paid, unpaid for credit, or stipended, stated in the first screen
On-site, hybrid, or remote
Who the intern reports to and how often they get feedback
The parts that filter applicants
Writing samples required, with a stated number
Enrollment or graduation status if you genuinely require it
The specific tools and formats the work uses
A short prompt in the application that reveals judgment
The parts that protect you
FLSA classification: non-exempt hourly for any paid intern
A list of what the intern does not do, starting with speaking to media
Confidentiality, embargo, and disclosure expectations
Equal opportunity statement and essential functions
The parts that win the hire
A named learning plan with measurable output
Real bylines, clips, or portfolio pieces the intern keeps
Exposure to the people who make decisions
Honest language about conversion odds after the term
The most common omission is the term structure. Students are choosing between offers with different start dates, hour commitments, and credit arrangements, so vagueness about dates reads as a company that has not decided what it wants. Our guide to writing a job description covers the general structure, and the public relations job description templates cover the roles above this one.
6 Public Relations Intern Job Description Templates to Download
Download all six as one file or copy them individually. Each follows the same structure: company overview, position summary, key responsibilities, an explicit list of what the role does not do, qualifications, a learning plan, a classification note, an equal opportunity statement, and how to apply. The bracketed fields are the only parts you change.
Download All 6 Public Relations Intern Job Description Templates
Paid, agency, media relations, digital PR, unpaid for-credit, and nonprofit communications. All in one download.
PR Intern (Paid)
The default posting
Drafting, media list upkeep, clip reports, and event support, with an explicit list of what the intern does not do and a non-exempt classification note.
PR Agency Intern
Multi-client rotation
For agencies staffing interns across accounts: time logging, confidentiality across clients, and honest handling of crunch-week overtime.
Media Relations Intern
Press side only
Reporter research, pitch drafting, interview briefs, and embargo tracking, with the spokesperson boundary written into the posting.
Digital PR and Content Intern
Earned meets owned
Contributed articles, podcast and creator outreach, newsroom upkeep, and reporting, with the endorsement disclosure duty stated up front.
Unpaid For-Credit Intern
Learning objectives first
Built around the seven-factor primary beneficiary test, with a syllabus, a faculty sponsor, a capstone, and a written acknowledgment to keep on file.
Nonprofit Communications Intern
Press, donors, programs
For a small nonprofit comms team, with story consent, board reporting, and a plain note on why nonprofit status is not a wage exemption.
Template 1: Public Relations Intern (Paid)
The default posting for an in-house internship: drafting, media list upkeep, clip reports, and event support, with the approval boundary and the non-exempt classification stated up front.
Public Relations Intern Job Description (Paid)
PUBLIC RELATIONS INTERN JOB DESCRIPTION (PAID)
Company: __ ([City, State])
Reports to: [Marketing Manager / Communications Lead / Founder]
For the press side specifically: reporter research, pitch drafting, interview briefs, and embargo tracking. Pair it with the communications assistant templates when the work outgrows an internship.
Media Relations Intern Job Description
MEDIA RELATIONS INTERN JOB DESCRIPTION
Company: __ ([City, State])
Reports to: [Communications Manager / Head of Communications]
•Fact-check every claim in a draft against an internal source before it ships
•Handle embargo and exclusive tracking with dates recorded in writing
WHAT THIS ROLE DOES NOT DO
•Give a quote, confirm a fact, or answer an inbound press inquiry
•Break or negotiate an embargo
•Discuss unannounced products, financials, personnel, or legal matters
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Enrolled in or recently completed a journalism, PR, communications, English,
or political science program, or equivalent writing background
•Reads the news in [our category] and can explain why a story ran
•Precise writer with genuine attention to names, titles, and numbers
•Discreet with confidential information; signs an NDA before starting
•Available [number] hours per week during business hours
LEARNING PLAN
The intern will own the clip report by week [number], draft [number] approved
pitches, and observe [number] media interviews. Written review at the midpoint
and at the end of the term.
CLASSIFICATION AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE
Paid interns are non-exempt employees: hourly, minimum wage at the highest
applicable rate, and overtime past 40 hours in a workweek. Media relations work
also touches unannounced information, so run the confidentiality agreement and
the media policy acknowledgment before the first day rather than during week
three. This is general information, not legal advice.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ per hour, [term length]
To apply, email __ with your resume, two writing samples,
and three reporters you would pitch us to and why.
Template 4: Digital PR and Content Intern
For the overlap between earned and owned: contributed articles, podcast and creator outreach, newsroom upkeep, and reporting. If the role is really channel management, use the social media intern templates instead.
Digital PR and Content Intern Job Description
DIGITAL PR AND CONTENT INTERN JOB DESCRIPTION
Company: __ ([City, State])
Reports to: [Marketing Manager / Communications Lead]
•Repurpose approved coverage into social and internal formats
•Maintain the asset library: images, logos, headshots, usage rights
•Log every material connection in any outreach we run, per company policy
WHAT THIS ROLE DOES NOT DO
•Publish to company channels without approval from [supervisor title]
•Offer payment, product, or perks to a creator without written sign-off
•Represent the company on the record
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Enrolled in or recently completed a communications, marketing, journalism, or
English program, or equivalent portfolio
•Writes clean short-form and can follow a style guide
•Basic comfort with [analytics, CMS, spreadsheets]
•Understands that paid or incentivized endorsements must be disclosed
•Portfolio or writing samples required
LEARNING PLAN
The intern will ship [number] published pieces, own the monthly report by week
[number], and complete disclosure and brand-voice training in week one. Written
review at the midpoint and at the end.
CLASSIFICATION AND DISCLOSURE NOTE
Paid interns are non-exempt employees: hourly and overtime-eligible past 40 hours
in a workweek. Separately, an employee who posts about their own employer has a
material connection that must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously under the
Federal Trade Commission endorsement rules, and the same applies to creators you
compensate or send free product. Train on this in week one and put it in the
social media policy. This is general information, not legal advice.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ per hour, [term length], [remote policy]
To apply, email __ with your resume and portfolio.
Template 5: Unpaid For-Credit PR Intern
Built around the seven-factor primary beneficiary test, with learning objectives in place of a duty list, a faculty sponsor, a capstone, and a written acknowledgment to keep on file. Read the next section before you use it.
UNPAID FOR-CREDIT PUBLIC RELATIONS INTERN JOB DESCRIPTION
Company: __ ([City, State])
Reports to: [Communications Lead / Faculty Sponsor liaison]
Employment type: Unpaid, for academic credit, [term]
Hours: [number] hours per week, scheduled around the academic calendar
Academic sponsor: [University / Program / Faculty supervisor]
Compensation: None. Academic credit through [program name].
READ THIS BEFORE YOU POST
An unpaid internship at a for-profit company is lawful only when the intern, not
the company, is the primary beneficiary of the relationship. The Department of
Labor applies a flexible seven-factor primary beneficiary test, and no single
factor decides it. Academic credit alone does not make an internship lawful.
Several states apply their own, stricter tests. If you cannot honestly answer the
seven factors in the intern's favor, pay the intern and use the paid template
instead. This is general information, not legal advice.
ABOUT THIS ROLE
[Company Name] hosts [number] for-credit communications interns per term in
partnership with [program name]. The internship is structured as a supervised
learning experience with defined objectives, a faculty sponsor, and a syllabus
the company follows.
POSITION SUMMARY
The intern completes a structured learning program in public relations practice:
observing, practicing, and receiving feedback on media research, writing, and
measurement. Work product supplements the team; it does not replace a paid role.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES (the core of this posting)
•Understand how a media target list is built, scored, and maintained
•Practice press release and pitch structure with line-level feedback
•Learn coverage measurement: clips, reach, share of voice, limitations
•Observe interview preparation and message development
•Produce a portfolio of [number] reviewed writing samples
•Complete a capstone project presented to [supervisor title] and faculty
SUPERVISED ACTIVITIES
•Draft practice releases and pitches reviewed line by line
•Shadow the weekly coverage review and reproduce it independently
•Research and present a media landscape analysis for [topic area]
•Sit in on [number] interviews or briefings as an observer
•Present the capstone at the end of the term
WHAT THIS INTERNSHIP IS NOT
•Not a substitute for a paid coordinator, assistant, or specialist role
•Not a source of production work the team depends on to hit deadlines
•Not a guarantee of a paid position at the end of the term
•Not scheduled over the intern's classes or exam periods
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Currently enrolled and eligible to receive credit through [program name]
•Faculty sponsor confirmation and program paperwork completed before start
•Coursework or demonstrated interest in PR, communications, or journalism
•Available [number] hours per week within the academic calendar
SEVEN-FACTOR ACKNOWLEDGMENT (keep with the file)
1. Both parties understand there is no expectation of compensation: [confirmed]
2. Training is similar to an educational environment: [describe]
3. The internship is tied to formal education and credit: [program, credits]
4. The schedule accommodates academic commitments: [describe]
5. Duration is limited to the period of beneficial learning: [dates]
6. The work complements rather than displaces paid employees: [describe]
7. No entitlement to a paid job at the conclusion: [confirmed]
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
HOW TO APPLY
Email __ with your resume, one writing sample, and your
faculty sponsor's contact information.
Template 6: Nonprofit Communications Intern
For a small nonprofit comms team covering press, donors, and program storytelling at once, with story consent requirements and a plain note on why nonprofit status is not a wage exemption.
Nonprofit Communications Intern Job Description
NONPROFIT COMMUNICATIONS INTERN JOB DESCRIPTION
Organization: __ ([City, State])
Reports to: [Communications Director / Executive Director]
FLSA status: Non-exempt if paid (see note on volunteers)
Compensation: $_ per hour or $_ stipend
ABOUT [ORGANIZATION NAME]
[Organization Name] is a [501(c)(3)] serving [population] in [City, State]. Our
communications work carries three loads at once: press, donors, and the
community we serve. The intern touches all three.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Communications Intern supports media outreach, donor and grant
communications, and program storytelling, with a strong emphasis on consent and
dignity when telling the stories of the people we serve.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Draft press releases, newsletters, and program updates for review
•Build and maintain local and trade media lists
•Collect program stories and photos with written consent on file
•Support event, campaign, and giving-day communications
•Track coverage and prepare a summary for the board packet
•Help assemble impact language for grant reports with source data attached
•Keep the website, newsroom, and staff bios current
WHAT THIS ROLE DOES NOT DO
•Speak to media, donors, or funders on behalf of the organization
•Publish any client, patient, student, or beneficiary story without a signed
release and approval from [supervisor title]
•Handle personal or protected information outside approved systems
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Enrolled in or recently completed a communications, nonprofit management,
journalism, or related program, or equivalent experience
•Clear writer who can hold a consistent voice across audiences
•Judgment and discretion around sensitive stories
•Commitment to our mission and the people we serve
•Available [number] hours per week for the full term
LEARNING PLAN
The intern will draft [number] published pieces, run the coverage summary for
[number] board packets, and complete consent and privacy training in week one.
Written review at the midpoint and at the end of the term.
CLASSIFICATION NOTE
Nonprofit status does not create a general exemption from wage law. Individuals
may volunteer their time to a nonprofit for civic, charitable, or humanitarian
reasons without expectation of pay, but an intern doing scheduled, assigned work
that the organization depends on is an employee, and a stipend does not by itself
make someone a volunteer. If you are directing the schedule and the output, pay
at least the highest applicable minimum wage and track hours. This is general
information, not legal advice.
EEO STATEMENT
[Organization Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ per hour or stipend, [term length]
To apply, email __ with your resume and one writing sample.
Paid, Unpaid, or For Credit
At a for-profit company, a paid internship is the safe default. An unpaid internship is lawful only when the intern, not the employer, is the primary beneficiary of the relationship, and that question is decided by a flexible seven-factor test in which no single factor controls.
The Department of Labor sets out the test in its guidance on internship programs under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which adopted the approach courts had already been using. Read the seven factors as a whole and answer them honestly about the internship you are actually planning to run.
1
No expectation of compensation
Both sides clearly understand that the internship is unpaid. Any promise of pay, express or implied, points toward an employment relationship.
2
Training like an educational environment
The internship provides training similar to what a school would give, including hands-on instruction, not just supervised production work.
3
Tied to formal education
The internship is connected to the intern's education program through integrated coursework or academic credit.
4
Accommodates academic commitments
The schedule bends around the intern's classes, exams, and academic calendar rather than the other way around.
5
Limited to the period of beneficial learning
The internship ends when the learning does. An open-ended unpaid term is one of the clearest signals that the employer is the beneficiary.
6
Complements rather than displaces paid work
The intern's work adds to what paid employees do while delivering real educational benefit. Backfilling a vacant coordinator seat is the opposite of this.
7
No entitlement to a paid job
Both sides understand the internship does not come with a paid position at the end of it.
Academic Credit Does Not Settle the Question
The most common mistake is treating academic credit as a permission slip. Credit is one factor among seven, and a for-credit internship where the intern spends the term doing production work the team depends on still fails the test. Several states apply their own tests that are stricter than the federal one, so check your state labor agency before running an unpaid program. The practical rule for a small business: if you would have to hire someone to do this work if the intern did not show up, pay the intern. That is the same instinct behind the exempt versus non-exempt analysis, and it is right more often than any clever structure.
Once you decide to pay, the classification is settled: an intern is a non-exempt employee, so hours get tracked and overtime is paid past forty in a workweek. Put the rate in writing before the start date. Our internship offer letter template covers the term, hours, rate, and credit status in one document.
The Boundaries the Posting Must Set
Four boundaries belong in a PR intern job description rather than in a handbook nobody opens: who speaks to media, when confidentiality paperwork gets signed, what has to be disclosed publicly, and how hours are recorded. Each one is a real exposure and each one is cheap to state.
Nobody becomes a spokesperson by accident
A reporter who gets a helpful intern on the phone will keep calling that intern. Write the rule into the job description rather than the handbook alone: the intern drafts, researches, and prepares, and a named employee approves and delivers anything that goes on the record. Give the intern a script for inbound calls, one sentence long, that routes the reporter to the right person and commits to nothing. This protects the intern more than it protects you, because an inexperienced person confirming an unannounced fact is a communications problem for the company and a career problem for them.
Confidentiality is the first day, not the third week
PR interns see unannounced launches, executive changes, financial context, and in agencies, several clients at once. The confidentiality agreement, the media policy acknowledgment, and any client-specific terms belong in the onboarding packet signed before system access, not collected whenever someone gets around to it. Keep the signed copies with the intern record and note the expiry of anything term-limited. When the internship ends, run the same offboarding you would run for any employee: access revoked, devices returned, and a written reminder that confidentiality survives the end of the term.
Disclosure is a legal duty, not etiquette
An employee posting about their own employer has a material connection to it, and under the Federal Trade Commission endorsement rules that connection must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. The same applies when your intern sends free product to a creator or arranges any form of compensation for a post. Interns are the most likely people on a small team to be asked to do this and the least likely to know the rule, so put disclosure training in week one, put the requirement in the job description, and keep a written log of every material connection in any outreach campaign.
Track the hours, including the ones that do not look like work
Every paid intern is a non-exempt employee, which means hourly pay at the highest applicable federal, state, or local minimum wage and overtime past forty hours in a workweek. Event nights, launch weeks, and a monitoring sweep done from a phone on a Sunday are all hours worked. Agencies get caught here most often because crunch is normal and interns rarely push back. Set the expectation that all hours get recorded, approve overtime in advance, and never let an intern work off the clock to look committed.
The disclosure point deserves its own line in the posting. The Federal Trade Commission explains in its endorsement guides for businesses that a connection between an endorser and a brand that consumers would not expect must be disclosed, and an employment relationship is exactly such a connection. Interns are the people most likely to be asked to post and least likely to know the rule.
What to Pay a Public Relations Intern
There is no Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation for interns, so no national median exists for this title. Benchmark instead against the classification the internship trains toward, public relations specialists, and set the intern rate below the entry floor of that occupation and above the highest minimum wage that applies to you.
The Occupation This Internship Trains Toward
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), public relations specialists earned a median of $35.94 per hour ($74,750 per year), with the 10th percentile at $21.21 per hour ($44,110) and the 25th at $27.05 per hour ($56,260). The occupation held 315,900 jobs in 2024, with projected growth of 5 to 6 percent through 2034 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS national estimates).
Benchmark
National figure (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
How to use it for an intern rate
Public relations specialists, 10th percentile
$21.21 per hour
Treat as the entry floor for the credentialed role; an intern normally sits below it
Public relations specialists, 25th percentile
$27.05 per hour
Roughly where a strong intern lands if they convert to a coordinator role
Public relations specialists, median
$35.94 per hour ($74,750 per year)
The job the internship trains toward, not a comparison for the intern
Public relations managers, median
$146,910 per year
The real cost of the supervision time an internship consumes
Market research analysts and marketing specialists, median
$78,760 per year
Nearest adjacent classification when the internship leans marketing
Applicable minimum wage
Federal, state, or local, whichever is highest
The hard floor for any paid intern; several states and cities sit well above federal
Occupational wage data classifies workers by the duties they perform rather than by job title, so a paid intern doing communications support work is typically reported within an existing occupation rather than a separate intern category. The Bureau of Labor Statistics profile for public relations specialists describes that occupation in full. Publish a rate or a good-faith range where pay transparency laws apply, and treat a livable rate as the cheapest competitive advantage a small employer has.
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Small team internships fail in three predictable places: the work is scoped beyond what anyone in the building can supervise, the term ends before the intern becomes useful, and the paperwork repeats every cohort with no system behind it. Each has a fix.
The intern is hired to do PR and there is nobody to teach PR
At most small companies the person hiring a public relations intern does not do public relations for a living. They run marketing, or operations, or the whole company. The intern arrives expecting to learn the craft and finds that the only expert in the building is the internet. That gap is why so many internships end with a disappointed student and a manager who concludes interns are not worth it. The fix is to scope the role to work that a generalist can genuinely supervise: research, list building, drafting to a template, monitoring, and reporting. Those are all real PR skills, they all produce visible output, and none of them require an in-house expert to review. Save pitching and spokesperson work for the day you hire someone who does it full time.
The term is over before the intern is useful
A twelve-week internship where onboarding takes three weeks and the last two go to wrapping up leaves seven productive weeks. Most small teams lose more than that, because nothing is written down and everything gets explained twice. Front-load the term with a fixed first-week sequence: paperwork, tools, style guide, confidentiality and disclosure training, a walkthrough of the media list, and one small piece of real work shipped by Friday. Then set the learning plan against dates, not intentions. Interns who ship in week one stay engaged, and the ones who convert to a paid role convert because you gave them enough runway to prove it.
Every intern means the same paperwork again, twice a year
Internships run in cohorts, which means the administrative load arrives all at once and repeats every term: offer letters or internship agreements, confidentiality and media policy acknowledgments, tax and payroll forms for paid interns, academic credit paperwork for for-credit placements, handbook sign-offs, equipment records, and access provisioning. Doing that by email for four interns in the same week is how signatures go missing. This is exactly what FirstHR was built for. The onboarding wizard runs the identical sequence for every intern, e-signature handles the agreements and acknowledgments, document management keeps the signed copies against each profile, and training modules deliver the confidentiality and disclosure briefing before anyone touches an account. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider.
Sourcing the cohort is its own problem, and campus career offices, faculty referrals, and your own alumni network beat a general job board for a short term role. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR. Until then, keep the applications in one place and score every candidate on the same writing sample rather than on the resume.
Once the agreement is signed, the work shifts to a repeatable onboarding checklist, and at the end of the term a short exit conversation is worth running properly: our intern exit interview questions cover what to ask before someone leaves with everything they learned about your program.
Key Takeaways
A public relations intern researches, drafts, and measures under supervision, while a named employee approves and delivers anything that goes to a reporter.
State what the intern does not do directly in the job description: no on-record comment, no unapproved pitches, no inbound press handling, no publishing without sign-off.
At a for-profit company a paid internship is the safe default, because an unpaid one is lawful only when the intern is the primary beneficiary under the Department of Labor seven-factor test.
Academic credit is one factor among seven, not a permission slip, and several states apply stricter tests than the federal one.
Every paid intern is a non-exempt employee: hourly at the highest applicable minimum wage, overtime past forty hours in a workweek, and every hour recorded including event nights.
Benchmark pay against public relations specialists (BLS OEWS, May 2025): a $21.21 per hour 10th percentile and a $35.94 median mark the floor and the destination, and the intern rate sits below the floor.
Internships arrive in cohorts and so does the paperwork. FirstHR runs the same onboarding sequence for every intern, with e-signature for agreements and acknowledgments, document storage for signed confidentiality and credit paperwork, and training modules that deliver the disclosure briefing before anyone touches an account. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a public relations intern do?
A public relations intern supports the person who owns communications with research, drafting, and measurement, not with representing the company. The core work is building and maintaining the media list, drafting press releases and pitches for review, monitoring coverage and compiling a weekly clip report, researching reporters and outlets by beat, preparing interview briefing documents, and supporting announcement and event logistics. In an agency the same work repeats across several client accounts with time logged against each one. What a PR intern should not do is speak to reporters on the record, answer inbound press inquiries independently, or send anything outside the company without a named employee approving it. Writing that boundary into the job description is the single most useful thing a small team can do, because the failure mode is not a lazy intern, it is an eager one talking to a journalist without context.
What should a public relations intern job description include?
Seven things, in this order: the term dates and weekly hours, whether the role is paid or unpaid for credit, who the intern reports to, the responsibilities stated as concrete outputs rather than verbs, an explicit list of what the intern does not do, the qualification bar including how many writing samples you want, and the FLSA classification. Add a learning plan with measurable output, because that is what students compare between offers and what makes an unpaid internship defensible. Then close with the equal opportunity statement, a named person to apply to, and a real deadline. Skip the phrase about being a self-starter in a fast-paced environment. Every posting has it, so it filters nobody. The six templates on this page follow that structure so you only rewrite the company-specific parts each term.
Do you have to pay a public relations intern?
At a for-profit company, usually yes. An unpaid internship is lawful only when the intern rather than the employer is the primary beneficiary of the relationship. The Department of Labor applies a flexible seven-factor test covering the expectation of compensation, training comparable to an educational environment, connection to formal education and credit, accommodation of the academic calendar, a duration limited to the period of beneficial learning, work that complements rather than displaces paid employees, and no entitlement to a paid job at the end. No single factor decides it, and academic credit alone does not make an unpaid internship lawful. Several states apply their own stricter tests. Nonprofit status does not create a blanket exemption either: genuine volunteers are treated differently, but an intern doing scheduled work the organization relies on is an employee. If the honest answer to the seven factors is mixed, pay the intern.
Are public relations interns exempt or non-exempt?
Non-exempt, effectively always. A paid intern is an employee, and an intern performing supportive research, drafting, monitoring, and administrative work does not meet the duties test for any white-collar exemption, regardless of how the role is titled or paid. That means hourly pay at the highest applicable federal, state, or local minimum wage, overtime at time and a half past forty hours in a workweek, and a real record of hours worked. The practical risk is not the base rate, it is the unrecorded time: event evenings, launch weeks, and monitoring done from a phone over the weekend are all hours worked. Agencies get caught here most often because crunch periods are normal and interns rarely push back. Set the expectation that every hour gets recorded, approve overtime before it happens, and never let an intern work off the clock to appear committed.
How much should you pay a public relations intern?
There is no Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation for interns, so benchmark against the credentialed role the internship trains toward and work down. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), public relations specialists earned a median of $35.94 per hour, or $74,750 per year, with the 10th percentile at $21.21 per hour and the 25th at $27.05. An intern rate normally sits below that 10th percentile floor and above the highest applicable minimum wage, with the exact number driven by your local market, the length of the term, and whether the role is in a high-cost metro. Publish a rate or a good-faith range in the posting where pay transparency rules apply, and remember that a rate a student can actually live on is the cheapest competitive advantage a small employer has against a larger one.
What qualifications should you require for a PR intern?
Require writing samples and a short judgment prompt. Everything else is negotiable. Two or three samples of any kind, including class work, tell you more in five minutes than a resume tells you in an hour, because the job is largely writing and taking edits. A one-paragraph prompt in the application, such as naming three reporters who would cover your company and why, separates the candidates who read the news in your category from the ones who read the job title. Enrollment in a public relations, communications, journalism, English, or marketing program is a reasonable default but a weak predictor on its own, and requiring a specific major narrows an already small pool for no measurable gain. What actually predicts success is precision with names and numbers, comfort with research and spreadsheets, and a tolerance for heavy editing.
Should a PR intern pitch reporters or talk to the media?
An intern can draft pitches and research targets, but a named employee should approve and send them, and no intern should speak on the record or field inbound press inquiries alone. This is not about trust. A reporter who reaches a helpful intern will call that intern again, and an inexperienced person confirming an unannounced product, a personnel change, or a financial detail creates a problem for the company and a worse one for the intern. Give them a one-sentence script for inbound calls that routes the reporter to the right person and commits to nothing, and state the boundary in the job description rather than burying it in the handbook. The same logic covers embargoes, client information in an agency setting, and disclosure of any material connection in creator outreach: draft freely, send only with approval.
