Big Red Flag - Anonymous employee Next PR Employee Review

1.0
16 June 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- 401K match - Flexible work from home - Free food - Everyone else is suffering so you get to be miserable together - You can wear yoga pants to work

Cons

According to the PRSA, the national average for salaried pay in 2016 for an Account Executive is 56K. SSPR starts you off at 36K and tries to keep you there for as long as possible. The company is known as a joke in the PR and tech space. Many reporters have asked not to be contacted by the company because of their spam pitching styles. The Chicago office is a joke. Meant to remedy reporter relations and provide unique strategies for pitch campaigns, when in reality they ask you how you would do something and then say, yeah you're right. But then criticize you for not getting enough placements. The expectations are ridiculous, to be on sometimes 13+ accounts with expectations to bring in at least 2 leads, per client, per week. There is nothing to learn here except how to spam reporters and damage your name in the industry. The CEO is known to surround herself with friends and family as her executive team. HR is a joke and actually took away some of the things that made working here fun. The environment is toxic, and very stagnant to your career. HR says they care and asks to hear from us and when we voice our concerns, we're met with nothing in return. Many don't even see the point in talking to HR or their managers because they know nothing is going to change. They've tried to work on hierarchy and managing employees but when managers themselves can't even seem to stay organized or keep things together, how can someone rely on them for help? They can't. Communication is hard here, there's constant whispers behind closed doors and it just doesn't feel safe. They're quick to lay people off for disagreeing with upper management, knowing they can sucker in some other kid looking for a job which is a big problem with people not feeling valued when people put in more than 60 hours a week here. I had a lot of high hopes to see this place change but it was pretty clear after two months of the new CEO in place it wasn't going to change at all. We might have pretty stationary, a new website and all that jazz but the company is still the same underneath.

Explore other reviews about Next PR

5.0
15 Oct 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The company culture is genuinely supportive and collaborative, making it easy to grow both personally and professionally. I was trusted with meaningful projects that helped me sharpen my PR and media relations skills while learning from experienced professionals who were always willing to help.

Cons

Honestly, not many. As an intern, I occasionally wished for even more cross-office collaboration, but the Chicago team did a great job keeping me engaged and involved.

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Next PR Response
7mo
Heather here: I appreciate the thoughtful feedback on your experience interning at Next PR! The goal of our internship program is to make you feel like a true team member working on real client projects, so I’m glad that matched your experience and that you felt supported throughout your time with us. I, too, would love even more collaboration across office locations, and it’s a conversation we’re continuously having to ensure in-person meet ups occur as much as possible. We’re taking your feedback into consideration as we work to develop next year’s internship process.
5.0
19 Oct 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Next PR is a great learning ground for anyone interested about PR. Each intern is assigned different clients to work directly with alongside their preexisting team at Next PR. All the clients I worked with were in different industries which made for opportunities to come up with diverse ideas. I loved being able to join client calls quickly into my internship and was already assigned projects my first week in. And if you ever need more work to do, just ask for it! The team is happy to put you on different projects within the company to make sure you are getting the most out of your experience. It was great to be with such a flexible company that not only has no-meeting summer Fridays (interns are off completely) but also with flex-hours. The team is also so easy to get along with and always willing to lend a helping hand. This was the perfect place for me to dip my toes in the world of PR.

Cons

Occasionally, client work felt restricted as clients were not always seeking larger projects or open to pushing forward on other projects. It would have been a great learning experience to work on a large-scale campaign for a client, but it just didn't align during my time at Next PR.

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Next PR Response
1y
Heather here: I appreciate the thoughtful review! I’m glad to hear you had a great experience interning at Next PR. We want our interns to feel like true team members throughout their time with us, so I love to hear you were able to get that experience in front of clients early on. We pride ourselves on providing flexible options like no-meeting Fridays for all team members. While we can’t control the cadence of client campaigns, this is good for us to keep in mind for future interns who may want to work on a larger-scale project.
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