My boss puts it best. In her words, “Whenever I put an ad on the website for a consumer person I’m inundated. When I put one on for a B2B person it’s like a deserted wasteland.”

This is odd because, from where I’m standing, B2B PR has a lot going for it. In fact, with the current state of the economy I would argue that B2B PR has more going for it than practically any other sector of PR.

How bad is this recruitment ‘“crisis“? A good friend of mine is an MD of a rival agency and we periodically have the following conversation:

Him: “How are things?”

Me: “Good, we won that [insert new client name] business.”

Him: “Oh well done, have you got anybody to work on it?”

Me: “No. Do you know anybody?”

Him: “No. I can’t find anybody either.”

Admittedly, B2B requires a certain type of person. You are more likely to spend time on a construction site rather than London Fashion Week. The talk is of drains and machine tools rather than handbags and shampoo.

Ultimately, I suspect that B2B suffers from the same problem as manufacturing in this country. The British regard factories and the engineers who work in them as being a bunch of chaps who wear overalls and have dirty fingernails, whereas the truth is very different.

So what should attract people into B2B?

You meet some very nice people
 

In fact the most common reaction you get from people involved in drainage, machine tools, insulation and aggregate is delight that somebody is taking an interest in what they do for a living.

You can work for some big names
 

Take just engineering for example. In the UK it is possible to work for multinationals with names like Bosch, GKN and Siemens. Put names like that on your CV and you have a track record which really stands up and works for you.

Foreign travel
 

In the last year I’ve been to Milan, Hannover, Vienna and narrowly missed having to go to Chicago (just to explain, I have nothing against Chicago it’s just that with two kids it was going to take some explaining to my good wife why I had to go there!) In short, it’s not only the consumer fashionistas who get to go to Milan.

B2B work is interesting
 

No really it is. I have one client who is marketing intelligent remote monitoring equipment for wind farms which stops wind turbine blades from hurling ice around. I have another who is at the cutting edge of biometric (hand and eye recognition) security solutions. If you have a yearning to know how things work then B2B may be for you.

B2B is dealing with the big issues
 

And by big issues I mean climate change, energy efficiency and all the UK government and EU regulations that have been brought in to deal with it. I mean issues like flooding (I bet you didn’t know that 80 per cent of UK homes and commercial premises are at risk according to the Environment Agency) and I mean issues like road congestion.

The bottom line is that B2B can offer a wide, varied and interesting career within PR, which many who want to get into this profession should consider as they attempt to get on the first rungs of the ladder.