Choosing the Right Writing Sample for Your PR Job Search

When interviewing for job opportunities, your writing sample can carry as much weight as your résumé. It's the part of your application that gives an employer the chance to experience and evaluate your actual craft.

But PR presents a unique challenge that most general career advice doesn't address: Much of your best writing may not technically belong to you.

Can you share your previous work?

Unlike a journalist or novelist, many PR professionals write on behalf of clients or employers, and that work is rarely yours to freely distribute.

A press release you drafted for a Fortune 500 client, a crisis statement you wrote during a sensitive situation, or a pitch that landed major coverage are often bound by confidentiality agreements or simply understood as proprietary.

Before you submit anything from a current or former job, check your employment contract or NDA, and when in doubt, ask your former employer for explicit permission.

If you can't clear a piece for external use, consider creating a sanitized version: Swap out the client's real name for a placeholder, remove specific financial figures, or generalize identifying details while keeping your writing intact.

Just be transparent about this in your submission. A brief note like, "I've anonymized client details to respect confidentiality" shows both integrity and industry awareness.

What kind of samples are appropriate?

The kind of writing sample that impresses an agency recruiter often differs from what resonates with an in-house communications team, and understanding this distinction can meaningfully sharpen your application.

Agencies tend to value versatility and range. If you're applying to an agency, consider submitting two contrasting pieces, perhaps a consumer product pitch alongside a more serious B2B thought leadership piece, to demonstrate you can shift tone and strategy across accounts. Agencies often juggle multiple clients across industries, so showing adaptability carries weight.

In-house teams, by contrast, are usually looking for depth and voice consistency within a single brand or sector. If you're targeting an in-house role, a sample that shows sustained, focused expertise, several pieces written for one brand or industry over time, can demonstrate that you understand how to build and protect a singular brand voice.

Crisis communications is one of the most differentiating skills in PR, yet it's also the hardest to showcase because real crisis writing is almost never public or shareable. If you have genuine crisis experience, consider writing a mock crisis statement based on a publicly known situation (e.g., a fictionalized product recall, a hypothetical data breach) rather than referencing a real client crisis. This lets you demonstrate command of tone, urgency, and legal sensitivity without compromising confidentiality.

For candidates without direct crisis experience, this is also an opportunity. A well-constructed hypothetical crisis statement can outperform a mediocre real-world sample, since it's built to highlight the exact skills, calm authority, precision, and empathy employers may be screening for.

Respect confidentiality and offer solutions.

Many PR professionals write extensively but rarely see their name attached to the final product. Ghostwritten executive op-eds, unattributed press releases, and internal talking points are the bread and butter of the profession, but they create a real dilemma when it's time to prove you wrote something.

If you've ghostwritten a byline for an executive, it's usually appropriate to submit that work as a sample, since the writing itself is yours even if the name on it isn't. Just be upfront about the arrangement in your submission notes. This is standard practice in the industry and hiring managers in PR expect this kind of transparency.

If confidentiality restrictions leave you with nothing submittable, create a sample for this purpose: Choose a real, current event relevant to the industry you're applying to, and write the press release, statement, or pitch you would have written for that situation.

This approach lets you demonstrate strategic thinking and writing ability simultaneously. You could also express to the employer your willingness to complete an assigned writing assessment.  

Your writing sample is, ultimately, about more than proving you can write. When applying for jobs, it is a preview of how well you know PR as a craft, and how you'll navigate confidentiality, brand voice, crisis pressure, and invisible authorship.

Selecting a strong writing sample creates a valuable snapshot of your skills that helps you stand out in the job-seeker talent pool.