With nearly two years of PR experience, you now know how the trade press works, and you’ve established a positive relationship with several key editors. You understand the trade press’ requirements and how they fit with your client’s desire for editorial coverage. You are able to analyze client and editorial information and distill it into key points, and you can communicate these orally to your team and client. You are an account executive in training.

You are beginning to know how to handle yourself in client situations and are learning how to creatively address conflict and difficult situations. You’ve learned that effective listening is an active, not passive, communication skill. You've expanded your writing skills to more complex written pieces including backgrounders and fact sheets.

As a team member you’ve learned when to ask for help, when to delegate up or down, and when to look to other agency resources to solve a problem. You’ve honed your research skills and know how to utilize all the online services, databases, and more to get the facts for your client. Your client contact and relationships are growing wider and stronger. Your client knows that you understand the business and is starting to look to you for tactical recommendations and management of smaller projects, within realistic time frames and budgets. In turn, you are looking to broaden the value you add by seeking larger, more complex projects to do. You’re also focusing on adding more strategic value to your client.

You’ve discovered that you’ll never outgrow the need to multitask. You read the trade press religiously to keep up on the changes in your client’s industry, keeping an eye out for new competitors. You are adept at Microsoft Office, and you know the location of all the online publications of interest to your client on all the electronic services.