The PR industry is lagging behind other professions when it comes to promoting itself to graduates, according to a survey.
Banking, accountancy, retail and marketing, teaching, law, engineering and advertising all fared better in a poll of final year students carried out by tech agency Hotwire.
Students, when asked which industries were effective at promoting themselves to candidates, ranked PR ninth out of 12 popular career choices.
Only the charity sector, medical science and journalism were seen as less effective than the PR industry at promoting career opportunities to graduates.
The agency's UK managing director, Brendon Craigie, said the results were shocking and that the industry had a lot of ground to make up if it is to be taken seriously by graduates.
He warned the growth the industry had seen in the past five years would be unsustainable unless it could expand the talent pool and that a pro-active approach was the only way to address the gap.
Hotwire carried out the survey among the university graduates who expressed an interest in the agency's 2008 scheme.