Career prospects for communication graduates in Indonesia go well beyond "PR officer": the five Proxemics guests below built careers in corporate communications, public affairs, brand marketing, newsroom leadership and agency founding. Each path rewards a different skill, none of them started in a straight line, and not all of them started with a comms degree. Below are five real routes, with the episode where each guest explains it.
Career guides from universities list job titles. This piece shows how people actually got there, so you can pick a direction before your first internship.
1. Corporate communications rewards people who can handle hard industries
Corporate communications is a career built on handling difficult stakeholders, not on writing pretty releases. In episode 002, Reza Amirul traces more than ten years across pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals and alternative tobacco, then Traveloka during COVID, before launching his own digital PR agency, Iluminar. The lesson for students: hard sectors teach fast. Expect crisis work early.
2. Public affairs is where communication meets lawmaking
Public affairs is evidence-based advocacy that engages the lawmaking process, and it is a real path for communication graduates. Jeffrey Haribowo, Corporate Affairs Director for the cocoa business at Mars Wrigley, started as a teenage football reporter and in radio before moving from TV into corporate work (episode 013). His three must-have skills for anyone moving from PR into public affairs are resilience, persistence and a willingness to learn.
3. Brand marketing values character as much as the degree
You do not need a communication degree to lead brand marketing, but you do need the habits a good comms education builds. Ananditha Mayasari (Ditha) went from physics at Universitas Indonesia to hard B2C sales to a marketing leadership role at Kopi Kenangan (episode 016). When she hires, three non-technical qualities decide it: willingness to learn, humility and integrity.
4. The newsroom is still a career, and strong training for PR
Working in a newsroom teaches what editors reject, a lesson every future PR professional needs. Rachmadin Ismail, Editor-in-Chief of Tirto.id, explains in episode 023 why about 90% of brand press releases never get published: no business, editorial or traffic value. Graduates who start in media carry that filter for the rest of their careers.
5. Founding an agency comes after years of operational discipline
Viana Igah built her own PR agency only after more than a decade of unglamorous hotel PR and operations work. Her career ran through hotels such as Hotel Indonesia Kempinski, Raffles Jakarta and St. Regis Bali before founding Prefinite and Askara Group (episode 032). She describes hospitality PR as five-star discipline behind a glamorous surface, and talks openly about the AI pressure on agencies.
The five paths side by side
| Path | Guest and episode | What the work looks like | Skill the guest stresses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate communications | Reza Amirul, 002 | Stakeholders, crises, media in tough sectors | Learning fast in hard sectors |
| Public affairs | Jeffrey Haribowo, 013 | Policy advocacy with data and alliances | Resilience, persistence, learning |
| Brand marketing | Ditha, 016 | Consumer brand, campaigns, competition | Humility, integrity, learning |
| Newsroom | Rachmadin Ismail, 023 | Editing, deciding what is news | Knowing what editors reject |
| Agency founder | Viana Igah, 032 | Clients, teams, hybrid paid and earned media | Operational rigour |
Where Proxemics fits
Proxemics is an Indonesian PR, marketing and communication podcast hosted by Mercy Tahitoe and Stephanie Sicilia, with full episodes and transcripts on proxemicspodcast.com. Every path above links to a full conversation, so you can hear the trade-offs in the guest's own words before an interview or internship.