As a beer promotions' girl, Emma Kelly had to have neck, confidence, charm, focus, flair and plenty of know-how. It was a job that demanded the kind of skills she needs in spades today to be successful in public relations.

Back in her student days at TCD, she learned how to promote a range of different beer brands in busy Dublin city centre pubs. "If you can do that, you can do anything," she says. "They wanted people who were able to talk about the brand. It gave me an understanding of brands as well."

It was not a job for the faint-hearted but it was great training, says Kelly, who works in the demanding and competitive PR business today.

Her work means she has to be good at networking with all kinds of people. She has to organise events, make sure they go smoothly and that they are covered by press, TV and radio journalists. It's an on-going job to ensure an event attracts plenty of media attendance.

Earlier this year she and her partner, Sonia Reynolds, who set up Amplify two years ago, organised the Red Bull Flugtag event. This was the key water-sport event in the Dublin Docklands Festival. They greeted all the guests, the media and the stars who came along. They had to make sure that everyone who turned up was happy, informed and excited about the event.

She believes that the PR industry is particularly suited to women. "It's a great career for women because women are better at it. It's to do with their interpersonal skills and being able to communicate and being able to charm."

There are more pragmatic skills also. "You have to be able to write and know how to pitch an idea and get journalists interested in the event," she says. She mentions the importance of the phone in her work. Her mobile phone sits on the table beside a bulging filofax.

In her own experience, PR is "about being strategic and being able to plan because it involves a lot of planning. If you get on with people and you like being out and about it's a great job for you."

Women, she says, can make a lot of money by the time they're 30 years of age. "It's competitive. There's freedom of entry to the PR business. Anyone can set up. It's just on your reputation . . . Our business has always been through personal recommendation. Now it's just getting bigger and bigger."

Her second-level schooling at St Andrew's College in Blackrock, Co Dublin, which attracts students from many countries, taught her about diversity and sociability. Her involvement in debating and sport were particularly relevant, she says. She sat her Leaving Cert in 1988. Her business know-how was reflected in her grade in business organisation - an A.

She went on to study economics and politics at TCD because. "It's a really good degree," she says. A lot of journalists do that degree. It prepared me for PR." The degree also allowed her to focus on languages. She spent a year working in Brussels as part of the EU-funded Erasamus programme.

After graduating in 1992 she got a job with the IDA. She was based in Amsterdam and charged with contacting up to 1,000 companies which the authority wanted to target to set up in Ireland. Back in Dublin she continued to work with the IDA, looking after companies which came on one-week visits to view Ireland's infrastructure and facilities. Then she decided to go solo and she's never looked back.

"I've turned my hobby into my job," says the girl who likes meeting people, partying and organising social events. She recently completed a master's in multi-media.

Her last word to students who are thinking about this career is to work abroad every summer. All through college she flew the coop, on successive years working in Spain, Britain, France and the US. A key part of being good at this job is "being at ease with people", she says. And "the most fundamental thing is being able to phone those poor journalists and having the guts to do it".