Hi all, this is my first blog for PR 393. I have been completing my placement with the Perth Fashion Festival since mid December. In this blog I will discuss how sometimes we don’t realise just how much we don’t know and why work experience is so important!
I have been working with the Perth Fashion Festival since July 2009 as a volunteer in the office and as part of their Style Envoy Program throughout the 2009 Festival in September. From the beginning of my work with the Festival my supervisors always saw great potential in me and were glad to present me with new challenges and give me extra responsibility.
During the Festival I was made one of two back of house team leaders, one at each location. It was a big responsibility as the volunteer co-ordinator was based front of house and also didn’t have much idea of what was going on back of house even if I needed help. I think that this responsibility gave me a lot of confidence not only in doing the job but also in knowing that my hard work had paid off and was being recognised.
After the festival I was contacted by one of Perth’s top Stylists who runs his own business styling for catwalk shows and other photo shoots around the state and was offered some casual paid work as an Assistant which I gladly accepted. I then worked back stage at some catwalk shows, which was great fun. Dressing and styling aren’t really my areas of expertise or even of particular interest to me, but I was very pleased to have the experience and quite chuffed with my achievements at that point in time.
I was then asked to come back to the Festival to help out in the office again in December. This was when I was offered the placement and was again very happy and excited about the opportunity. I went into it feeling very confident and knowledgeable not only about the organisation and the work but also about the position itself and the requirements. I really underestimated the responsibility and the amount of knowledge and expertise required.
After working as a helper and general assistant in the office throughout December, I came back in January as the temporary Festival Administrator as the previous employee had left. I was confident about the job and did not see many challenges ahead. I felt that I knew enough about working with the organisation to easily pick up the work and complete the tasks at hand. I was wrong! I slowly realised that even though I was just assisting with the Public Relations, it was a real shock. Everything that I had learnt so far at Uni was not as easy to put into practice as expected.
One of my main tasks so far has been helping to collate the newsletter. Quite a substantial Public Relations task which I have been very excited to complete! I first created a draft template with some stories and a basic layout from the direction I had been given. It turned out that all we had learnt at Uni wasn’t so transferrable into the real world and certainly the use of Microsoft Publisher wasn’t acceptable! I quickly learnt just how to write a real life Newsletter for a real life business. It is something I am very proud of! And thanks to my work experience I can now say that I AM competent in preparing a Newsletter and I am confident to do so. I am hoping that in coming weeks I will be able to prepare other important event documents and get those skills in order.
I guess what I am trying to say is that work experience is just so important and the more you do before you enter the workforce and the more extensive it is, the better off you will be. At least you will save yourself the embarrassment of getting things wrong when you’re actually getting paid for it! I know that I will be confident entering the workforce after this work experience is complete as I have had real experience. Even tasks as simple as collecting mail, distributing mail, photocopying, collating databases or simple email etiquette is all important and needs to be learnt properly for anyone working in a business or office environment.
I am really thankful for the experience and have certainly changed my attitude towards it. I thought it would be easy and I thought that Uni had taught me all the skills I needed to go straight into a job. It’s not that Uni isn’t important or helpful, it is the foundation of learning but the skills need to be put into practice and the lessons need to be learned in order to succeed in the future!
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