My placement has now officially ended. I have done my hours and now find myself looking both backwards reflecting on my time, and forwards - to the report due this week. What have I achieved at my placement? What have I learned? And would I do it again?
To all those up and comers to the 393 world - students who will be doing their placements in the semesters and years to come at Curtin - what sage advice can I give? First - choose your placement wisely. I chose to carry out my placement at my current workplace, which had both incredible benefits as well as some technical difficulties.
An organisation that has not really embarked on PR activities in any way, shape, or form in the past, is both an opportunity to introduce and nurture incredible change in an organisation. But is also a source of frustration and moderate stress for a placement.
However, I can truthfully say that I am glad I chose the placement I did, and can look back at what I have achieved and be proud. I feel I have successfully created a good grounding for future PR strategies and tactics to be used in the firm. And have raised awareness and acceptance of PR in the organisation, so continual use is hopefully maintained and drawn upon to create future benefits for the company.
Be open to experiences and challenges. Try whatever you can. Take every opportunity given. Plan, plan and plan some more for any PR activities you decide to attempt. Nothing is worse than calling a media publication hoping to garner some coverage for your company, and having nothing more than "we want some media coverage" to say to the journalist that answers the phone. You will probably make mistakes. And after you fix those mistakes, you will probably make some more. Ask for help and guidance. Be honest about your capabilities, but don't let that hold you back from trying anything that is presented to you.
Look for any additional opportunities than those presented to you, to use PR in your placement or place of full time employment - they are out there. It just takes a bit of creativity.
More than anything. Have fun with your placement. I know I did. I learnt so much, and have solidified a role in the company for hopefully many years to come.
2 comments:
Congratulations on finishing your placement. It sounded very interesting seeming as your company did not have a set Public Relations team.
I completely agree with your advice "Ask for help and guidance. Be honest about your capabilities, but don't let that hold you back from trying anything that is presented to you." This was what I found was really important to remember throughout my placement. On a few occasions I felt nervous to ask questions and did not want them to think I could not do the task at hand, however, when I built up the courage to ask the questions, every person was so obliging and willing to help. Every person said please ask me as many questions as you like etc. This was really handy as they all did know a lot about the company and instead of wasting time not knowing and trying to work things out for myself, which sometimes proved impossible, I could just ask someone there and they would have the knowledge to give me an answer and often more information. We must also be confident yet remember our capabilities. Majority of us did not have experience in our areas of work and therefore were learning. A couple of times I sat in with different staff members and felt out of my depth when they did things that I thought were hard and they were so fast at completing the task. However, I would just remind myself of their experience and that at our age and stage they would have been in the same boat.
Enjoy continuing to work at your company.
Hello Sharon,
Congratulations on finishing your placement!
When reading your post I could completely relate to what you were describing as I was doing my placement where there was no set position of Public Relations also. Due to this situation, I was able to contribute a lot to my organisation. In reality I discovered that organisations already use PR duties without knowing it. I had the opportunity to show to them that they could do much more in applying proper PR knowledge. When doing my research for my report I saw that there was a real tendency for companies to use PR without having educated expertise. For instance in my organisation "the Graduate School of Business and Economics of University of Melbourne" they work on getting long term offers with coffees, restaurants or print shops every semester for students. You probably already recognised this popular PR task as I did. Indeed they use sponsorship without knowing it and waste time as they do not have the knowledge for processing this task. This is why I recommended that they write a sponsorship proposal in order to be more effective. As a student, I was able to give them a lot of useful advice for the continuity of their organisation. This is why I agree with you when you say that you would not have done it the other way around. It is great to be able to make organisations benefit from our knowledge.
Good luck for your pursuit as a PR graduate.
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