Hellooooooooo everyone!!!! (:
I’m Joyce from Curtin Singapore and I’m interning at Weber Shandwick Worldwide Singapore.
I started about three weeks ago. My colleagues are a very friendly bunch of people. My first week of internship was to do coding of some news articles for a client for an audit, with my second week doing media monitoring reports and updating media lists. After heeding Gregory’s advice to speak to my supervisor with regards to being more involved in some strategic planning instead of just technical aspects of PR. Apparently, my supervisor misunderstood and she had thought I was just interning during the summer holidays to earn some money. However, I have cleared this misunderstanding with her, so I will be doing more than what I have been these three weeks, and you will hear more from me!
So anyway, why is communication so important? In my second week of internship, another intern and I were in charge of doing the media monitoring report as it was our first time. And it being a Monday, there was a lot of newspapers to look through and we did not really communicate as to who was in charge of what. Hence, we only managed to send out the report to the client at about 1pm, which was quite late. From this experience, I had learnt that communication is very important as it not only affects you, but the company and its clients as well.
Also, today had been a pretty busy day, some of my colleagues came to the office later as they were at a meeting with a client beforehand. However, there was a report that another client was supposed to receive but apparently there was some miscommunication between the client and my colleagues so there was no report given. So by the time it was discovered that the report was not sent, it had become a big commotion with those in charge of that particular account. All felt that they were not responsible for the issue, and I felt that they were kind of pushing the blame to one another. I guess it is human nature that no one wants to take the blame for such things when it could have been avoided at the start. The problem has been resolved at the end of the day, but this should not have happened at all.
So, I believe that communication is essential.
Don’t you agree??
Adios.
3 comments:
Hi Joyce,
I couldn't agree with you more! Communication is integral to the working environemnt, especially with your team mates. I guess it differs amongst different agencies and firms, but with my agency,everyone working on an account is in charge of their own clippings for that account, including me! I suppose this eliminates a bit of confusion as opposed to one person doing the entire agency's clippings, especially when they have to be sent out by 10am. I prefer to do clippings only on the accounts assigned to me, therefore when I close the account I will be able to remember those clippings and notice if any are missing.
As for the newspapers, I think it's really important to delegate all publications amongst your collegues. In the office there is a print out stuck everywhere with our names and designated publications we have to read forst thing in the morning. Maybe you could do this with your fellow intern, It might save you a lot of trouble. The only setback with this is that you must know all the accounts you have in the agency and remember to thouroughly read through! I hope this helps :)
Enjoy your internship
Nessa Fouquet
Yes Joyce, I went through some bottle-neck due to miscommunication lately too! It was totally uncalled for. There are only 2 of us in-charge of the networking session and my colleague amended MOST of the slides before sending to bosses for clearance. Before he sent the email, he smsed me that he did NOT make any change but ONLY added 1 slide with photos. Thinking it was ok, I gave him the green light.
Got a thrashing from bosses after they received the email and spotted numerous errors, blaming me for not checking the work and us for no proper communication :(
I couldn't agree more too! And a lot of us have experience the "its not my responsible" attitude too!
Communication is important and sometimes we need to communicate earlier! I had a morning CNA interview for 3 spokesperson (1 client + 2 client's partners) and guess what happened? My client didn't turn up for the interview! This is because she was reminded late and there was a clash in her schedule. So it was only the client's partners were interviewed. And this is so unacceptable! but thankfully the mistake wasn't us.
Therefore early communication is important!
Post a Comment