The beginning of my professional career!

Hi all

I have had issues logging in to the blog site all semester but finally this has been resolved! Because of this I took notes on experiences I have encountered whilst undertaken my internship and now I would like to share this with you all!

I started my PR internship in January 2011 with the Retirement Village Association (RVA). It is a national company with offices located throughout Australia. I worked alongside Katheryn Jones, the WA Regional Manager and National Membership Manager in the Perth office as her Public Relations assistant.

What is the RVA? The role of the RVA is to be Australia’s peak body for the retirement village industry. They have over 600 village and associate members nationally to which they play a critical role in the ongoing growth and sustainability of the retirement village industry.

The role has a heavy element based on public relations as key objectives are to raise the profile of accreditation to stakeholders, raise the profile of retirement village to potential seniors, increase the membership through communicating the value of member services and to increase the knowledge of professional development within the industry. Therefore, during my internship I had to apply numerous types of public relations tools to satisfy these objectives.

The RVA has an agreement with the West Australian newspaper to publish a column each week in the retirement section. The target market is to the over 55 West Australian market who are thinking about moving to a retirement village. My first task was to interview a village resident from one of the RVA member villages and discuss personal experiences living the retirement village lifestyle. I then had to write up a column article which would be published.

My first attempt to interview a village resident encountered a communication problem as the hearing of the lady who volunteered to speak to me was very impaired. She could not clearly hear me over the phone. I needed to speak to someone that could hear me clearly and vice versa so that information communicated was not confused. I had to communicate with the village manager of that village to find another resident who would be willing to be interviewed. The second interview was successful and I managed to get interesting information as to why that resident had initially moved to a village and what the lifestyle is like.

The use of interviewing a resident for my column article made it much more credible for seniors who want a firsthand insight to retirement village. This experience has made me value the importance of interviews as information can be derived which you could not find elsewhere. For future interviews I would most likely visit a resident at the village for a more personal experience and to thank them in person for giving me their time!