The search.

Hi everyone, I am Sivapriya Suraindran, Priya for short, and this is my first blog post.

I am a Singaporean who ventured off to Perth after my O'levels to continue my studies there. I am now a student from Curtin Bentley. However, I am currently doing my Summer School in Curtin Singapore. During this summer school programme, I decided to complete my PR Professional Practice unit in Singapore. Why you might ask? I have previously done two internships in Perth and I wanted to explore the PR industry in Singapore. So my main reason is to get more exposure in the Singapore PR industry.

I was only given my letter of acceptance to do the summer school programme one week before the term started. So you can imagine how short a time I was given to start sourcing out for internship opportunities. I immediately started to email PR firms. The thing I learnt is that big PR companies or any companies for that matter of fact, wanted a 3 - 6 month commitment as an intern. I was unable to give such a long commitment period because I needed to fly back immediately after my exams to complete my final year at Curtin Bentley.

So as time went by and December approached, I started to face another issue. Companies were not interested in recruiting an intern in December because there was nothing much to do during that time. Therefore, I kept getting rejected again.

My last resort was to start using contacts. I had to ask my dad, my uncle, anyone and everyone to help me source for an internship opportunity. I even asked my lecturer, Shalu, to help me. With all those contacts and connections,  you would not believe it, I was still unable to find an internship. The year was soon going to end and still no internship.

I was starting to lose hope and realised that there is no chance for me to get an internship at this point of time. I was about to talk to my lecturer and Student services about withdrawing from this unit. You could imagine the worry and stress I had gone through.

I can clearly remember that on 24th December 2012, I went for a Christmas gathering at my mum's friend's place. At this gathering I had spoken to one of my mum's friend, Selva, and he had told me he knew a friend who owned her own PR company. He said he will contact her and explain to her my situation and get back to me as soon as possible. I was so relieved, it felt like a Christmas miracle.

On 26th December, Selva had called me to pass me the contact details of Audrey McGagh, director of McGagh Communications. I had emailed her and she got back to me the next day, arranging a meeting on 2nd January 2013.  After the meeting, I was offered an internship opportunity and was to start the very next day.

So here I am today, advicing all future PR 393 students to start sourcing out for internships at least 2 - 3 months in advance to avoid all this stress.

Priya Suraindran
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