It's not over, it's just the beginning

The emotional time has come, to say the goodbyes and thanks to the dear colleagues that have worked by my side for the last few months, my dear supervisor who was ever so helpful and patient with me, and to the boss who allowed my presence and learning in a most remarkable consultancy.

From the coffee runs and junior jobs, to the never ending mailbox and the tight deadline frenzies, and lets not forget the odd glass of champagne at the end of the week, I can say that the whole PR interning experience was one of a lifetime.

Never could I have imagined prior to this unit, learning so much about a degree I already thought I knew.

This internship has taught me so much. Not just about things you can learn from a book. But real things, things like building relationships with colleagues and clients, things like gaining the courage to tackle tasks front on and gaining a certain confidence to find YOUR place in PR.

I’ve learned that PR is a lot more versatile than I had previously thought. The profession cannot be defined by one simple definition, but many definitions. The job entails all sorts of wild activities, all of which share one thing in common: to get the job done.

I have come out of this internship with a hunger to learn and experience more, to graduate out into the real world and embark on a never ending learning journey.

It has been an absolute pleasure reading up n everyone’s different experiences; I hope every one has come out of their internship with the same motivation as I have.

All the best,

LS

A day out in the field

Nearing the end of my internship at Mills Wilson, I was asked to visit the facilities belonging to one of our clients: Brightwater

To give this a little context, over the last two months I have been involved in the communications for Perth’s Longest Lunch, an event held by non-profit Brightwater to raise funds.

The week prior to this event, I was asked to visit their Oats Street Acquired Brain Injury rehabilitation center with the event MC Andrew Daddo, to experience a tour of the center and meet some of the residents at Oats Street.

My task would be to write a community newspaper story about how the Oats Street center is changing the lives of some of its residents.

It’s during this visit that I met Craig, a young man living with a brain injury at the center. After speaking to Craig for a few minutes, I decided that my news article would feature his story at Oats Street.

Craig had been living at Oats Street for a few years, and had made some extensive progress since his admission. But that wasn’t the reason I wanted to feature his story in the article. It’s the fact that Craig is working hard to change things around for Perth’s younger generation.

His brain injury was the result of a drug-induced stroke, a fact he refuses to hide from. Over the last year, he has been using his story to educate school kids about recreational drug use.

Now as you can imagine, speech and movement don’t come easy for Craig, but it is his goal of teaching kinds that has pushed him further and yielded great progress in his rehabilitation.

And that is something that the Oats Street center has been capitalizing on, to find individual goals and to use them as a driver towards recovery.

I found great pleasure in writing the story for Brightwater, knowing that the end product would help share a story worth reading, and to spread the word about the good work it does.

If you’d like to find out more about Brightwater, click on this link.

Treading on the waters of confidence

...A safeguard to information

One topic that has been addressed multiple times throughout this degree was that of confidentiality in the business of PR. 

We learn that confidentiality is key, and trade secrets must be kept. We are told about these confidentiality agreements that PR professionals are asked to sign before entering employment.

It’s one of those things you know exists, but only get a real sense of when it’s your turn to sign the agreement.

...Time to sign

In my first week at Mills Wilson, I was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. It was pretty straight forward, outlining the fact that any information I might come across interning for this company would have to be kept confidential. Sounds simple right?

But once I’d signed that agreement, it occurred to me how important confidentiality is in the PR consultancy business. Any work that is undertaken here is in fact a trade secret. The way the business runs, the way the consultancy manages its clients, but more importantly the information the agency gains from its clients – that’s all very confidential material.

I came across this constant dilemma outside of work, wanting to explain to my peers what I was actually doing as an intern, without divulging any confidential material, treading carefully on the waters of confidence.

...Conflict of interest

Accidentally divulging confidential material to an individual may be one aspect of confidentiality, and a relatively easy one to manage. But when working in a consultancy which covers a range of clients - it is even more important to make sure that there is a level of confidentiality between clients, and carefully manage any conflict of interest that may arise from consulting for competing clients.

It’s the week we’ve all been anticipating

 

This first week as a PR intern was all and nothing I had expected at the same time.

I scored an internship at Mills Wilson, a Public Relations Consultancy with offices based in Nedlands. Mills Wilson is a specialized consultancy, with many clients in the oil and gas, construction, government and not-for-profit sectors.

I was immediately briefed on a project as I walked in, I’ll brief you as I was that morning.

Client: The Gascoyne Food Council

What: Chefs for the Gascoyne

When: 19^th April 2015

Where: Perth Cultural Centre – Urban Orchard

Why: A fundraising event to support the devastated Gascoyne region in the wake of Cyclone Olwyn

How: Perth’s top chefs would get together to cook up a storm; all proceeds from the ticket sales would go to support the Gascoyne region

I was also briefed about the message the consultancy wanted to send out to the public, and that message varied for different stakeholders.

Message to the Gascoyne: Perth cares, we’re helping you

Message to Perth: Buy a ticket, come to the event

Message to WA: Donate your produce, help the Gascoyne

The first thing I did was some intensive research in what happened to the Gascoyne. I scoured the internet for articles and websites explaining the significance of the Gascoyne as a farming region. I made myself an expert.

I feel like that research was possibly the most important task I could have undertaken that day. Talking with my supervisor, it became clear that research is an essential part of working in a PR consultancy. When faced with multiple clients, it’s important to know as much as you can about them. At the end of the day, you’re going to be the communicator, and you must reflect their true image at all times.

After a heavy dose of research, I was handed my first assignment, which was to compile a list of all relevant media that we would contact to communicate the event. The key word here is relevant. When writing a PR submission for assignment purposes, it’s easy to get away with a long list of media outlets that might or might not be interested.  It became apparent that it would not be the case in the real PR world. I was told to treat each media contact as if I was personally going to communicate to them. I was told that in the real PR world, there’s no time to mess around with irrelevant contacts. It makes sense doesn’t it? But was I completely aware of that after going through all those PR units at Curtin? Not really.

Nervous on the first date with Mills Wilson

And by the first date, I mean the interview.

Let me rewind a little bit. A few weeks ago I started to prepare for the big treasure chase. The treasure was the best possible and most compatible PR internship in town, and the chase was the application process.

It took a while to get everything ready. A PR resume is a showcase, and so I had to make sure that everything I put in there was with careful consideration, and naturally that took a while.

Once I was happy with my application, I compiled and ranked a list of companies that I would approach. I wrote customized cover letters for the favorites and started making calls.

Long story short, I was contacted by Marie Mills the Managing Director of Mills Wilson, inviting me to come in and meet her for an interview.

The interview is a critical aspect of a career of PR. At the end of the day, a bad interview = no job. So I treated this opportunity as my first assignment.

I’m naturally quite a nervous person and so I thought the more preparation I’d do, the more comfortable I would be in that interview room.

Here are a few ways in which I prepared

Dressing for success

First impressions are important and appearance is key, so I put a lot of thought into what I would wear at the interview. I wanted to wear something that would be quite fashionable, yet reserved. That would convey my personality to the “employer” without revealing too much of my personal life. I did a little research on this and came across this interesting article, which you are welcome to read.

The question all employers ask

So tell me about yourself. It’s more a statement than a question and the answer is most critical. Again, first impressions are important, and this part of the interview is where the employer gets a first real snapshot of who you are. The difficulty in answering this is the fact that you could talk about almost any aspect of your life, from where you were born to what you had for dinner last night. But you want to make sure that whatever you say in those few minutes reflects your best possible self. I made sure to prepare and memorize a summary of the facts I wanted to convey about myself in that interview. More information about those interview questions here.

Know your stuff

First impressions are important, but it is likely that the interview will last more than a few minutes so you should prepare adequately and have enough to say to your prospective employer. This is why “knowing your stuff” is vital. For this interview, I made sure that I knew the ins and outs of all the PR projects I had been involved in. I could imagine nothing worse than not being able to properly explain your involvement in an assignment you had. It sounds very basic, but you must know what you are talking about, and you should have worked out a way to accurately but concisely talk about your projects. It’s also important to research the company you are being interviewed for, because chances are they’ll be asking you why you want to work for them. Read about it here.

In the end, I got the internship. Did I make use of all the research I did? No. But did I benefit from being prepared? Greatly.

The answer we’re all looking for in PR

Let me introduce myself.

My name is Lucie Marchant and I’m a third year PR and Journalism student. 

It’s been a good three years, full of ups and downs and plenty of opportunities along the way. Most of all, there has been a hell of a lot of learning.

If you’d asked me three years ago what PR was, I would have shrugged my shoulders and said it had something to do with “companies” and “image” and the “media”. Nowadays, I can elaborate a little more but it’s still a burning question with an unsatisfactory answer.

What is PR? Really, what is it? It’s the one question that has remained unanswered throughout this degree.

Each term has got me a little step closer. We were given the opportunity to learn about all the activities and techniques involved in PR, we followed templates and wrote proposals for real and theoretical clients, we learned about PR in an international context, and we gained an understanding of how consultancies operated and how practitioners worked in the corporate setting.

Thinking about it now, it’s true that we learned a whole lot in those three years. But after each term passed - and I don’t think I’m unique in that respect - I feel like I still couldn’t put my finger on what PR really is. What the job actually entails on a day-to-day basis and what it would feel like to be in a PR role. What is this mysterious degree leading to?

The answer to the burning question is what I’m hoping to gain from the PR internship. Surely this one final unit of working experience will explain everything. We’ll find out very soon…