First Day Jitters

(Written Monday 29th July 2013)

Hello again everyone! It’s that time again… Blog time! As you should know by reading the title of this blog, it’s all about my first day at Professional Public Relations or PPR for short. I must admit many nerves were held by me before I arrived for my first day. The anticipation was horrible. I didn’t know what to expect having never worked in an office environment before and being a little intimidated by how much more experience everyone at PPR had on me. The worst thing that could happen would be that everyone thought I was an idiot for not knowing simple things that came easily to them. Shallow as it may be, deep down most people want to be accepted and I think this is where most of my nervousness and anxiety stemmed from. Of course I wanted to be accepted at PPR to start building my reputation as well as just making the work environment more pleasant not just for me but everyone at PPR.

So the first thing I did when I got too PPR, which has very recently moved from it’s Subiaco location to West Perth was park on the street. I went to the ticket machine… $4 an hour! My heart nearly dropped to the floor. I’m a university student who can barely afford a cup of coffee let alone pay for parking at a rate of $4 an hour. Anyhow, I paid for just one hour and went up to the office. Here, I asked if there was possibly a staff parking bay. There was, however, it was reserved for senior members of PPR which was completely understandable although I did get some tips on places to park where I could avoid paying for a ticket. Please keep this on the down low though! All jokes aside, parking was one thing I didn’t think I would encounter. Now I know why so many business people take public transport and this may be a suitable option for me in the future.

So when I finally got shown to my desk, I familiarised myself with PPR’s body of work by reading up on their past projects in a book given to me. I was then shown how to navigate through the computer system and then taken around the office to be introduced to the staff. At this point I was so overwhelmed. As I mentioned before, these people were so much more experienced and knowledgeable then me and I didn’t know what to do or what to say. You know what they say that it’s all about that first impression so I tried to be as professional as possible but somehow I don’t think I left a great impression. I was told I had to generate my own work and that tasks would not be handed to me so it was important to build a relationship with each and every one who worked there to make sure I would be consistently getting tasks to do, while also building my reputation as a reliable person.

I asked around and my tasks on the first day were all pretty administrative. I had to contact organisations in order to validate their contact information for an event that was coming up. I also had to research advertising data for online websites which included finding specific sites’ unique browsers per month and the advertising rates for them. This would be used to identify how much PPR would have saved clients on advertising when they received publicity online. I then had to create a list of corporate advisory firms for each state in Australia and include relevant contact information for each. All in all, a very stimulating and challenging day and I look forward to what awaits me in the next four weeks!

Jamie.

The little things

One thing I knew was inevitable about being an intern is having to do the tasks that nobody else wants to do, or has time for. And as much as it sucks it's all a part of the experience and this was something I wanted to talk about in one of my blogs.

Even in a fast paced environment like 96FM there still needs to be organised chaos! And lets just say there filing system before I started was just pure chaos.
On numerous occasions when asked to file away client information I was faced with over flowing cabinets and some seriously confusing clutter. So one of the less busy days of my internship I took matters into my own hands and took to those cabinets with some archive boxes!

So, there is only suppose to be this years and last years client information within each folder and they had some dating back to before it was even called 96FM so many hours and numerous paper cuts later I had about 5 head height piles to be archived and some sparkly clean, organised filing cabinets.

So even though when I began my internship I had such high hopes of the tasks I would undergo, I found myself trying to figure out how to put together archive boxes and doing administrative tasks. But all in the name of the game, and i'm happy to say it was appreciated as who doesn't love an organised office! And whilst doing this task I learnt so much about Perth's media industry and the relationships that 96FM has with both small and large companies throughout the state. Seeing who they are currently working with for competitions, advertising etc and who they use to in the past. Gave me a broad understanding of just who's out there and what they're up to!

Sometimes we feel like we are doing things that wont further our skills but one thing I found from my internship is that even when it seemed boring it was furthering my overall skills that may help me in the future and is most definitely appreciated by those you're helping out.

Alicia

The Glamour Side of PR

Most people think of PR as an episode of Sex and the City. Maybe this is the case if you’re a 20 year veteran to the industry but starting off, not so much. There are aspects that are a lot of fun, but PR is a career that you have to work your way up which means starting at the bottom of a barrel full of mundane tasks. For me, these ranged from Library and IT support where I had to search for and scan in pages of articles published about Hames Sharley from various magazines, crop hundreds staff images in Photoshop for the email facial recognition database and create project sheet after project sheet.

For those of you that don’t know, project sheets are an A4 page including project content and images created with InDesign displaying each project Hames Sharley has ever worked on. Needless to say there are a lot. At first it was fantastic and necessary working with InDesign as I had no prior experience but then after around the 50^th project sheet, it started getting repetitive.

However, these were beginner’s tasks and I was soon thrown into press releases, writing articles for publication, external client newsletter (IntheNews), the internal staff eNewsletter, competitor analysis and website updates. My knowledge has grown exponentially in a range of tasks that I greatly value. My last day as an intern, I got to work on a submission which is a very important document determining whether or not the organization is chosen for a contract to a project. I was honored to be chosen and for the responsibility it entailed.

The most exciting thing for me was to see the project sheets for the WA Institute for Medical Research and Fiona Stanley Hospital (which can be seen from the freeway near Murdoch train station) come to life. Bravely I asked if Bec and myself would ever be able to do site visits to get a feel for current projects we were writing content for. My bravery was rewarded and the next week we set off to the construction sites. It really put everything into perspective. We could see the sheer size of the project and how much coordination it took to get all aspects working together and to a tight schedule. Even the smallest change in a design or subcontract with an electrician etc could mean added months to the estimated completion time. It was also great just to get out of the office for a few hours.