Am I industry ready now? A reflection of industry placement

My time at Event and Conference Co. has come to a close and I feel like I have learnt a lot.

But do I feel ready to enter the Public Relations Industry?

Working for Event and Conference Co. as an intern was an eye opener into the way a small events businesses work. The business had minimal paid staff and quite a few interns. This posed it's own challenges and benefits.

While I felt comfortable knowing I could talk to the other interns and bounce ideas around, the owner of the business, however, having so many interns producing work meant everything needed to be proofed and reworked in more detail than, I think, if the work was produced by professionals. It meant I had less room to fail and I needed to learn to produce industry quality work quickly so she didn't need to review my work so much.

I learnt a lot from my industry placement that I only knew in theory before starting my placement. I have more confidence in myself and the skills I have learnt while at Curtin University. I now know for certain I chose to study a profession I will enjoy and excel at. I do not think small business event work is where I see my career path heading but working in that environment taught me a lot and gave me to tools, knowledge and experience to know where I want to head and know I will succeed in the Public Relations field.

How was your industry placement experience? Do you think the area you interned in is where you want your career to focus? Or, like me, did it show you you want to pursue other areas of public relations?

Over and Out,
Bridgette

Keeping Up With The World

Media monitoring

Unfortunately, one of the most common tasks most interns will encounter throughout their experience is A LOT of media monitoring. Let’s be honest – media monitoring can be a long and tedious task. It resulted in me questioning the necessity of this task, particularly when it involves tracking the industries and competitors of your clients as well as the company itself. After this, the filing process is even longer as the details of each article is scanned, cropped, filed in several platforms, printed and calculated.

Each morning, I spend two hours flicking through various newspapers, scanning the articles for 23 names of clients, along with news concerning their industry and competition. Two ladies in our office have a job purely designated to newspaper monitoring – and they still need extra help in the mornings. Meanwhile, other workers in the office are scanning the online world for articles and news about their clients.

Fortunately, this means public relations has the opportunity to become extremely familiar with what’s going on in the world. I learnt to enjoy this task as I become familiar with events, politics and issues throughout Malaysia. 

Your public relations consultancy's client benefits from relevant news is filtered for them through to review without manually searching the media. The client also receives consistent updates with statistical analysis’s concerning the news value in print, online, broadcast and social media, allowing them to compare how the media is presenting their company from month to month.

Those interested in public relations should have an interest in the news and media, as well as a curiosity for the world’s activities maintains your interest through activities such as media monitoring.

Not Quite the end for me...yet!

Hi Guys,

So although my required 20days of interning is officially up, I have decided to stay on at Telethon to help out with the rest of the years events. As I'm sure many of you are aware the later half of the year is were most of the fun begins culminating with the Telethon weekend!!

Prior to that weekend i have the 92.9 kids appeal which sees Telethon raise funds specifically for much needed equipment at PMH. I will then be helping in the continued development of the Cole's Kids carnival held over Telethon weekend and will lend my hand to any other tasks required for the live 26hour broadcast. Offering my services a couple of days a week will really boost my experience within the not for profit industry and will in turn help me shape some vital contacts moving forward.

Hopefully i can aid in helping Telethon implement a viable PR relations plan to help further their organisation and its already broad reach.

I have to admit entering this unit at the start of the semester was a hassle!trying to find a placement and giving up work hours at my current job proved difficult obstacles to overcome. However, the experience and insight i have learnt from the placement program is beyond anything i could have every imagined. Not only has working at Telethon shaped my values and attitudes, but it has also provided me with a future direction for my career post studies and for that i will be eternally grateful.

Good luck to everyone in your future endeavors
Its been a pleasure interacting with all of you.

Until next time

Catie
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YOU WILL NEVER KNOW IT ALL

As I finish up and finalise the end of my internship, I pack away all my new tools into my PR tool kits and realise how much the last 6 months alone have taught me. After 3 years of university you would think you would know the bulk of it and that there really could not be that much more to learn.

We get degrees at uni, doesn’t that mean we should know it all? (Or at least most of it?)

Of course not, the Curtin Public Relations degree most definitely has played its role in my education into the field of PR and even if I were to spend another three years here I would still walk out into the real world with so much more to learn.

Public Relations is an ever-expanding profession, one that is viewed so differently by many people and plays such a different role in each industry and each individual business. No public relations job will be the same as the next and every new position will require a whole new skill set on top of the foundations we take away from uni.

This internship has showed me that we will forever have new ideas to come up with, new challenges to face, but the key is to never stop learning and actively taking any steps to further your education whether it be in the industry you work in or specifically about the work you do.

It is a big scary place out there in the big wide world but I finally am ready to take my degree and my industry experience and face the world with my head held high, ready to tackle any challenge it decides to throw my way.

Good luck to all Graduating PR students, I am sure many of us will cross paths in this little place of Perth.

Telethon Presents Cirque Du Soleil Sneak Peek!!

Events just dont seem to stop at Telethon!!

This year saw the first event of this kind as Telethon teamed up with world renowned Cirque Du Soleil to rasie money for the children of Western Australia.
Presenting a sneak peek of the popular Ova performance last Saturdaay saw families from all over perth meet at the big top to pay a $10 donation to view a snippet of the performance and the opportunity to meet and greet with the performers after the show, with all proceeds going to Telethon. After a couple of weeks with constant liaison between us at Telethon and Cirqu's PR team an event run sheet was finalised and saw us all meet Saturday morning at Langley Park. On Telethons end we were able to promote the event through an exclusive segment on Today Tonight (thanks is part to Telethons association to Seven) we also ran a variety of post on the Telethon Facebook page encouraging families to come down, The West also did a write up promoting the event and ran some ad's for it whilst regional stations such as Seven Mate played advertisments on their channels. We were amazed at the responce as the two of us from Telethon arrived early on Saturday morning to set up for the event.

Two hours prior to the gates even openening the line was around the corner, which really demonstrates the support Telethon has from the Western Australian community. After meeting with Cirque Security and PR team we were issued backstage working passes and began to set up for the event. Volunteers were given a run day of the day and it was my responcibility to keep an eye on Fat Cat.
Being the main branding image for Telethon, Fat Cat's presences at community events is huge which I'm not sure i realised until this event. I was incharge of walking around with Fat Cat who was immediatly swarmed with children and parents all wanting a photo and a cuddle, chatting with all sorts of publics about their love of Telethon or how Telethon had helped them or people they knew was the most rewarding part of my day.
After watching the performance and then coordinating photos it was time to pack up the event.

After a couple hours of work we established we had raised just under $16,000 for Telethon which was just amazing to be apart of the support of the community within Western Australia is so overwhelming!! I think today really highlighted to me the improtance of branding within an organisation and providing the community with something they can associate your company with, also getting the opportunity to go out and speak with key external stakeholders who you might not often get the opportunity to speak with is very rewarding.



Fat Cat and the Performers


Until next time

caitie
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Presenting the 2012 Telethon Beneficiaries!!

When i first started at Telethon one of my first jobs was to help with the 2012 Beneficiaries function, regarded as the 'heart end' of telethon by Mr Kerry Stokes himself, this function saw Telethon distributed the $16million raised last year to a variety of beneficiaries who would all put it towards research and aid for the sick children and families of Western Australia. Being named a beneficiary is no easy thing, each charity must put forward a business case outlining what every single cent of their grant would go towards and inturn how that would help the children of Western Australia, the Telethon Board of Trustee's then take each application into careful consideration before determining a final number of recipients. This year it was 45 Western Australian charities and research organisations who Telethon felt could best utilise the funds. The function also acknowledges its million dollar partners who donate in excess of a million dollars each year to aid in the cause.  

The beneficiaires function was to be held on the 29th of May at the Perth convention and exhibition centre and my first task was ot monitor the 500+ guest list. Telethon invites all its major stakeholders your share a vested interest in the organisation as well as those it has worked with over the years. A generic email invitation is sent out to all beneficiaries as well as other stakeholders inviting them to the event (i even had to hand write some for the likes of our Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi and the Premier Colin Barnet just to name a few..). I was then incharge of monitoring their RSVP's and forming an official guest list.

Leading up to the day there was a lot of work to do, we contacted media outlets such as Seven News and The West who both agreed to send crew along to report on the function, with Seven news playing a broadcast on that evenings news and The West doing an article for the following days paper. A run sheet was created so we all knew exactly what was to be done and who was doing it on the day. I got assigned the job of greating the guests as they arrived, checking them in and answering any questions they had regarding the event, i got to chat with some very amazing people ranging from representatives from each charity, as well as some of Perths big names and million dollar partners.

I also had the opportunity of hanging out with the telethon stars of 2012 Conor ad Sophie and a little legend named Scott Geurini who at 6 yrs old has, in the last three years, raised over $25,000 for telethon by walking from his home in the country to their local footy oval which i hear is over 25km. Scott become the centre of both media reports appearing on the news and then in the paper the following day with Mr Stokes.

This event has encouraged me to, beyond my study, seek a job in the Not for Profit industry where my skills can be utilised to raise awareness to the amazing things these organisations achieve for our community.

Scott and Mr Stokes in The West



Beneficiaries recieving their certificates



Until next time

caitie

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