Will you sink of swim?

Hi everyone!

I am in my final semester of my Management and Public Relations degree at Curtin University and I am currently in my sixth week of my PR internship at St John of God Murdoch Hospital (SJOGMH). This blog post is concentrating on everything I have done from the first till the third week of my internship and boy have I learnt a lot in a short period of time.

The first challenge I faced during this unit started way before I took my first steps into the PR and Community Relations department of SJOGMH, and that was finding a placement. I'm not going to lie, finding a placement wasn't my cup of tea. The idea of cold-calling an organisation in the hopes of scoring a twenty day internship terrified me and three weeks until the start of semester I knew I had to get my butt into gear and just do it!

After a week of procrastination and researching various organisations I finally made the call to SJOG and I'm glad I did, as they said I could definitely do a placement in their PR and Marketing team at their Murdoch campus on the days I was free (I work 30 hours already). In all honesty the last six weeks have flown by and I don't think I could have selected a better organisation to intern for.

For those who don't know, SJOG hospitals are private, non-profit and located throughout Australia and New Zealand. SJOG appealed to me as an organization as they were non-profit and I always wanted a career in health care.

But enough about that and let's get down to how my first three weeks went.

The first week of my internship was the sink or swim period, and to say I was thrown into the deep end would be an understatement. My first day was centered on looking at all their publications, social media, community relations and events archives so I would have a feel for what the PR and Community Relations team does at SJOGMH. Then on the second day my first assignment was to interview two caregivers; a doctor and the Arts Program manager, and write up two separate pieces by the following week to be published in the SJOGMH quarterly newsletter "The Murdoch Messenger"

My boss, Roshan, asked me if I was comfortable jumping straight into the interviews solo and I jumped at the opportunity to shine. So, armed with a trusty tape recorder in my hand I set off to prove I could conduct a successful interview (I mean we all did them in PR 250 Media right?) and come up with a story with an angle that the public would be interested in, boy did that backfire at first.

I went into the first interview completely unprepared and it took only three minutes. I knew as soon as I was walking back I had screwed up by not preparing my questions beforehand. We were taught during PR 250 Media that preparation is the key when it comes to interviews, both as an interviewer and as an interviewee. I was not making that mistake again!

Heading into my second interview I still had my trusty tape recorder, but I was also armed with a sheet of questions that I had prepared which would hopefully start the ball rolling, and it did. I was more confident and I found I was able to probe deeper and get more relevant answers. Seems that in this instance what I had learnt at uni had paid off going into my internship.

The second week consisted of more interviews with more people, and more pieces to boot! Again, preparation was the key to my success and the key to being relaxed and confident. Up until this point I had received really positive feedback from Roshan on my writing though it did require editing before submission. The confidence boost I received from this feedback was exactly what I needed as I remember feeling extremely nervous after I had sent off my first piece to Roshan for approval in case it wasn't up to the standard of a university graduate.

One thing I have realised is I am now learning how to push out pieces and media releases in less than two hours, sometimes even in less than an hour. This is a huge turnaround from when I was at uni and writing up media releases for assignments would take me days. Roshan told me "limits and caveats breed creativity and force you to rely on your instincts" and I am starting to see how true this is.

My third week was not as hectic and I spent most of my time researching the use of social media in health care. SJOGMH has a social media plan and is active on Facebook and Twitter but want to better utilise various social media outlets to boost their profile as the leading private hospital in Western Australia. Roshan stressed to me that social media is not just about pushing information out, but making it relevant to the target audience and stakeholders. They want their stakeholders to engage with them as a brand and this requires using various channels more effectively.

So as you can see, my first three weeks were full on sink or swim moments but I am happy to say I have loved every moment of it so far, and I'll keep you posted on what is happening in the next few weeks.

(If you want to see some of my work, follow this link http://www.sjog.org.au/pdf/Murdoch_MM%20Autumn_2013_FINAL.pdf. I wrote the 'Caregiver of the Year' piece on page 3 and co-wrote 'The Art of Good Health' on page 4.

Until next time!

 

Beginning at the Beginning 

I started looking for placements way back in the winter holidays knowing we only had 4 weeks off, I thought I may as well start getting ahead before the pressure starts again in Semester 2. There were many things to look into before applying for placements and I knew I had to be sure about where I was going as I was going to have to write a long and important report at the end of it and if I was not interested in the place I would not do a good job.

The first question was if I wanted to work in a consultancy or in house operations. I had heard of the benefits of both through my three years in the PR degree but I have never actually done any placements so I could not be too sure of what I would prefer.

The second question was if my resume, references and interviewing skills were up to date. I had to go over my CV with a fine tooth comb and got a few proof readers before considering sending it out into the business world to reflect and represent myself.

The third question was how confident I was in the basics of most PR areas. I started re reading notes and lectures and going through the pre requisite information for this unit so I felt confident enough to interview for a PR position.

http://www.scitech.org.au/

After all of this, eight weeks ago I got a call back from my first choice of placements which is Scitech. A general background about the company is that it is a not for profit science education institution which gets almost 60% of its funding from the State Government and public and private sponsors. I was so excited and after a straight forward interview with my Supervisor and the Communications Manager I got the call back for the job! I soon found out that not only was I the Schools Marketing Assistant but also a Communications Assistant so I was going to be put straight to work and would be juggling a few different areas in the office.

I was so nervous for my first day but I was soon put at ease as I was told that I had to go and experience all that Scitech has to offer so I could get a proper feel for the work they do. I got to play with the toddlers in Discoverland, sit in on a puppet show with a school group, watch the Slime demonstrations in the Lotterywest Science Theatre and enjoy a show at the the Horizon Planetarium. After the exciting day I was excited to get into real work twice a week for the next few months.

My next posts will be on the exciting work I have been up to and looking forward to!
Until next time,

Brooke
14275177

Interview Preparation

I'm completing my placement at Liberty Resources, and our spokesperon is the Managing Director, Andrew. He has a strong, credible reputation within the finance and investment industry and is the most appropriate spokesperson for most interviews.

The first time I secured an interview for Andrew with a journalist I was over the moon! However, I’ve learnt that just securing an interview is not enough to ensure positive media coverage. I thought that I would share the process that I developed to implement after securing an interview.

1. Confirm the interview date and time
2. Ask the journalist to send through a list of proposed questions
3. Determine a list of key messages that need to be communicated in the interview
4. Develop a brief analysis of the listener/reader demographic
5. Research the journalist
6. Write proposed answers to the interview questions (for this I just used dot points under each question as it was easier for the MD to read)
7. Take research findings and proposed answers to the MD and brief on the interview

Where possible I always ask the journalist to send me a copy of the article before it goes to print or is streamed online (this is not always possible – but always worth asking!)

This task always reminds me of the mock interviews that we did in PR Media! Knowing that I had completed this excerise (even though it was over 2 years ago now) gave me the confidence to sucessfully implement this interview process.

It’s all about having as much control over the message as you can. While you want your spokesperson to sound natural in conversation with the journalist, it's also very important that they are saying the right thing!

Liberty was invited to present at a Sydney Resources Roadshow conference in April. While we were there we arranged a video interview with ABN Newswire. This is the first video interview I’d prepared for and let me tell you it is a lot more challenging than an interview over the phone. Firstly, Liberty’s MD could not read from my interview preparation notes so I spent 15 minutes before the interview going over it with him.

Let me know what you think...

It is just as important after the interview to review it. I always found it difficult to sit down with Andrew to listen to the interview and evaluate it because he didn't like listening to himself. But it is so important, as with any project, to enage in ongoing evalutation to ensure to the next interview is perfect!