Great leader's advice

Hello fellow friends, 

This week I realized it has already been my third month with the agency, and I could not believe that time flies that quickly. I was overwhelmed with thoughts and the lessons I've learnt throughout my time here. I believe having supportive superiors in my agency helped me a lot during my course of internship with them.

My boss taught us a very important lesson during the weekly meeting that we had. She never fail to remind us that communications between us and a client should always be clear, to avoid any misunderstandings. On top of that, communications between a team is just as important. In a small agency like mine, it gets pretty hectic with the different accounts that we work with and the expectations of each client differs. 

It is important that the work is delegated equally and in my case, for example, if I feel too overwhelmed with the workload, then it is my responsibility to voice out and give myself the time I need. It is also my seniors' responsibility to lighten my workload wherever they can because after all, we are a team. 

The past few weeks have been busy with preparation for event launches. It was part of our responsibility to follow up with the coverage, photos, blog posts that was garnered from the event. These are a few of the many things that they don't teach us in textbooks and I feel thankful to learn from the few people that showed me the ropes of doing it well (:

As we near the dates to my last day at the agency, I looked back and thought carefully about my career prior to graduation. This experience have definitely opened up my eyes to the real PR industry. I love the people, the events, the adrenaline rush that I get from being in PR. It's also especially helpful when you are able to click with your colleagues. It makes work a little less like work and more like play. 

I hope in the future I am able to be as good as my superiors, handling so many things at once and doing it well when they're on the job. I'm glad that at the end of these few months, I don't go back empty-handed. I have a suitcase full of lessons learnt to bring back home. 

Thank you CROWD, for welcoming me with such open arms and for all the friendship made while I was on internship. This will not be the last time that you will hear from me. (:

Cheers,

Faizah

Post placement blues

Much to my displeasure, my placement at Shine Communications, much like everybody else’s placements, has now come to a close. I can say without an ounce of hesitation, this was one of the best experiences of my university life to date.

During my time at Shine I have learnt many things. I have learnt to liaise with clients and about approval processes. I have bettered my writing skills and pinned down my ability to find newsworthy angles for stories. I have seen behind the scenes how it can be necessary to call and call back and call again and leave messages for journalists and how these endless phone calls can pay off in the end. I have seen the benefits of a job well done, and even had a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling afterwards. I have been inspired, not just by those that work at Shine, but by their clients, and every day people who want to help the not-for-profits Shine works with. And in saying that, my highlights flow right on, the best moments I had at Shine were as follows;

1.       Seniors for Seniors

This success managed to feature in a blog post all of its’ own. But in case you haven’t read that post, this moment was when a media release I produced lead not only to one article in a newspaper, but two articles, in two separate papers, and from that, lead to the beautiful subject (Cindy the Labrador) getting adopted out of the Shenton Park Dogs’ Refuge Home. More information on this success story can be found here - http://pr393reflectiveblog2.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/seniors-for-seniors-success.html.

2.       Twins take the lead

This was another story I put together for the dogs home, in which two inspirational teenage girls give up birthday presents for donations to charity, and have done every birthday, since they were 6. This was a very enjoyable release for me to write. The girls and their mother have such a passion for helping others. This year their chosen charity was the Shenton Park Dogs’ Refuge Home, and like the majority of Refuge related work while I was at Shine, was given to me. I successfully got this story published on PerthNow, the story can be found here -http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/twin-girls-reject-presents-for-puppies/story-e6frg13u-1226479371840.

      3.   Care Oprtions Annual Report
It may come to a shock to anyone who has read a previous post of mine, but this time, I’m not talking about the Dogs’ Refuge. This was my first major project to handle almost solely that was not Dogs’ Home related. As a result of this project I wrote all copy for the Care Options 2011-2012 Annual Report for approval by Ruth and then the client. This was quite a daunting task initially, but after seeing it all come together it felt like, and was, a fabulous achievement. While the report is quite small, and not overly detailed, I still successfully wrote an annual report for a client. Completing tasks from interviewing staff members and their chairperson, as well as volunteers, in order to gather all the information  necessary for the report.

Media relations was a huge part of my work at Shine, but as you can see from my third highlight, it wasn’t all that I did, and wasn’t the only enjoyable part of my internship. However, I have to admit that being able to see the result before me in a newspaper a week or two later is a wonderful feeling!

Suffice it to say I have enjoyed my time at Shine immensely and would highly recommend students take full advantage of their placements in the future because they can be tremendously rewarding!

Thank you for reading.
I hope that each and everyone one of you enjoyed your placement as much as I did!

Elizabeth Gall
Curtin – Bentley