Reflections of a PPR Intern

Hi folks!

Unfortunately, this will be my last blog entry as my internship with Professional Public Relations has now drawn to an end.

As I walked into the office on my last day knowing it would be the final time I would as a PPR intern, it made me reflect on my time here. Did I do enough? Had I immersed myself in the culture of the organisation? Did I leave a meaningful impact on PPR or would I soon become a distant memory meshed in with every other intern who was there?

I knew the one thing I wanted to do was to make myself stand out from other PPR interns. PPR only accepts 12 interns a year and when I was talking to the consultants, they could barely remember who the intern before me was. How was I going to prevent this from happening to me? Obviously, I wanted to be remembered as PPR is definitely an organisation I would like to stay in contact with, not only for potential employment but also networking opportunities. Perth, the market it is, I would likely come across many of these people again sometime in my career so it would be nice to maintain a relationship that I had fostered over the past four weeks which would extend the life of my internship.

Reading the article, Nine Tips for Ending Your Internship on a Positive Note made me realise I had to leave my internship believing I did make a positive impact not only with regards to the work I produced but also with the relationships I has formed. The article goes on to say there are certain things you should do on your last day (which I would definitely recommend doing for those of you still completing your internships). The following tips are slanted towards a consultancy only because that's where I undertook my internship but they are easily transferred to in-house.

My farewell email I sent everyone

Tie Up Loose Ends
I made sure that all the tasks I was given were completed and those that weren't, I made sure I told the consultant who I was doing it for that I was unable to get it done. As I had to brief the next intern, I made sure they were aware of what to do when they got to the office on Monday morning.

Set Up Time To Talk To Your Supervisor
I discussed with the HR manager the positives as well as the negatives I experienced during my internship and also thanked her for the opportunity.

Give A Standout Gift
As you should have read from my farewell email (sorry it's a bit blurry), I came into the office on my last day with donuts, cupcakes and spring rolls. I didn't think it was much but the comments I got back raving about the food was amazing. A little tip for you guys, food is always something that will make people happy so I would definitely suggest bringing something in on your last days. Chatting to one of the senior consultants, she told me it was great that I brought so much food in because as I said before, interns are usually forgotten in a month or so and a scenario to remember me she said: "Oh you don't remember Jamie? He was the intern that brought all that food in." Distinguish yourself and make yourself standout in more ways than just quality work!

Thank Everyone!
I literally thanked everyone at PPR; of course I thanked the HR manager like I said before for giving me the opportunity to complete my internship here but beyond that, I thanked the consultants, account managers, group directors and even the admin staff. I also had a chat with the executive director, personally thanking him and also to talk about what my future endeavours were. It was a great opportunity to pick his brain about what it's like to search for a job in the PR industry in Perth.
In my farewell email, I also thanked everyone again as I didn't want them to think that I took their efforts in providing me with work as unimportant. It took a lot of trust for them to give me work, particularly because they had known me for less than four weeks and that what I would do had real implications on their professional reputations. I was and still am extremely grateful and appreciative of this.

Ask For Feedback
Feedback is such an important part of any internship. How are we to improve if we don't know how our performance actually stood up? It was so important to me to get this feedback so I could work on my professional skills and to see if what I thought my weaknesses were ran parallel with what others thought. This will be discussed further in the second part of this blog post.

Stay In Touch
In the email I sent out (I know I keep referring to this email I wrote but a final email is really a great way to conclude an internship, complemented with personally going up to people) I included my personal mobile, email address as well as LinkedIn account details. As I have already said Perth is a small market and maintaining these connections is instrumental in my career longevity. Talking to the executive director, he told me to stay in contact with the HR manager emailing her once every couple of months saying what I am doing now even if I have already got a job.

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As you know, I asked for feedback if anyone had time in my farewell email. I invited them to my desk or just to send me a brief email about anything regarding my performance. Quality of work, meeting deadlines and communication were things I particularly wanted to know about though. Obviously, this internship meant more to me than just a grade on my transcript; I wanted to know how I would perform in a role within a consultancy because of course, what we're all looking for after graduation is employment. Any feedback I received while at PPR, I would use as constructive and help myself improve for any future employment opportunities be it at PPR or at another organisation.

After I sent out that email, it was so humbling to have so many of the consultants come up to me and tell me that I did a great job and that they would definitely recommend me to other organisations, particularly because it was coming from such a credible source as PPR. If any of you had read one of my earlier blogs, I was daunted by the fact that the consultants wouldn't accept me as a valid and reliable intern which turned out to be all in my head. This is my message to all of those who have just started their internships or haven't started as yet: as long as you are 100% committed to producing quality work, you should have no problems being considered as reliable, trustworthy and responsible. If you were in an intern role like mine, I had to generate my own work and it was important to be seen as reliable because the consultants wouldn't have given me any extra work to do, if they saw me as incompetent and unorganised. Looking back on it, I'm glad I had to find my own work because if I was given tasks to do, I may have become complacent and not have taken as much pride in my work. Having to "work for work" made me just that much more motivated to keep deadlines and produce quality work. It has definitely made me more work-ready and now believe that every task done, no matter how menial I think it is, fits into the larger picture of PR and is something to be proud of.

Reflecting back on my entire internship, I now realise how beneficial it actually was. Particularly because this is my last unit, I will be entering the job market as of now. The experience gained at PPR has helped shape my idea of employment as well as the field of public relations. It has allowed me to explore different elements of PR with a wide variety of clients. The one question that still remains is whether I want be employed in a consultancy or as an in-house PR professional. Having never worked in-house before, I cannot answer this question without bias and unfortunately, until I myself figure out which career path I want to head down, I cannot conclusively give you my thoughts on this. I sincerely apologise but as you know, it is not a decision I can make lightly.

As I now look to the future and graduation in February, I now look onwards and upwards with the new found knowledge I have gained through my internship. It will be interesting to see how I apply everything I have learnt here into getting a job in the PR industry. I have had a pleasure reading all of your blog posts and hope you have enjoyed reading mine. Best of luck to you all and hope to see you guys at graduation next year!

Happy Interning!

Jamie :)

Didn't think it could be done

So my internship has come to an end, as so with it my uni days (almost).
I never thought this day would come.

Placement was always something I saw as the end of my degree and as it fast approached I was quite daunted by the thought of putting all my learning and skills to the test.

But now that it's over i'm reflecting on just what a valuable process it has been.
When i began at 96FM I felt like a little fish in a big pond full of people with great skills and knowledge and wondered how i could ever have any impact on a large organisation such as this and continue into the workforce to pursue public relations.

But with ending my internship came a burst of confidence that it can be done and you can have an impact, be it big or small.

My supervisor gave me the feedback that I truly needed, even though I didn't request it, and it gave me faith that I had accomplished what I had set out to do and in her eyes had surpassed the expectations of an intern.

I have found blogging a great way to look back and reflect on what I have been learning throughout my internship as often we don't really focus on the bigger picture.  But it has been a great way to see just how the skills we learn in the classroom are then used in the workplace.

Even if every little task I was given wasn't specifically PR, I can see that they have helped me to broaden my skill set. Even when you're handing out newspapers in the freezing cold, you're gaining great experience and putting those communication skills to the test. Being put under pressure in a professional environment has been a great experience in pushing myself and being a part of many exciting events and competitions.

Even though instead of writing media releases I found myself instead writing promotional scripts and letters and emails I have learnt a lot that will help in the future.

Good luck to everyone and especially to those graduating this semester.
Hope you have found it as rewarding an experience as I have.

Alicia

Who are your stakeholders?

Hi everyone!

I can't believe I only have two weeks left of my work placement, the time really does fly by!

Just a quick recap for those who don't know, I am currently undertaking my work experience at St John of God Murdoch hospital (SJGMH) in their Marketing and Community Relations department.

Since I've started I have met some amazing people, including the four lovely ladies who I have worked quite closely with: Kat, Community Relations Coordination; Jody, Marketing Coordinator; Nicola, Events Coordinator; and Lizzie, Public Relations Coordinator.

As you can see the roles are quite set in the department and as an intern I was able to stick my foot into each pond and gain experience in each facet of the department.

In this post I will be talking about stakeholder management and what I have learnt since coming on at SJGMH.

Stakeholder management at SJGMH falls mostly under Kat's role as Community Relations Coordinator. Being a private hospital our primary stakeholders are patients and future patients, doctors and allied health professionals, and our employees (which I will be discussing).

One of the ways SJGMH engages with its employees is through a Caregiver Exchange, a two-way monthly meeting with caregiver representatives from each ward who come together to discuss ideas and issues relevant to their roles at SGJMH.

What I found really interesting about the Caregiver Exchange is that there are members of executive management present so employees can give their ideas/opinions on various SJGMH initiatives straight to management. I can't think of many organisations that have these types of meetings on a regular basis.

Once the topic of the meeting has been discussed and the ideas collated, Kat produces a paper on her recommendations going forward and that is presented to all the executive directors for consideration and approval. In other words this exchange is a forum for employees to contribute their ideas of how to improve SJGMH, and to also be kept up to date about what is happening around the hospital.

Another interesting way SJGMH encourages feedback is through an initiative known as  "Ask Executive". "Ask Executive" is where caregivers can email the executive questions they want answered without having to speak to someone directly. All the questions are compiled once a month, answered and available both on the intranet and on the "Ask Executive" noticeboard in the employee lunch room. This form of two way communication allows employees to give feedback, address concerns or even praise the work of their fellow colleagues and is extremely popular if you consider how many questions get sent in.

Though I have only brushed on some of the ways SJGMH engages one of their primary stakeholders it has reinforced the importance of two way communication when it comes to stakeholder management.

I am extremely keen to see some of the changes that are happening as a direct result of discussion at the Caregiver Exchange and through suggestions sent to "Ask Executive".

Until next time!

PRintern.

We are living in an online world

Wow, its already week 3 of my internship… Time goes way too fast! I’m sure some people are wishing it were over however I am really enjoying it. It will be sad to leave. Yes, you have to wake up early to get there, and yes you have to sit in traffic on the way there, but the responsible feeling you get knowing that you have ‘work’ to get to is quite exciting. Half of the working world would be rolling their eyes at me right now, thinking ‘just give it a few years of full time work and you’ll see’.

Anyway, the one thing I love about this work is that there is never a day that’s the same. You can’t really plan exactly what tasks you have to do for the day, you only really know once you get there and see what needs to be done.

I have been writing quite a bit of content for their website and the best part about that is that you get to see it go up online. Unlike journalism, your name may be put as the directors or you may not get a by-line at all however it is nice to know that you wrote that and its up where anyone can view it. If you were a speechwriter, the person saying the speech gets the credit for his inspirational words. In a PR world you very much work as a team to develop content. Everyone has input, gives advise and feedback on how they would prefer to see something written. The feedback I get from my supervisor is really excellent. She comes from a writing background and therefore I appreciate everything she has to tell me in regards to my written work. I am very luck that she is so approachable and that I feel involved and included in everything.

It is too hard to describe everything I did so I wrote a list this week-

This week I:

-       Added events to the twitter timeline I am making (to keep their social media presence going)

-       I tweeted about 5 times on different things on the 32dsg twitter page. (I have been made an administrator of their Facebook page, twitter and one of their clients pages.  – I made Facebook comments on our page (Please like 32dsg page and NGALA, Emergence, oZAPP if you can!  

-       I wrote 2 blogs for their website in the blog section- One about Malcolm Bryce receiving the National Pearcey medal and one about AWARD school graduation. Check them out on http://32dsg.com/blog/

-       I worked with the Social Media Coordinator on a social media strategy for 32 dsg

-       I wrote up a list of companies similar to 32 dsg in WA to see what they are doing differently and where we could improve

-       I am preparing a few things that are coming up for us- there’s a few events that I will have to write some news pieces for and blogs (my to do list is getting bigger)

As you can see a lot of the things I do are social media based and website content based however everything these days goes online. Even our clients put our media releases up on their websites. It is nice to know that nothing we do in this business goes to waste. Everything gets used somewhere. For example I wrote an article that had more positives for one of our clients then 32 dsg so they said they would use it on their website instead.

Next week on Wednesday I will be going with the team to an event organised by 32 called Sharing Healthy Conversations which is a chance for carers and those with disabilities to share their thoughts on how they can better communicate. I have been given the job of being a scribe (writing down peoples answers to questions) but this is also a chance for me to understand how the event was organised and then carried out. It is also a chance for me to get all the information I need first hand for the news piece I will write for their website.

While doing all of this there is so much else to do in terms of the PR strategy I am trying to develop for them.

So much to do! But that’s exactly why it is such an interesting and enjoyable place to work. There isn’t a day where I’m holding out for 5pm so I can go home.

I hope your still enjoying your internships!

Thanks again for reading,

Martine.