What I've learnt about Consultancy work...

My last week at PPR came so quickly and I have enjoyed my experience and getting to know everyone at PPR! After a month’s work at PPR, I have learnt a lot about how a consultancy runs and operates and this was definitely had a great insight into what goes on behind the scenes. Even before I started my professional practice, consultancy work seemed more appealing to me than in-house and after working at PPR, I still think this. The main thing I learnt about consultancy is that it’s not for everyone. These are the main points I discovered about working in a consultancy:

• The variety of work – I found you have to be very active, and be ready to do anything. It’s not just a desk job, consultancy offers off-site work too.

• The variety of clients – I enjoyed the variety of jobs for different clients and consultants.

•  It’s very fast-paced – You need to have extremely good time management, organisational skills and be able to think and act fast. Jobs and deadlines are always changing, so prioritising and having our own organising system is important.

•  Low/high capacity – Job capacity from day-to-day can be unpredictable. Sometimes there are days where not much is happening.

•   Working in a team – Success for a client depends on how well you can work with fellow employees.

For anyone who wants to work in consultancy, PPR is a great place to gain experience and start out!

Attention to detail is the key to success

Hi all!

Today was my second last day at my work experience prac at PPR - I have been having such a good time and constantly learning, that the time has gone so fast!

I have quite a bit of work to finish up so I will be getting onto that most of today and tomorrow - I would rather leave here with all my work completed than leaving tasks unfinished.

One of these jobs includes finishing a distribution list for the Investor Relations team. PPR's IR team work closely with Australian Brokers and institutional firms and the distribution list/database which I am editing has approximately 1450 contacts to update and validate.

I have been working on this for IR since Day One between other urgent tasks and fingers crossed I will have it completed by tomorrow!

From working on this and other similar tasks, I have learnt that attention to detail is imperative in everything that you do in public relations - one small mistake could ruin a whole lot of hard work.

Though we do learn this at uni (to check, check and check again!) it has furthermore been drilled into my mind during my placement at PPR , that attention to detail in a real life situation is key to success. The team at PPR all specialise in different areas, but from working with many of these people, I have seen that attention to detail in all areas of work is a key in the high quality of work they produce.

For example, sending a media release or event alert to the incorrect email address of a journalist could result in a loss of potential media coverage and a very unhappy client. Every task is done for a reason and in the long run, even the tasks that seem mundane tasks will pay off.

I have taken on the tasks I have been given as a huge responsibility, because as an intern, I am learning skills and testing my abilities every day.

How is everyone else's placements going? Has anyone else been able to complete their placements during the semester break?

I'll be sure to post again soon.

Dominique,
Bentley

FINAL POST FROM AUJS

So the final week was very interesting, it's all coming to an end very slowly! but i've thoroughly enjoyed working for AUJS the past 15 days or so..I feel like I have learnt so many new things and its exemplified all the theory I have learnt at Uni over the past 3 years..

I really think this unit is great in actually providing us real life experience in the industry and i think that it has really swayed me to turn back to PR, despite wanting to move on to other things!

The biggest achievment in the last few days of AUJS was re-designing and re-doing their entire membership application forms. Basically the previous form only had one option, 'send emails or do not send emails' (most of the students did click send emails but later replied saying "we dont want to receive any more emails, there too many of things we dont want"

So basically, I liased with the web developer and we discussed how to achieve this through the online application form. With the approval of the ED we made the form as such:


MEMBERSHIP FORM

Family/Surname: ________________________________

First Name: ___________________________________

Date of Birth: ____/________/______ Gender: M F

Email___________________________________________________

Mobile: ____________________________________

Street Address _________________________________________________

Suburb/City: __________________ Post Code: ________ State: __________

University/College/Tafe: _________________ Campus: _________________

Guild Member Y/N Guild Number: ___________________

What year of study are you in? Are you an International Student Y/N

Did you attend a Jewish day school? Y/N Do you have regular Shabbat dinners? Y/N

Do you have meals for major Jewish festivals? (E.g. Pesach, Rosh Hashanah) Y/N

Would you host someone for either of the above? Y/N

Have you been to Israel? (Please Circle) Long term/Short term/AUJS Program/Never




YOUR INTERESTS (Please circle)

Charity/Tikkun Olam Sport/Recreation Networking/Job Opportunities

Interfaith/Social Justice Educational Internships/Study Abroad

Political/Israel Advocacy Holocaust studies Drama/Performing Arts/Music

Religious Israel Programs Leadership Development

Social Events Retreats Social Networking

Other (Please specify) ______________________________________________________________________________

This new form allowed the students to circle their interests and when the memberships were being uploaded online, they would only be put in the relevant interest categories, therefore eliminating their previous problems of receiving emails they wernt interested in.

Of course, the outcome is unknown because this is so recent - however no students to date have emailed back to take their name off the list - so i will consider this a conditional victory!

I was also involved with really getting AUJS to utilise social media EFFECTIVELY! What I mean is that - they relied on social media, especially twitter and facebook WAY TO HEAVILY

I am a firm believer that if you do not have a personable, one on one, face to face, direct relationship - the relationship is doomed to fail. The reliance on social media is basically making phone calls and one on one meetings obsolete and i think this is going to be to the detriment of the organisation and ALL THE ORGANISATIONS THAT DO THE SAME THING!

I'm pretty sure they valued my opinion on this because after all, I am still at UNI and its been a while since they had been at uni.

To end off my time there - i developed a who is AUJS poster to put in their offices, to send to their target markets and just to promote generally to the public when needed, seen below:



THANKS FOR READING (HOPEFULLY)

It has been a pleasure being apart of this wonderful experience with you all!

Hope to see you in the 'real world' :)