The Peaks and Troughs of Consultancy Life

This week I have learnt that consultancies are not always fast paced but follow a continuous up- and-down cycle. There are periods where client work dies down and you are left putting your focus onto one or two many tasks instead of juggling four or five. It has been a lot quieter at PPR this week, and this wasn’t just for me. A lot of the girls were saying that this week had slowed down quite considerably from the previous weeks, but explained that this was just the nature of consultancy. One week you may absolutely loaded with tasks, and by the next they may have all been completed or not needed anymore and there may not be any new work to start on at that time. This is what has happened to me throughout my three weeks at PPR so far. The first week and a half was pretty hectic and I had to learn how to do everything quite quickly, but the past week has been a lot quieter, and I have only been working on one main task for a client and doing a few little jobs for others here and there.

 I spent most of my time working on the Bunnings Activity Tracker for PPR in Victoria this week. This was because one of the PPR staff members over in Melbourne who was in charge of the Bunnings account had recently left the company, and so the girls from the PPR WA office were asked to help take over the account until they found someone else to cover it. So, majority of my workload for the week consisted of going through the activities list for Bunnings Victoria (for example workshops the different stores they were holding, school visits they would be doing etc) and then drafting an outline of the event for the local media outlet of each store. By the end of the week I had drafted up roughly 30 media releases. Next week I will be pitching these media releases to each relevant media outlet with help from one of the girls which is exciting!  It was also my job to compile an Excel table of all of the local media outlets and their editor or reporter for each Bunnings store.

An exciting moment for me this week has been seeing my Purple Bra Day story published in the Eastern Reporter. It was interesting to see how the journalist edited it to suite the audience of the paper. In my case, they cut about half the content out to make it a shorter article and changed the title. Aside from that, everything else stayed the same, so it was amazing to see my own written words in print in the newspaper as well as in the online edition!

Here is a link to the online article if you are interested in having a quick look:

http://www.communitynews.com.au/eastern-reporter/news/purple-patch-in-morley-for-breast-cancer-fundraiser/

Towards the end of the week I developed quite a bad cold, but I felt bad asking for a day off, as I knew I only had four weeks to make the most of this internship. Nevertheless, it was comforting to know that the girls in the office cared more about my health than anything and practically told me to take the day off so I could get better. Its nice knowing I am carrying out my work experience in a place where everyone is so caring and considerate of each other, and I definitely won’t forget the kindness everyone has extended out to me throughout my time at PPR.

I was hoping to share more pictures with you all but I have been based mostly in the office, so I figured posting heaps of office snaps would just be boring! I hope you are all enjoying your holidays and/or placement and are learning lots! I will post again soon.

-Helen