My first week on the job!

So my first week at Professional Public Relations was crazy! And I loved every minute of it. My first day was a blur, trying to find my way around the city on public transport trying to get to the office on my first day without being late (not a good look). Luckily I made it J My first day mostly consisted of getting to know all of my fellow colleagues and learning my way around the office. There was a big office desk move around on my first day so my actual PR work was very limited, however it was great to learn how to use the printer and scanner and meet everyone in the office in the meantime.

My second day was far more hectic. I was asked to do a ring around to all of the major radio stations in Perth (i.e: hit92.9, Nova 937, mix 94.5, 96fm and many more) to confirm our organisations current contact list to ensure it was up to date with producer’s current contact details and to get new details for producers who have since taken over the role. Doing the ring around at first was so nervous! Having worked in retail before I decided the easiest way for me to tackle this would be to develop a script and just say the same thing to each receptionist that I called. I started with the big guns, 92.9 and it was so scary but I made it out alive and the world wasn’t crumbling once I’d hung up the phone. I started to get the hang of it more and more as I went through the list and by the time I’d finished the list I felt so relieved and proud all at the same time.

My second day I also did some work on the Mangles Bay development project taking place down in Point Peron. I was asked to review a collection opinion pieces from local newspapers from that area to grasp an understanding of how the public felt about the development. Many are opposed to it as they are concerned for the environments welfare and do not want the project to be given the go ahead to commence construction. I had to compile the main messages from each opinion piece and the tone the message (i.e: was it positive/negative towards the project commencing) into a spreadsheet on Excel for one of my colleagues to keep a database of all of the articles.

I was also asked to research statistics of employment in the oil and gas industry for a client of one of my colleagues. Strangely, this proved to be the hardest and most time consuming task of my day. I expected a bit of light googling and some searching through the ABS would give me the answers I was searched for, however, I was sorely mistaken. The ABS choose not to publish statistics on this industry as it is too vast to cover it all and google did not produce any recent figures from anywhere after 2014. This was the first task I was given that I could not complete. I felt quite bad about it. My job as an intern is not only to learn on the job but also the take some of the workload off of my colleagues and assist them with their tasks for the day. Being the type of person who does not like to disappoint on delivery it was difficult for me to tell my colleague that after THREE HOURS of searching online I had not found one, single statistic for him to get back to his client with. He was super understanding and nice about it and did not mind at all that I hadn’t been able to deliver.

My third day I proceeded to create a media release for an event launch being held by Cancer Council. The event is called Girls Night In and encourages women to have a girls night in and donate the money they would usually spend from going out to the Cancer Council for research towards breast and gynaecological cancers. The launch night is set to include a pamper night at one of Perth’s premier day spas, Bohdi J, which will be opening at night time especially for this event. Women who come will be treated to luxurious massages and chakra balancing, truly indulging themselves. Not only will everyone feel great but they would have raised money for a great and worthy cause.

I also created a template for a colleague who is creating web content for a new home loan website. By creating the template for them they are able to simply input the content they have created for the client into it. It was really cool to see a new website before any of the public had access to it.

I’m very much looking forward to my second week and seeing what might be in store for me!

Stay posted J

Holly Armstrong

18022908

Bentley Campus