comparison of Professional and Academic PR

My seniors in uni always quoted that "once you start working, you'll know that you don't know anything about the agency world". well, its true, in a way.


I started working thinking in PR as long as you have good communication, personal, creative and strategic skills, then you are good to go. After a while I learnt, your skills should be far more than that, PR skills are skills you have to develop.
Yes, communication skills is really important for some PR aspects, like pitching and meeting with clients. but there are more skills required to be able to deliver your ideas in a convincing way for your clients to buy it, or even come up with great ideas for your clients to make them stand out from the crowd.


With PR there is always a lot of work, other job, when you finish your task its done, but PR you always have to continue reading, and researching and learning. work is always coming.


PR is fun, PR work is not dry and boring, everyday of my internship I learnt new things about PR, about the world, and my general knowledge increased by a great extent.

In uni we study plenty of important concepts and theories that gives us a general idea on what goes on in the professional world, but what really goes on in PR agencies is different. In my opinion, working in a PR firm makes PR much more fun than what we expect from our lectures and books.


One of my favourite moments through out my internship were brainstorm sessions, were we would sit together and talk about a clients up coming event, and everyone would discuss and eventually we would have great ideas for the particular client. Attending these sessions has helped me learn a lot from all my colleagues, and different views on promoting a particular client, or introduce a particular product that it was brand new.


Stay tuned for my next blog about my very first event experience on PR event for the client Old Town White Coffee.
Zahra

December 2nd - First Day Of Internship

This is it, after sending all those internship applications, I finally found the place I want to do my internship for the next 3 month.


Before beginning to describe my first day, I'm going to give a bit of background.

I considered 20 PR firms and agencies for a placement and eventually applied to quite a number and got accepted to 3 places where among those I chose, Text100. The reason I chose Text100 was that from my research it seemed to have an excellent organisational culture, their client list was very impressive and they are highly tech based (an area of my interest).






I did a complete research on Text100 and prepared everything I needed to know for the interview. and tadaaa I received the email for an interview. Was happy to be called for an interview, I knew as long as they like my resume, impressing them on the interview is a piece of cake, and it was! the interview went very well, I received the acceptance letter within a few hours and here I am a month later, starting my very first day.

On my first day I woke up early, put on the best formal outfit I had and made myself presentable, considering I had a phone interview and today, I'd make the first impression.

I had looked up the company on map and estimated the time from my house to my new office so I would be on time. Once I entered the office and started greeting with everyone, the friendly faces made me feel belong immediately, I was lucky there was a potluck among my colleague on the first day, what a great opportunity to mingle around with the colleagues and get to know everyone.

So far, I've only been trained on how to use the software and all, yet to know my daily task, am looking very forward to it.






Stay tuned for my next posts.
Zahra