Last January-February 2008 of my work placement at Shangri-La's Tanjung Aru Resort, I gained many insights of what makes PR in the resort. I was placed into the resort's Communication Department. My department works more like crossovers of PR, marketing and sales of the resort's events, sponsorships and promotions. The crossovers became important keys to recognise the resort as one of the top five-stars (hotels/resorts/motels/inns) back in my hometown.
Furthermore, I came to realise and understand now that for a PR corporate it meant full confidentiality. My work placement is corporate type, different from non-profit organisations. Because, it represents corporate trusts between the staff of the resort and the resort's clients. Furthermore, with full confidentiality the resort is able to build its brand image to much more professional level. The professional level is mostly referred to level of work professionalism and relationship managements.
I learned that for a single name of a photographer or any small piece of information leaked or made public, it would cause bad publicity and bad corporate image for the resort. Other five-stars would take every single opportunity to grab what is done by the resort for the sake of doing better. After all, the success of five-stars depended much on professional PR to be tops in my hometown. And, the reality of my hometown's tourism and hospitality work sectors 'may turn ugly'.
Many five-stars face huge competitions following their specific target audiences/tourists and demographics for qualities of providing best hospitalities and qualities of offering tourism services.
What can be learned from here are:
1) To know what PR information is confidential, we need to consult our work supervisors/bosses
2) Picture any scenario what happens if leakage of PR informations of well-known professional organisations happen
3) Anticipate steps to prevent bad publicities made by medias/publics/other organisations
Interesting facts/tips for applying into any jobs: (PR or others)
1) Know the type of organisation you wish to work. There are different types. There are corporate, non-profit, 'corporational' (big corporation), governmental, consultancy or more. Please help add if you know.
2) Understand how the organisation works. Our lecturers and seniors may have shared the emphasis of doing our research.
3) Send email/send mail/call to make the move for ideal job. We need to know the right person to contact.
4) If it is the job we wanted, then we go and strive for it.
5) We dress super professional if we are called for any super important interview.
6) Something I learned from internet regarding job hunting is that we give a thank you letter to show the employers our gratitudes for giving us the jobs we wanted.
7) If things did not turn out as hoped, keep trying, keep persevering, more persistence.
Good luck everybody for future careers. Please comment for feedbacks. Thank you.
2 comments:
Many thanks for your very interesting insight into working in the Shangri-La Resort, Christie-Ann. Unfortunately, many communications departments are a mix of marketing, public relations, publications ….and sometimes sales. On one hand, that can be very advantageous, as it means all communications functions work closely together. However, on the other hand it means that PR might not be able to work at its full potential.
I fully agree: confidentiality is absolutely crucial – and that applies to every job. No matter if you are working in a consultancy, a large corporation or a non for profit organisation. As interns you will almost certainly come across confidential information, which needs to be handled appropriately! You are now PR professionals – and that may mean you won’t even be able to discuss certain aspects of your work with your family or best friends in order to protect your employer’s interest, brand & competitive positioning.
Hi Christie-Ann,
I know what you meaan about the importance of confidentiality in PR. I am working at a magazine for my placement and the first thing we did on our first day was sign a confidentiality agreement! I initially thought that this was just the correct procedure we were following rather than being a practical requirement, however it the following weeks it became apparent that alot of the work we were doing had to be kept a secret to pretect the exclusivity of the edition and protect the advertisers and people featured in the magazine.
We were told we should not even discuss the cover of the magazine at lunch because they wanted it to remain a surprise for readers and the talents privacy had to be protected until it went to print.
On top of this we are regularly using contact details of very private people and discussing contracts and future products that need to be kept under wraps. At the magazine we were also sent some advance release cosmetics and music cd's to trial and rate, that had an embargo on them until the exact launch dates. This comes down to professionalism as PR people because to break the trust of the people that you work with is dangerous to the companies future. Not only that but you miss out on the little advantages of the job! :) It's a bit of a privelege but it needs to be respected.
Well good luck with the rest of your placement.
Michele
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