Hello everyone:
Our internship was finished; I think that was a most rewarding internship for me. And now, I would like to share my experience with all of you. I sum up the eight important things for PR students and we should learn during our internship.
1. Writing: Get to learn and write compact press releases, media pitches, invitations, etc. These are the basic writings that every PR professional should know before going to the advance stuff - white papers, case studies, speeches, etc. Make yourself good enough to have your drafts ready to go out to external audiences without any edits from your bosses.
2. Reporting and documentation: Get familiar with the templates - the daily media monitoring, monthly reporting, ad Val analysis, media coverage analysis, minutes of meetings, etc. When you grow in your career ladder, you should be familiar with all these terminologies.
3. Media networking: So here during your internships you start out reaching to the media. Accompany your colleagues on a media round and get introduced to as many journalists as possible.
4. Learning the protocols of the PR agency: Since this is probably your first stint with the corporate world, utilize your time to learn who’s who and how things work in your organization. Learn the official protocols and the unofficial ones as well. Observe how your colleagues behave with their seniors.
5. Organizing a media interaction: Do write a pitch mail and send it to a journalist. Follow up on the phone ad see how it goes. You can as well quote the number of media interactions you have organized for your clients when you finished your internship and apply for a regular job.
6. Taking part in organizing an event or a press conference: Just do all these, and you be in a different level than the one you were in earlier working in office. See the chaos, the confusion, tension, pressure, seeing the things you planned unfolding in front of your eyes, and the final sense of accomplishment of getting a job well done.
7. Learn about who’s who in the PR industry: Well, you need to know who’s who in the PR industry, which agencies are good and which have a bad reputation. What are the salary brackets available? Ask multiple people around. Don’t be too loud on that because someone may just fire you for that.
8. Learn about how the media works and who’s who: Get to know how the media works. You are going to be the one to play thick-face. When you are following up for an upcoming press conference and the media say they will attend, you need to know whether that ‘yes’ is actually a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ in disguise.
Han Xiao
2 comments:
Hi Han Xiao
It is so nice to hear that you have finished your internship. Congratulations! As seeing your entry, I am sure you learnt a lot from this working experience.
Indeed, I strongly agree that learning who is who in the PR industry, or the people who have relationship with your organisation, is extremely vital. I found hard to remember all the people’s name during the first week of my internship and even worst, I mixed up the name and organisation of some of them. Luckily, my supervisor was there and helped me to fix it. Knowing that a normal greeting by calling other’s name is essential when working in the PR office or department. I found out that, if it is possible, try to remember their organisation and a little bit of company’s recent information would help to develop a conversation and relationship with these people. This first impression might help a lot in the future.
Thanks for your sharing and good luck with your report!
Cheers
Zambi
Hi Han Xiao, thanks for sharing your valuable experiences. I strongly agree with what you wrote.
First, writing is extremely important in PR industry. We not only have to write but write very well. Practice makes perfect, we really need to write a lot to learn the skill. Writing media material is something different from report writing which we are taught to write.
Second, for my opinion I think not only media networking but networking for the industry you are working (i.e PR industry) As a fresh graduate, networking may help us to get into the industry and get a job!
Third, from my internship I experience how difficult to handle and deal with media. We have to figure out the culture and approach those media used to in order for us to manage media relations. We can never underestimate the power of media.
Good luck to your report and your studies!
Cheers,
Jie
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