My name is Ben Hennessy and I’m doing my work placement at a charity group called Rocky Bay. Rocky Bay is a not-for-profit organisation that provides disability services to more than 1000 children and 500 adults across Western Australia. My initial decision to approach Rocky Bay was the fact that they were a not-for-profit company and would essentially appreciate any help they could get. This relationship would be mutually beneficial to both parties because it means I would be given more responsibility, which as it turns out I have.
I am just over half way through my placement at Rocky Bay but I am only doing one day a week. Only doing one day a week has had its positives and negatives. On the positive side, I have had the chance to work on a number of projects because I have been there over an extended period. One the negative side, it has been difficult to get stuck right into projects because by the time I come back a week later the assignment has passed. This hasn’t always been a huge problem as Rocky Bay’s PR heavily revolves around event management and fundraising, which requires several weeks of extended planning.
I have to say I am grateful to the team at Rocky Bay for their support and showing faith in me by giving the responsibilities they have. In concluding this post, I wanted to ask what everyone else thinks on the issue. Having spoken to a number of fellow PR students, many have gone out trying to get work in established PR firms and agencies. As students coming to the end of our university degrees, are we better off going for smaller in-house jobs to fine-tune our PR skills?
I look forward to your responses,
Ben
5 comments:
I believe that as an intern you will generally be given more responsibilities in a not-for-profit organisation. Like you said they will be so appreciative of any extra help they can get.
I did my internship at a school thinking their PR department would be fairly small but it turned out to be quite extensive which may have affected the level of responsibility I was given.
Good luck with the last half of your internship!
I am currently interning at an international consultancy firm, Hill and Knowlton.
I believe that I have gained invaluable experience, working on many different projects within the health section. But I also find that I am not given enough responsibility in terms of being faced with a challenge. Although the tasks I partake in now (media releases, media lists, research, brainstorms etc) are all related to PR, I feel like working in an in-house position would allow you to further explore in the more strategic side of things.
i was am intern in AIDS foundation which is an NGO and i believe working with them gave me more room to learn than if i was in a bigger and established PR agency because most agencies will make u do the very bits of this an that under the department which i don't think it would have given me more of what i would have expected as an intern.
yes, one could learn a lot under a well established PR agency but the advantage of working with an NGO is that the work is hands on and they are willing to listen to your ideas compared to when you get into agency that ready has projects running and lists of clients they have worked on and you coming in half way the whole thing. i feel they limit you to some point.
like Ashlea just mentioned she doesn't feel like she being given enough responsibility, exactly my point.
where i was working my manager was willing to sit down with me and discuss certain issues and involve me in coming up with a few ideas for events and many other things which gave me more hands on work.
looking forward to your responses too check out my posts if you have time. thank you
on a personal view i would say as we are about to graduate, in-house PR it is far much better and insightful than in agencies where you will meet people with more like a fully furnished set-up of Pr and you will less be exposed,and they normally deal with secondary matters unlike in-house where tiny thing that happens is their concern and reaction hence broader exploration.
In house PR gives one an exposure of the relation with the company and with its key public at first hand, thus being familiar with your consumer audience as you will be constantly catering to their needs.And for you to fulfill you duties as the PRO of that company you will bypass the issues where agencies and the company will will fighting for their own interests.i will go for in house.
Hi Ben,
I’d always thought when I was in still in Polytechnic (our version of TAFE) that once I was done, I’d want to get into an in-house department.
My logic on this was that I’d be able to pick a company whose work I was interested in and would not have to juggle the task of learning about multiple clients and their businesses while fine-tuning my skills.
2 years later (when I’m 6 months away from completing my degree), imagine my surprise to find out that my peers who have been looking for jobs find it incredibly hard to find in-house jobs and end up at agencies.
Their feedback is that in-house departments expect job seekers to be proficient in the skills needed as they seldom have the extra manpower to guide a fresh graduate.
I’m not sure if this is the case worldwide, it would be interesting to find out though.
I still do think I would rather try and get an in-house job once I’m done and its great to see that many of the comments on your post agree as well.
Cheers!
Nicolette
Post a Comment