I wanted to share with you my opinions about the PR job and what I noticed during my internship... I realised that to be an excellent PR practitioner, paying attention to details was very important. The thing is that those involved in this job are mainly women and I worked with two women, the PR and CSR manager and the PR coordinator... As an intern, I learned the job of the PR coordinator which is more technical/functional and at the same time the PR Manager made me aware of what her role consists of and I noticed that it was quite different from that of the coordinator, she was more concerned about the strategic aspect of PR... Hence, all the decisions about the strategies and tactics are taken by her and the coordinator does not really have a say regarding these decisions. The PR Manager admitted that each and everyone has his or her own area of expertise, for instance she is not gifted for the creative aspect of the job.
Therefore, she looked for a coordinator who had the skills that she did not have so that their jobs and tasks could really complement each other. Working with women might be really challenging and enriching in the sense that they all have the same taste for details and perfection.... My majors are PR and journalism and I did not realise so far how these two could be interrelated in the performance of duties. In the communication department where I worked, we had to do the monthly magazine IBL news and the responsibility of the latter has been delegated to me during the internship. This is where I saw the link between PR and journalism, the articles had to be written to satisfy the audience (the employees) and their areas of interest had to be analysed to offer them a interesting magazine. Facts and each and every little words have to be checked and re-checked, this is where details are becoming vital. The real challenge was that the articles written by me was not really verified by others. So I had to be very attentive while doing this task.. I learned to be self critical and accept my mistakes - this is an important quality when you are a professional.
This was also an opportunity for me to understand that PR is more than just a two-way process, we have to be more open to the public and I had to take initiatives by myself for the interviews and this is where I had to approach people coming from different backgrounds. The approach is obviously different, I have to adapt to their personalities and cultures while trying to instill a trustful relationship. This is what I have learnt through my degree and I was happy to be able to apply this in the work placement.
I think that it is a good thing that each PR representatives in a company have different skills that complement each other or else conflicts might arise.
What do you think about the different skills required to be a good PR? Do you think that a "PR" whether he/she is a manager or simply a coordinator or else have to have more or less the same skills to ensure the better functioning of the company ?
1 comment:
wow um fascinated by what your company did, this is the kind of company i would like to work at. we all have different areas that we excell at, so the fact that in your company everyone had his or her own area of expertise is very interesting. for instance during my internship i found out that i enjoyed and did a good job at events management than other stuff, and if it was up to me i would have concentrated only on that for my whole internship. As a PR and journalism major too i do believe that the two go hand in hand because PR needs journalism. As to your last question i think it would not be wise of a company to hire people who only specialise in one skill because that would mean the focus is on only one thing and other areas would suffer thus not ensuring the better functioning of the company. atleast if everyone had a different skill and they worked together making sure that their work compliments each other that would ensure the better functioning of a company.
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