This
week is my last week as an intern!
And I can’t believe how quickly time has passed. I have done so many different
things over the last 20 days from company social media education to building company
wide initiatives for measuring staff performance and satisfaction. Upon entering this internship I
honestly had no idea what to expect and whether or not I could even hack it in
my chosen profession.
However I am happy to announce I have enjoyed every
minute of it and now know that I have the ambition and drive to tackle whatever
is thrown my way. So I suppose the most valuable skill I have acquired from
this internship is confidence. The confidence to be creative, the
confidence to tackle whatever obstacle is thrown my way and most importantly
the confidence in knowing that I have not just wasted three years of my life on
a degree in a field I am not suited for. This week I am taking the chance to
reflect on the internship that was and see where I shined and areas I need to
improve on in the future.
First
of all I want to look at the new insights
I have into my profession and share some of the experiences I have had. One the most important insights I have
found during my internship are to do with employee communication. It is so
important to always tailor your message to your target audience. Now you would
probably all think yeah we know this. But you don’t really understand how
important it is and difficult until you have to do it. You have to adapt and
communicate your own understandings so that the correct message will get
across. I found myself constantly forgetting to tailor my messages because I’m
so used to interpreting messages with a university-developed mind. Most of the
university language we use everyday will fly right over the heads of people who
have never been to university or had to grasp the concepts of what yours
entailed. As well as this another new insight has to do with online
communication. We do it everyday but when it comes to employee communication we
really have no guide as to what you should and shouldn’t say and how you should
word what you do. For instance if you predominantly communicate with people
online through email, it is important
to establish a positive relationship with conversational type language and
including smile icons to express your excitement at working/communicating with
that staff member or a fellow college. Even my work with the social media communication
during my internship showed me the boundaries surrounding internal
communication e.g. constantly bombarding staff with performance results on their
group Facebook pages does not foster a positive sharing and communicative
environment.
Now
lets move on to more challenging
experiences and areas that I think I
need to develop over time. When working on events and staff performance
reviews I realised the importance of triple checking every single thing you do.
Looking over and over documents and numbers is going to ensure that your event
runs smoothly. As well as this it ensures that you look professional and well
organised to both your internal staff and external stakeholders. Further more
in relation to events and performance analysis I found getting everyone to
communicate on time was challenging sometimes. It is so important that everyone sticks to deadlines
and communicates in a timely fashion. For instance we had finalised a section of our event
plan but then a change was made after which could have potentially set us back
due to having to change what we had already done. Getting hold of the person
who made the change was also difficult.
Essentially
I have learnt public relation’s is all about communication, it comes up
everywhere no matter if you’re working with the press or in employee
communication. You
can be a creative and well-spoken individual but if you cannot communicate your
ideas and understandings to a variety of target audiences you may as well
choose a different field because PR is not for you. When we were developing the company
wide social media training we had to take into consideration such a wide range
of target audiences, from people with a university degree to people with years
of retail experience but no university degree or higher education. When we were
developing our employee performance reviews we had to define who our target
audience was and the best way for them to review their performance or that of
their managers. When working with the staff intranet page we had to put
ourselves in the mind of a manager, how would they want their information to be
organised? What do they access the most and how can we make that easier to
navigate? In these situations it is always best to put yourself into the mind
of who you are targeting, who are they? What
do they do for the company? What do they really need to know? How would they
like to hear it? Once you can iron this out you will be better equipped to
communicate with your target audience efficiently.
In
conclusion I am sad to be leaving,
it is like I’ve got a taste of what life is going to like after university and
now I have to wait till I’m finished to enjoy and keep learning in my chosen
field. I feel like I have so much to learn and I think in our field we will
always be constantly learning,
learning new ways of professionalism, new ways of writing and most importantly
new ways of communicating with both internal and external stakeholders. I hope that all your internships
were as for filing as mine and that you are equally excited as me to see what
lies around the corner. Thanks for taking the time to read my blogs over the
last 20 days, feel free to leave me some feedback on your last day and how you
felt!
Until we meet again…
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