On my last day of my supervisor called me in to her office for
a ‘chat’ about my internship. I won’t lie, I was nervous. In my mind this was the part where she goes
through all my intern work and scrutinizes it, evaluating my progress in a
confronting finale to my placement. Of course that wasn’t the case. Instead,
she sat me down and said she was going to give me the most important advice she
could give about a career in public relations.
The first thing she spoke about was organisation.
Specifically, emails. She told me that as ridiculous as it may sound, sorting
your emails in to separate folders is the best thing you can do to stay on top
of your workload. In a corporate PR situation, as it would be with any communications
role, there is quite a bit of versatility in the work that you do. You may be
dealing with writing an internal article one day and organising a sponsorship
event the next, so it’s integral to be able to have each different sector of
your work carefully separated. It’s no fun having to search through your inbox
to look for an email or to forget to respond to something important.
Organisation is key.
The second thing she told me was that no matter how much
writing you do at university, nothing will prepare you for the amount of
writing you do in a real communications role. She told me that you may write 20
PR plans during your degree, but you probably won’t even need that skill until
you’re in a high level position. ‘Ninety per cent of my role is writing,’ she
said, and now I’m grateful that I studied a few journalism units while I’ve
been at university.
My supervisor finished off our meeting by thanking me for
all the work I had done and saying she’d happily write me a reference– this was
nothing like the scary final meeting I had envisioned. I left feeling grateful that
I had been able to have for such a rewarding and useful experience.
When I got home that day I opened my email inbox. I had 3,109
emails. Would you believe it, I managed to purge every unwanted subscription
and piece of junk until I had a neat inbox with a number of carefully organised
folders.
So here I am. Internship completed. I am now ready for a career
in public relations and so is my email inbox.
4 comments:
That is some really good advice Anna. It sounds like you learned a lot from your internship and your mentor was really helpful. I wish you luck in the future as a PR Pro yourself.
I found that all the little tips that our mentors give us are always the best.
And the best part about them is it isn't always something that a uni lecturer
or tutor would think to give you, so if you didn't do a internship you would never
know, and these blog posts have become a great way to pick up tips and tricks
from all different people.
Hi Anna,
What an insightful read this post was. I can certainly resonate with that feeling of instant panic… your heart beating a million miles an hour when your boss calls you in to have a ‘chat’. I’m glad it was all positive pointers for you and your boss is so right about email folders being key to pristine organisation.
I can also relate to what you and your boss discussed about the role of writing in a professional public relations role. I did my internship with HBF and what a great experience it was. Each day, there was plenty to be done, and it all began with a Word document. All the work I did over the course of 12 weeks was saved in a folder so I could look back at the end of my placement and see what I had completed and how far I came. I can tell you, there were dozens of writing documents devised and thousands of words within them. Journalism is a great tool to have and I can assure you it will be most beneficial for you as you seek work in the PR industry.
It is great to hear you had a rewarding internship experience. I hope you and your inbox are ready for a professional career in public relations. All the best for the path you take!
Regards
Ashleigh
Hi Anna
Thank you for forwarding that little bit of advice. It is amazing to learn the little tricks that no one told us in uni. I often found myself jotting down the little tips my mentor would randomly blurt out throughout the day and then found myself looking over them again and again during tasks I was doing.
It is also quite interesting that she mentioned that studying journalism was beneficial as I often find myself struggling with the written component of PR (only to learn that most of my day consists of writing).
It is great to hear that your supervisor was so happy with your work. Good luck with your future and I hope that you have the opportunity to utilise those great lessons.
I'll be off to sort my inbox now.
Regards
Taila
Post a Comment