On my first week on the job I thought my days would
have been all about observing and learning from others but I was plunged into
the deep ocean that the business world is and left to fend for myself. At
Imagine Communication they are all about learning from firsthand experiences
and mistakes, which at first I saw as a harsh situation to impose on an
inexperienced intern but in the hand it shaped me into a strong and independent
employee, ready to faced everything the business world would throw at me. So on
my first week I went to a conference organized by a client of Imagine Communication at Hotel
Labourdonnais Port-Louis, I had to keep track of all the press present, the
journalists that attended and their contact details. That was the easiest part
of my job because then during the conference I had to record and memorize all
the important information discussed by the client during the conference, which
was a bit hard due to the strong German accent the speakers had. The hardest
part of the job was managing all the interviews that were taking place at the
end of the conference. I never thought about the importance of supervising all
the questions asked to the clients by journalists but my supervisor told me on
the day that it was vital for me to successfully complete this task. Managing
to assist and record every interviews was quite hard but in the end I managed. In
this situation nothing went wrong during the interviews conducted by the
journalists but I learned that being present at every interviews is vital as inappropriate
questions can be asked to the clients or they may also feel overwhelmed by the
amount of journalists bombarding them with questions which is when we are
needed to assist and render help to the clients. When I got back to the office
later, I felt relieved for having closely paid attention to the conference as
my supervisor immediately told me to write a report summarizing all the press
present, all the information divulged by the clients and a brief summary of the
interviews. I was already exhausted after the event but I had two days to
complete it so after a short break I started on working on the report
immediately.
This was on the day on the event itself but now let me
give you a glimpse of the behind the scene of the conference. Most of you must
have learned by now that behind an event is a lot of preparation and stress,
which we never seem to realize when not being the one organizing or hosting it.
I spent a total of four full days working on the preparations and still had
some last minute details to confirm on the day of the conference. First it was
all about looking for a venue for the conference, the clients asked for
something simple but classy so we had to brainstorm all the ideas we had for
possible venues and finally we decided on the hotel Labourdonnais at
Port-Louis. The client wanted to invite all the press of the island to the
conference so I had to prepare an official invitation for the event and send it
by mail to all of the media outlets of Mauritius. At Imagine Communication
follow-up calls are seen as vital, so I then had to call all the media outlets
to confirmed if they received the invitation that was sent by mail which took
most of my afternoon. After two days I had to call them back to confirm their
presence and which journalist that they were sending to the conference. I still
had to make some calls on the day of the conference as most of the journals
Chief Editors have busy schedules or have debriefing meetings at any time of
the day.
After this whole week of hard work, I thought that they
would give me some lightweight work, but guess I should have known better after
an event media monitoring is vital and the client often ask for a press book.
So, I had to monitor all the online Mauritian newspapers and magazines for any
details concerning the client and the conference. The first week was pretty
hard and hectic but I loved every minute of it as I learnt as much as possible
and above all I had my first true experience of the PR world and it was exhilarating
and superb!
Cheers,
Sophie.
2 comments:
Sophie, it sounds like you had a challenging but valuable star to your internship! It can be daunting when companies/supervisors do this as you feel added pressure from not wanting to make mistakes! Unfortunately, mistakes are part of the job and are almost more valuable than not making any mistakes at all as you never learn that way! I hope you find a way to manage and balance the challenges of your workplace and enjoy the rest of your time there!
- Marianne
Hi Sophie,
I absolutely agree with you! At my placement I was thrown into the deep end as well as it was quite daunting. I felt like I was prepared to use the skills I had been honing for the last three years into a real life situation. But it is interesting how once you start and get use to it, you can surprise yourself.
I'd be interested to hear your thought towards the end of your internship. Keep at it, and try to work out a process that keeps you sane when you feel overwhelmed. What helps me, is keeping a diary of my different tasks and writing any tips I learn down so I can reflect on if working on a similiar task.
Good luck!
Dharsh
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