How Being Nice Will Get You There

My 20 day internship is almost at its end, and if there's one thing I have learnt more than anything, it's the importance of building personal and professional relationships with the media.

The boss and founder of Devahasdin Public Relations (where I have had the pleasure of interning) Sandra Devahasdin, has one of the most well-known names in the industry.
All the staff members at Devahasdin did not hold back to tell me that Sandra's relationship with the media is impeccable. Being a journalism and PR student, I was fascinated to see how the two industries worked together, and how Sandra managed to know the ins and outs of the media world with her eyes closed.
And what is even more impressive, is that Sandra NEVER studied public relations, she actually graduated with a degree in dietetics. So how did she develop such close relationships with the media?
During my interview with Sandra I learnt that her personality has played a huge part in her success. She is out-going, confident, professional, considerate and very very nice.
During my interview with Sandra, I asked her how she has developed such reputable long lasting relationships and her answer was inspiring.

" I spent every minute building contacts. I worked, I entertained and I made an effort to connect with them. There is a great deal of effort in relationship building. I have a professional approach, I thank them, appreciate and recognise their support and I never ever let them down professionally." 

Luckily enough, I was able to introduce potential clients and direct them into the board room to meet with Sandra. Sandra is not only skilled at building relationships with the media, but also with her clients which is absolutely vital.

Pretty much, if you can be the best person you can in this industry, whilst also making sure you are professional, and work hard at building relationships you will get further than someone who does not show any enthusiasm.
Personalising a professional relationship can be challenging - you don't want to make it too personal, nor too professional. This balance is hard to find but is definitely worth it.

When I enter the workforce I am excited and eager to be the nicest person I can be, and I think this is something that can be forgotten when working in the real world as pressure and stress can over power whats important.

The variety in consultancy

Week three has been my busiest week so far. This week was the Australian Oil and Gas conference/exhibition, which my internship workplace was managing the media room. Personally I had no knowledge in the oil and gas industry, it was never something that I had studied or followed. However when asked if I wanted to come along and experience it, I said yes wanting to get as much experience in different fields as I could. Now that the conference is over, I can honestly say it was one of the best experiences I have had and I really enjoyed it.

The conference was very interesting, I got the opportunity to network with some great people who work in different fields, listen to talks by companies such as Woodside and Chevron and participated in the AOG Women expo. I met some great journalists who offered me advice on the PR/journalism world, helped with interviewing/filming of the expo and also helped curate the @AOG_expo twitter feed with one of my colleagues. I was asked to be the barrel girl with one of our competitions and also be filmed walking through the expo for some promo footage. It was an experience that I really enjoyed and I am very grateful for the opportunity. 

To finish of the week after 2 and half days at the AOG expo, I was back in the office interviewing clients’ team members and also writing pitch stories to the media for clients. The weeks are full of variety and there aren't enough hours in the day to fit in all in, but I absolutely love it!

Chelsea x

All great work requires daily practice and endless patience!

Hello everyone,

I hope that you all had a great week doing your internship. Mine was just as frenetic as you can imagine and it has been a very long week I should say before, during and after the recent event that my company was organising.

In my previous blog post, I was telling you that we were just one day before the event and we were still busy doing call-backs for journalists, we were still updating the files to put in the pen drives and putting stickers on the pen drives boxes as you can see in the picture below. 

As a PR intern, I must say that this experience was really amazing and priceless. It gave me the opportunity to show to my employers, one of my main talents: being a versatile person. I could do anything if I was well briefed.

In fact, at my workplace, I could have been left with only doing basic things which are known to be very cliché such as photo copies, make coffee, and so on. But the thing is, I was considered as an employee and I was given real responsibilities which I took very seriously.

Furthermore, I realised something during the event. To my opinion, I understood that we, as PR students and later on as PR agents, cannot and, will never again, rely on journalists’ promises to assist to events. Before the event, we have spent considerable time making so many call-backs to the journalists every day for one week prior to the event to see if they have got the e-Press Invitations and to confirm their presence.

We continued to phone them in the morning of the event to make them remember to come by and they confirmed. Then again, we phoned them on arriving to the site to explain them the road and they would still say that they were on the road coming to the event0! But as the event went through, out of 15, only two journalists made the effort to come. I really cannot understand them. What’s the use of confirming their presence and do not come later? I think that this is the only thing that went wrong. I was really disappointed but what to do? It was one risk to take.

After the event, we had so much things to do such as calling back journalists again for the photo people and reading loads of newspaper to see if there was a maximum media coverage. And I can tell you there was - though journalists did not attend the event!

Moreover, I think as a PR student and as most of us said in our first blog posts, we were scared to make phone calls and working as PR agents in the real world, I think that by now, we are used to the daily quota of work. Besides, I think that though we have been going on through a lot lately with work pressure and on-going courses - meaning on-going assignments too! -, I think that we have been taking our roles very seriously and with countless patience. This perseverance and patience have made me see things differently in the workplace. It has helped me to broaden my knowledge and made me acquire hands-on experience especially during the event. As the famous quote says it all:

“All great work requires daily practice and endless patience!”

Enjoy being a PR Intern.

Stay tuned for my next blog post,

Keshya S. Rassen.