I Made It!!!

This week is the last week of my internship, it is so crazy to think how quickly the time has flown! My 20 days at Professional Public Relations has come to an end and it has been an amazing opportunity. In this final blog post I’m going to reflect on my time here at PPR and the things that I have learnt.

My first few days at PPR were a little scary. I’d never worked in an office/corporate environment before and wasn’t sure of my place in the firm. I tried not to get in the way of what people were doing too much and I wasn’t sure of how to approach people to ask for work. Fast forward 20 days and I’m super comfortable here now and have settled into the organisation well.

This internship has definitely been a big change for me. I haven’t done a lot of full time work over the course of my time in employment, so having to be up and in the office by 9am everyday was a change in itself. Combine that with my lack of experience in a corporate setting and the fact that I haven’t had to use the knowledge I’ve learnt at uni thus far for anything other than exams, it shows how much progress I needed to make at the start of the internship. But I’m here! And I made it! J

I somewhat expected all of the work I had learnt over the course of my degree to be in the back of my head ready for me to just pull out at any moment when I needed to, but it wasn’t like that at all! I definitely had to relearn a few things, and for some of the things I could remember I needed to increase the level of standards from what I had learnt. There were a few occasions where I needed to redo some of the work to increase the standard, but the best way to learn is by learning from your mistakes!

I would definitely recommend doing an internship to other people who haven’t done one yet, as it provides an insight into the kind of work you’re going to be doing if you pursue a career in that field and gives you some experience being in that setting. It’s crazy how much difference it can make by doing a few weeks of interning, both to your knowledge of the industry and also to your confidence.

Holly Armstrong

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Being published in the Australian Financial Review

I had a great opportunity the other day at my placement to see a different side of PR and to write some articles for a technology focused magazine that will be inserted inside the Australian Financial Review! Very exciting stuff for me. I haven’t done a lot of writing at my placement so far, mostly just in the sense of media releases but not actual journalistic articles so it was a great opportunity for me to try something new. It was also great because the National Head of Investor Relations was the one who offered me the opportunity, so it was great working with someone with a lot of influence and experience.

I wrote two articles, one about a local West Perth based company who won the National Innovation Award at the 2016 iAWARDS for technological innovation in their field and nationwide, and the second article was about a programme being run down at Sacred Heart College regarding the “Just Start IT” programme that immerses students in a hands on environment where they design their own programme/app and the winning team has the opportunity to work alongside a tech company who assists them in developing the software and bringing the programme to life.

The Australian Financial Review is distributed to over 65,000 organisations nationwide so it’s actually so crazy to think that my articles with my by-line will be published in there for people all over Australia to read. I mean, I’m just an intern after all! It was a really great experience and learning opportunity for me and definitely one of the most exciting things I’ve done at my placement thus far and I’m really excited to get to see my words in print!


Holly Armstrong
18022908
Curtin University, Bentley

Being published in the Australian Financial Review

I had a great opportunity the other day at my placement to see a different side of PR and to write some articles for a technology focused magazine that will be inserted inside the Australian Financial Review! Very exciting stuff for me. I haven’t done a lot of writing at my placement so far, mostly just in the sense of media releases but not actual journalistic articles so it was a great opportunity for me to try something new. It was also great because the National Head of Investor Relations was the one who offered me the opportunity, so it was great working with someone with a lot of influence and experience.

I wrote two articles, one about a local West Perth based company who won the National Innovation Award at the 2016 iAWARDS for technological innovation in their field and nationwide, and the second article was about a programme being run down at Sacred Heart College regarding the “Just Start IT” programme that immerses students in a hands on environment where they design their own programme/app and the winning team has the opportunity to work alongside a tech company who assists them in developing the software and bringing the programme to life.

The Australian Financial Review is distributed to over 65,000 organisations nationwide so it’s actually so crazy to think that my articles with my by-line will be published in there for people all over Australia to read. I mean, I’m just an intern after all! It was a really great experience and learning opportunity for me and definitely one of the most exciting things I’ve done at my placement thus far and I’m really excited to get to see my words in print!


Holly Armstrong
18022908
Curtin University, Bentley

My first week on the job!

So my first week at Professional Public Relations was crazy! And I loved every minute of it. My first day was a blur, trying to find my way around the city on public transport trying to get to the office on my first day without being late (not a good look). Luckily I made it J My first day mostly consisted of getting to know all of my fellow colleagues and learning my way around the office. There was a big office desk move around on my first day so my actual PR work was very limited, however it was great to learn how to use the printer and scanner and meet everyone in the office in the meantime.

My second day was far more hectic. I was asked to do a ring around to all of the major radio stations in Perth (i.e: hit92.9, Nova 937, mix 94.5, 96fm and many more) to confirm our organisations current contact list to ensure it was up to date with producer’s current contact details and to get new details for producers who have since taken over the role. Doing the ring around at first was so nervous! Having worked in retail before I decided the easiest way for me to tackle this would be to develop a script and just say the same thing to each receptionist that I called. I started with the big guns, 92.9 and it was so scary but I made it out alive and the world wasn’t crumbling once I’d hung up the phone. I started to get the hang of it more and more as I went through the list and by the time I’d finished the list I felt so relieved and proud all at the same time.

My second day I also did some work on the Mangles Bay development project taking place down in Point Peron. I was asked to review a collection opinion pieces from local newspapers from that area to grasp an understanding of how the public felt about the development. Many are opposed to it as they are concerned for the environments welfare and do not want the project to be given the go ahead to commence construction. I had to compile the main messages from each opinion piece and the tone the message (i.e: was it positive/negative towards the project commencing) into a spreadsheet on Excel for one of my colleagues to keep a database of all of the articles.

I was also asked to research statistics of employment in the oil and gas industry for a client of one of my colleagues. Strangely, this proved to be the hardest and most time consuming task of my day. I expected a bit of light googling and some searching through the ABS would give me the answers I was searched for, however, I was sorely mistaken. The ABS choose not to publish statistics on this industry as it is too vast to cover it all and google did not produce any recent figures from anywhere after 2014. This was the first task I was given that I could not complete. I felt quite bad about it. My job as an intern is not only to learn on the job but also the take some of the workload off of my colleagues and assist them with their tasks for the day. Being the type of person who does not like to disappoint on delivery it was difficult for me to tell my colleague that after THREE HOURS of searching online I had not found one, single statistic for him to get back to his client with. He was super understanding and nice about it and did not mind at all that I hadn’t been able to deliver.

My third day I proceeded to create a media release for an event launch being held by Cancer Council. The event is called Girls Night In and encourages women to have a girls night in and donate the money they would usually spend from going out to the Cancer Council for research towards breast and gynaecological cancers. The launch night is set to include a pamper night at one of Perth’s premier day spas, Bohdi J, which will be opening at night time especially for this event. Women who come will be treated to luxurious massages and chakra balancing, truly indulging themselves. Not only will everyone feel great but they would have raised money for a great and worthy cause.

I also created a template for a colleague who is creating web content for a new home loan website. By creating the template for them they are able to simply input the content they have created for the client into it. It was really cool to see a new website before any of the public had access to it.

I’m very much looking forward to my second week and seeing what might be in store for me!

Stay posted J

Holly Armstrong

18022908

Bentley Campus