Blog 5: A Pause but Not Stop here!

Time flies, one month passed and it comes to the end on of my internship life.

I have gained and growth a lot during this internship, not only learning a new software (CorelDraw) but also precious experience.

I am grateful to have the chance to work in this hotel and all the people here.

As going to graduate soon, this internship did help me to prepare myself for the real world. Besides, this internship also helps me to discover the PR role in hotel industry.

Although I only have one month internship, it has been a fruitful month. I not only discovered the PR role in hotel, but also discover my ability during one month internship. Before that, I only have little confidence in me and I always doubt myself that I cannot do this, or thinking that is too hard for me to handle. Surprisingly, throughout this internship, by the encouragement from my supervisor and managers, and the chance that they had given to me, have faith in me. Slowly, I building up confidence and took up those tasks and challenges.

Moreover, as my internship is start during the Christmas season, my supervisor took one week holiday leave, hence I have to take up all her job. That is a challenge for me, as I have to be independence, handle her jobs and stand by for the emergency work or last minute changes. Besides, there is also an “inner challenge” to me, such as how can I overcome the laziness and procrastination by being discipline and self-control when I was all alone in the office. However, I am thankful for the chance, as I can push myself to the limit and growth.       

By the way, here is a reminder for all of us.

“Say what you should, do what you should, do not over say something. Be wise and control your tongue although it is the smallest part of our body, but it can make people stumble.”

“The word you use must be careful, it is like a weapon, it might cause harm or kill someone without you knowing.”

This is NOT THE END but JUST START!

Group Photo - Refreshment after singing Christmas Caroling in Grand Palace Hotel

Hoh Xiao Mei 

15109206 / 7e0a7613

Blog 3: Explore What PR do in the Hotel industry

One of the reasons that I choose to have my internship in the hotel industry is because I would like to know what is the role that PR paly in the hotel industry.   

As working a couple days in the hotel, I slowly discovered what is the role of PR in the hotel.

From my observation, to be a PR in the hotel is not an easy job, he/she must have certain skill with him/ her. For example, my supervisor, her job scope is quite big. She must know how to use CorelDraw, Adobe Photoshop all those software in order to design menu, signage, brochure, poster, website update and Christmas Charity Bookmark (CSR program). Besides, she also need to have photo shooting skill as she need to attend every function and event that held by the hotel and be the photographer. Moreover, when the restaurant launches new dishes for every season, my supervisor has to be there to shot for the dishes and design table menu and brochure for it. On the other hands, she has to be able to go communicate well with media person.           

**However, different organizations has different definition to the PR, therefore their job scope will be different as well.

Something I can learn from my supervisor:

• Be polite and patience. In service industry, there is no hierarchy, meaning you have to be polite to everyone, even they are housekeepers, they equally deserve your polite. Besides, there are always some great functions and events happen in the hotel, therefore, as a PR, she contact with media in polite way as well. Because I am new to this hotel, she is patience to me, teach me and guild me.

•      Always has the habit of noting down those tasks and the due date.

•      Well time management and discipline is the key of finishing your work effectiveness and efficiency. 

      

      Hoh Xiao Mei 

15109206 / 7e0a7613

Blog 2: Taste the real world - Intern life start!

Before I start my internship, I was informed to go the hotel few days earlier for the purpose of filling up some documents, understand the hotel rules and regulation in the hotel, getting familiar in my workplace and people here.

First day of internship:

I was told to write up a press release for the upcoming event which is sing Christmas caroling in the general hospital.

What’s in my mind?

•      People said that is a gap between the thing (hard skill) that you have learnt in the university and what the real world is. However, I found that statement is not really true because somehow I can link what I had learnt from the university to my work in this hotel.

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•       I feel grateful because I am not as bad as what senior told me that just sitting in the office and do nothing but I am using my skill to contribute to the hotel that I currently working with.

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•      Stressful. As I poor in English, I doubted my ability to take up this task. However, my supervisor keep encouraging me and willing to help me when I faced difficulties.

What I have learnt?

•       My manager told me that as working in the hotel industry, service is important. Therefore do not forget about those magic words (Thank you, Please, Sorry) and greeting to everyone even a housekeeping worker.

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•      When you are not clear about anything, do not hesitate to ask your supervisor or people around you. 

• When I am not sure about the news angel, always referring back to the media clipping. Media clipping can be consider as a reference for you to refer and come out with an idea to write about press release.  

Hoh Xiao Mei 

15109206 / 7e0a7613

Blog 1: For The First Time

Hello, Xiao Mei here. I’m currently taking PR393 (like you all here).

I worked as an intern in Grand Palace Hotel, Miri. Although I only work for the hotel for 20+ days, yet I learnt a lot while intern in this hotel.

Actually most of the hotel or workplaces prefer trainee or intern with three months working / internship with the firm/ organization because they need time to train and teach the intern and the intern him/herself need time to learn and get familiar with the company and the culture inside.

Because of the tight schedule, I cannot work for the hotel for three months. However, I am so blessed to get offer from the hotel and have the chance to work as an intern in this hotel with less than one month (yet fulfill the minimum 20 days requirement).

Let’s share about the first interview experience.

I was informed to have an interview in the hotel, and after class I rush to the hotel with my semi-formal outfit.

I was informing that to look for the person but I didn’t know that he is the general manager of the hotel. After he introduced himself, that is a big shock for me that I am meeting up with the GM. (A big shock to me!)

The first time I feel like I am stepping into the real world and workplace, no longer a student no longer in campus life.

Although that is an interview, for me it is like another best lesson in my life.

During the interview, the GM was not only asking about your basic information, he even asked me to define some of the business term, such as marketing, and sale and he came out with a conclusion. I would say the interview is more like first stepping stone to enter the real world. He explained to me about the company and his job scope patiently. Finally, he said he accepted me as an intern to work in this hotel.

How I feel during interview?

• Of cause, I felt nervous because that is the very first interview in my life. However, after talking to the GM, I felt release, not really stress any more. He made the conversation in a casual way and made me felt comfortable to talk with him.

What I learn in this interview?

• As a manager, they must have certain level of leadership skill in them to lead the employees. Being friendly and kind to the employees does not mean that the manager does not strict in the law and regulation. Manager can build a good environment and culture in the workplace, having a good bonding and relationship with employees, but the managers still holder his/ hers power and all the employees will respect to the manager and they do not take it as granted.

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• Every little thing that place and design in this hotel, that must be a reason behind. Even the front office employees’ uniform design. For example, in this hotel, all the female front officers are wearing red and white color uniform. According to the GM, he said that as AirAsia is popular and famous, so the hotel decided to let the front officers wear similar to AirAsia flight attendances’ uniform as it will make the customer to remember about the hotel and feel familiar. Therefore, when people think about AirAsia, they will also remember that is a hotel in Miri also wearing the similar uniform with AirAsia flight attendances. 

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•      You are not as awesome as what people praise to you, but at the same time, you are not as bad as who do you think you are. So, be confident always.

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•       Sincerity and your personal character are important as well.  

In conclusion, that’s an unforgettable interview in my life. 

First day internship - my name tag  

Hoh Xiao Mei 

15109206 / 7e0a7613

360 ° Changes

Hurray!!!! My two months internship placement in Hill+Knowlton Strategies finally came to an end. New working environment in a consultancy firm really do change my whole mindset thinking about the PR knowledge in this two months.  I sincerely want to say a millions of thanks to the Managing Director of Hill & Knowlton Malaysia, Mr Justin Then, Senior Associate, Mr. Burhanuddin Omar who is my internship supervisor and also all the colleagues for their willingness and kindness in giving me the learning opportunities and providing me proper guidance, training skill, and sharing their useful personal experience and knowledge with me throughout the internship period. Before I step into the real public relations industry, I really did not know much about PR. In fact I was just a student who barely understands the actual operation process of how public relations carry out their work in order to achieve their goal of any communication project for their client. I also always had a perspective of public relations that it is just like a professional career which uses communication skill to facilitate the relationship and understanding between an organization and its stakeholders, all about practical daily routine of working closely with media to secure positive media coverage in order to protect corporate reputation and image of company, mainly handle crisis issues and community project, organizing press conferences and others.

After I accomplished the internship, now  my perspective towards public relations have changed and my personal working attitudes have much more improved than before such as the way I think and analyze current issues became more critically and skeptical, communication style with clients and media became more friendly and straightforward to the important point without wasting time, be more aware of my dressing and talking style which might affect the company image and work ethically by following my company policy. Moreover, I still remembered one of my associate director advised me that public relations nowadays actually can be defined as ‘people relations’ which means human networking and contacts are very crucial as sources for  getting information and medium for disseminating information to a diverse range of audiences. This made me realized that when you are in the PR industry, you must make friends whenever and wherever you can. Internship placement in a multinational consultancy firm have made me get the chance to expose to the variety of client from different sectors such as telecommunication, automobile, healthcare, consumer goods, technology and finance. Eventually, this has improved my general knowledge in every aspect that related with my client business. Throughout the internship, I also realized that employee communication is very important in every company to keep engage every staff for making them keep aware about the current business updates and policy of the company and also strengthen  the relationship between the  colleagues by using their in-house news portals, newsletters, email, weekly meeting, staff training, festival celebrations and others. For instances, Hill & Knowlton have organized a Christmas party and Lou Sang Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner to celebrate the festival joy with the staffs. On my last day internship, they also have organized a farewell lunch in the office for appreciating my hard work and contribution towards the company. All these various types of company events improve employee engagement while providing a platform for employees to socialize and be positively motivated.

Based on my personal experience, year end semester break or the month of December could be the best time for students to do an internship. This is because all the clients’ projects and annual report would be due on end of this month. It is the busiest time of a year that everyone in the public relations consultancy firm will be  rush to finish up all the workloads and most of the time the intern will be used to  assist them in finish up their work. This means intern can learn a lot of new working skill or extra knowledge when assist them in handling client’s annual reports. Internship placement at Hill & Knowlton Strategies Malaysia have let me able to experiences and seen the dealing process of a professional PR consultant with client and able to participate in helping the colleagues to engage our client business with the media. In addition, my supervisor have given me a precious feedback regarding my internship performance which is he advised me that as a professional public relations officer need to keep ‘READING ABOUT  EVERYTHING’ on the news information of every industry sector because this extra knowledge could help us to think critically while designing an ideal and reliable communication project for every client. Once again, thank you everyone in Hill & Knowlton Strategies for giving me lots of golden opportunities in learning about the professional public relations frameworks throughout the internship.

Photos below are my best memorable moment in Hill & Knowlton Strategies Malaysia. 

Awesome people in the house HK Strategies!!!!

My Supervisor, Burhan & Me J

Farewell gathering food       

Intern from Taylor University & Segi College

Christmas Party and my Christmas present from company J

Our client brings along their product visit us!! Red Bull Wings!!!!

Lim Min Yuan
Curtin Sarawak
15625074 / 7E0B7821

Recognising the need to Digitize

Whether it is for reasons of going green or just for plain convenience, technology has helped pave the way for digital management when it comes to business. Not to say hard copies have become completely obsolete, but slowly but surely it may be the reality. My last task before my internship comes to an end is to digitize Miri Marriott’s media clippings. You may all recall doing media clippings in PR250, and I’m sure some of you already doing your internships have been delegated to do this.

Firstly, a little detour first of how it works around here (if PR250 didn't quite make sense and you were doing that assignment just for the sake of getting it done – guilty!): Daily newspapers are collected (all local/national/online publications) and I have to go through them looking for articles about the hotel (media presence), other hotels in Miri (competitive analysis) and hospitality/tourism-related articles across Sarawak, Sabah and West Malaysia (industry monitoring) – the articles about the hotel (excluding our own advertisements) are considered free media coverage and I must calculate the value of such articles. Bare with me, this is where it gets a little confusing: this is done by measuring the article’s length and multiplying that by the number of columns based on figure 1. The result is then multiplied by set prices for each publication (see figure 2)– as I said it's all a bit confusing at first but that’s what the tables are for.

Figure 1

Figure 2

All the articles I collect are filed to be circulated monthly within the hotel to the General Manager and all Executive Committee members. It’s not the most exciting job in the world, but it’s just one of those things that needs to be done. Personally, it’s kind of nice to start the day reading up on some news (you never know what you might find – I once found an article entitled “Know Your Poo” – and it was rather hilarious) plus you get to be a little arts and crafty. As with all hard copies, they can get damaged or go missing along the way – so my boss though it best just to scan it all, make it into a pdf and email it – easy peasy! And this is where digital management comes in: creation, storage and retrieval are now at a click of a button (or two). But it also has other perks for overall business but you will find many of the points are similar: 

• With faster access to and retrieval of information logically means faster business transactions;

• With quicker access to all of the right information means staff are better informed and can make better decisions faster;

• Less time is spent looking for information;

• Easier information sharing not just internally across the hotel and other franchises;

• (My personal favourite) saving paper means saving trees – particularly important for this part of the world;

• Clutter-free offices – it frees up some space where all the filing used to be.

The only cons to digital management is that technology can let you down, all it takes is one crash and it’s all gone, or some hacker extraordinaire to snoop, steal or unleash a virus. The solutions to such issues would be to make sure to do regular back-ups and make sure system security is top notch. We are creatures that crave convenience and the same goes for how we want to do business; making use of technology and choosing digital management is a more effective and efficient way of doing business.

Rachel Salinah Jackson

15624958

Miri Campus

Truly Embracing CSR

Miri Marriott’s (CSR) Christmas Wish Tree project came to an end last Friday. After 3 months of preparation, we delivered all 442 gifts/money donated by guests, associates and friends of Miri Marriott to the various orphanages, disability centres and the hospital. It was an experience that brought on a rollercoaster of emotions, but an experience I will remember and treasure forever. It did get me thinking about CSR; how some companies (corporations) choose not to do it and for some that do it’s all just a load of green, blue or pinkwashing.

Personally, to experience what I experienced last week, it is worth all the time, all the money and all the effort. It’s a given that acts of CSR are not going to solve all the world’s problems (it would be amazing if they could!) but it is a way for companies to extend a helping hand to society, while also benefiting from it themselves. Clearly the feeling of doing something good for others is not enough, so why else should companies embrace corporate social responsibility? Specifically focusing on hotel CSR, I did a little informal verbal survey among my fellow associates and came up with the following reasons:

1.    Going Green is the new frontier of innovation – Hotels are constantly trying to keep up with the times, in terms of standards and innovations. New generation travellers (Gen Y) are more environmentally conscious and this can affect where they choose to stay. Hotels are very much aware of this and must think of innovative ways to accommodate to their greener needs

2.    It saves money – CSR is one of the easiest ways to cut down on costs. Whether it’s improving energy efficiency or water use, it really can make a difference it terms of saving some money;

3.    Competitive advantage – In conjunction with point 1, CSR can set you apart from your competitors, with guests having your hotel as a preference in response to all the your positive impacts on society/environment/etc;

4.    Long-term thinking – We are all very much aware of the need to be more sustainable economically, environmentally and socially (triple-bottom-line). Long-term sustainability is just good business when you’re in it for the long run;

5.    Communicating and Connecting with Customers – CSR can help you engage with your customers on a more personal level. Since the message you want to put out is about doing something “good,” it can often be an effective way of getting customer attention as well as community attention;

6.    Employee engagement – engaging employees in the company’s CSR priorities can really aid in communication and boosting morale.

Of course different companies do CSR for different reasons. But I take back what I mentioned before about CSR not solving the world’s problems; I would like to believe that if every CEO felt what I felt giving a gift to a little girl bed-ridden in hospital and putting a smile on her face, and then felt compelled to make more people smile, the world would be a much better place. Naive? Perhaps, but maybe I'm just optimistically planting seeds for all you future CEOs :)

Rachel Salinah Jackson

15624958/7e0b8041

Curtin Miri 

Ring~ Ring~ Media is PR best friend

In the past few weeks I have grown significantly in respect to media monitoring, newspaper clippings and monthly report. Now is the time for me to step up and do something that is much more challenging so far in my internship.  As such my supervisor acknowledged this and began to make me involve in more significant media relations tasks such as media calls and meeting up with media for discussion. Media relation is one of the important work tasks of public relations consultant which is to primarily facilitate the communication between the client organizations and media. Therefore, public relations consultant must work collaboratively with journalists and editors to build positive long term relationship with media by regularly keeping them abreast on what is going on with client organization and giving them accurate newsworthy information in order to generate positive editorial coverage of your client organization, product and person in press, broadcast and internet.

The days of my involvement in these tasks finally let me to the moment when my supervisor requested me to call the media. At that moment I did feel a sense of nervousness as it is after all my first media call at H&K. Did anyone here feel the same as me during your internship? Anyways I did finally managed collect myself and remain calm as I realized that it was a very good opportunity to get to know further in depth of how people in the industry actually interact.

Before calling the media, I must prepare a list that consists of the latest contact number of various local media outlet. Different people have their different way of working, so I always have a small habit that writing up a script about what would I going to say or ask during media call. This script can ensure myself communicate well and confidently with the journalists during the media call by asking them the right question and giving them the accurate information to avoid any confusion in the phone. The press and broadcast media outlets have various editorial desks such as news, business, automobile, health, metro and others. Therefore, we need to specify clearly which desk we want to find when calling up to the main operator line of the media.  Normally I will make twenty to thirty media call in a day for checking whether they receive the media invitation, the publication date of our client press releases or attendance confirmation (RSVP) of journalist for cover up the client events. The best time to make media call for checking up whether they would send reporter to cover the event is around 5.30pm-7pm on the last day before the actual day of event. Before that, I don’t know which publishing company own which newspaper. But after making media call, I have  found out that News Straits Times, Berita Harian and Harian Metro are the press all under a same publishing company which is New Straits Times Press (NSTP) that owned by Media Prima Company.

The three key messages that must be disseminated during the media call for inviting them to cover the event is the date of the event, the title and the company name of the launching event and also must inform them if any big gun like minister or famous artist would be attend the event to attract the journalist to cover the news. Besides that, I also call up some of the online media like Driving Motion, Mekanika and Autofreaks for enquiries about their media rate card and readership of the website. Rate card is a document that shows the prices, news values and description of various advertorial and editorial news placements of the media. It is a very useful and important reference source for the PR consultant to calculate the PR value and news values of the client media coverage. I am so lucky that I got the chance to meet Mr. Leonard Wong, Assistant Manager of Advertising Sales and Marketing from Big Oranges Media for discuss further details about their rate card and advertorial sales. We also had a small conversation about the brief overview of current operation and readership trend of print and online media in media industry Malaysia.

It is a rate card for The Star Online (Rate Card 2014). Sources from: http://adrates.thestar.com.my/page01_welcome.asp

In my opinion, a few tips that can ensure a smooth and pleasurable media call is identify yourself clearly like you calling on behalf of client or your PR firm, contact with the right person or editorial desk who in-charge the news issue, straight to the topic, giving a clear and precise information, and speaking in a moderate loud and polite tone.  During media call, normally I will speak in Malay, Mandarin and English accordingly to the main language of the media. For example, I will speak Mandarin whenever I call to Sin Chew Jit Poh and Oriental Daily. This action can make the media feel the friendliness and honesty of us in working line. This eventually also can improve the relationship between the organization and media as well as my communication skill.

Lim Min Yuan
Curtin Sarawak
15625074 / 7E0B7821

Be alert of surrounding, it might affect YOU!

It has been two weeks here in Hill & Knowlton Strategies. I am starting to adapt to the busy working life in KL city by waking up early every single morning and squeezing into a crowded LRT in order to get to work on time. This is probably the first aspect of working life that you would experience after university stage & once you start working for a paycheck.

Now let’s talk more about what I learnt from H&K. Before starting to handle any PR report, I did a comprehensive research on all of the company’s portfolio of clients and their current business activities. Why am I doing this? This is because the most basic & important requirement as a public relations consultant is understanding and analyzing your customer’s needs and  wants, which would become your single most reliant tool to make the right decision and advise your client accordingly using a suitable communication plan for their business. Therefore it is crucial to be alert of the surroundings and the changes in client business activities as it will directly impact their organization.

In the case of H&K, they practice having an updated database of the entire client’s media coverage. To do this, my company prepares monthly report and I have been assisting my supervisor in two monthly reports for our two main clients; Maxis and Sony. This PR monthly report mainly will tabulate and evaluate all the media coverage of the Maxis, Sony and also their competitor’s news stories each month. Our company has subscribed a service of news monitoring system which is provided by Nama News and Ads Monitoring Agency that tracks all the news stories of the newspapers and magazines in Malaysia.  This can ensure that we don’t leave out any of our client news stories and it makes the process of monitoring easier.

Following is the official website of nama media monitoring that consist the coverage of national media outlets. Click in and take a look  http://www.namaasia.com/aboutus/ .

All the news stories will be extracted into the Microsoft Excel files and then the news coverage will be categorized into competitor and main client tab. This is the moment that I can polish up my Microsoft Excel skill since all these time I just only using Microsoft Word and PowerPoint during studying. All the PR value of news articles will be calculated accordingly with its media publication rate card which specifies the amount of news values based on various size, length and placement of stories. Even though both reports are only submitted on every end of the month, we still need to do it as weekly task to ensure the quality of work and punctuality of work submission. 

Online coverage monitoring also needs to be included in the report as well. Therefore, every day I must monitor the online media coverage on several target websites or blogs such as Lowyat.NET, SoyaCincau and Malaysian Wireless by using internet searching tool or what we usually calls as ‘Google-ing’. The most interesting part during the process of calculating the PR values of online coverage is using our hand to calculate it. In addition, we also need to identify certain relevant words that are mentioned in the article & event activities and also decide the news tonality. This is the crucial part that requires me to always keep myself updated about our client’s latest activities or their industry news on their official company media portals. For example, I knew that Maxis recently launched some Christmas promotion for mobile data package and introduced the new Hotlink 4G Internet plan, so I can easily & accurately name out the event activities as well as list out the spokesperson who in-charge of the event and decide the news tonality as a positive coverage without any hesitation whenever I found the related news stories.  

This picture shows how to measure the PR value of online news coverage. One span of the hand is equal to one page of news story.

Sometimes I might feel a little bit bored of doing monthly report, but from doing so I have realized that monthly report not only can let the client know of the portrayal of organization’s image in media outlets and it also can be a minor analysis report in guiding the public relations consultant to analyze the current business trend in certain sectors such as telecommunication, automotive and consumer technology from time to time. Eventually better understanding of business trend can boost the company revenue and improve business communication strategy. By reading hundreds of industry news per day while doing monthly report have broaden my mind in various aspect such as politic, global economic, foreign affairs and social change which is will be the most crucial lesson from my internship at Hills & Knowlton.

Lim Min Yuan
Curtin Sarawak
15625074 / 7E0B7821

First Chapter of PR Life

Today is the first day of my two months internship placement in Hill+Knowlton Strategies Malaysia. It is a famous international public relations consultancy firm under its parent company WPP, a well known British multinational advertising company. My internship journey began with these three questions:

• What do you know about PR
•   How do you find out about our company
•  Why you choose our company 

These are the most common questions your supervisor or managing director might ask you on your first day or interview session. As for me I got to know this company from one of the famous ethic case study in the lecture slide at Curtin. The other two questions seeks to understand your knowledge in PR and pitching skills; after successfully getting shortlisted from a vast pool of potential candidate, my internship finally took off today.

On the first day morning, my supervisor brought me around the department and introduced me to all the staff in the company. The new working environment has its own unique working system and style. Soon after the tour a friendly human resource staff briefed me on the operation system of computers and working rules & regulation. My company has its own online messenger which operates under Microsoft Lync and everybody called it as OCS which is the acronym of Office Communication System. I observed that all staffs depend heavily on it as it provides easy access for working conversation between the colleagues anytime and occasionally used to carry out project discussion smoothly without wasting time.   Every staffs need to achieve a minimum eight working hours per day. Therefore, the company has a clock-in system to calculate the billable and non-billable hours of account by filling up a timesheet for tracking the hours spent in a day. This system can boost the productivity of project & ensure that it is done on time while assisting efficient project planning. Eventually, this has made me think of account management theory which mainly talks about the operational pattern of PR consultancies work, economic of consulting, capacity management and utilization, payment system and business development.

Newspaper monitoring is one of the ‘MUST’ do things every morning as it is a priority to monitor and keep media clippings of any news stories which is related to our client. Normally I don’t have the habit of reading newspaper, but this job made come out of my comfort zone by giving me the opportunity to read all the total 17 copies of main three languages of newspaper in Malay, Mandarin and English in Malaysia. This task enlightened me further on the publishing pattern of each media, respective news placement and their publishing scope. Throughout the newspaper monitoring process, I got to know of the circulation and readership details of each media. One of the unexpected facts that I learned at Hill+Knowlton is the Harian Metro is the biggest press media in Malaysia which has the largest circulation and readership. Such facts are crucial for us in order to target media effectively when we want to publish any specific client press releases to the right medium by aiming for a large readership base.

Since I have the capability of reading Mandarin, my supervisor has assigned me to monitor all the Chinese newspaper and magazines. Apart from that I am also assigned to help my colleagues and senior associates to translate the Mandarin news into English for clients & for our own documenting needs. During the media monitoring task, the client news on the newspaper will need to be cut out and made into a media clipping for the client to easily observe their current situation of business on the mainstream media. This also acts as a guideline to monitor the public sphere reaction towards the organization which in turn can assist the consultants in effectively analyzing the current trend of client business and enable them to provide ideas of improving corporate communication in business world. Besides that, news updates of government regulatory system and technology changes could easily affect the client business operation. For instances, our company have kept the clippings of many news about the announcement of National Automotive Policy (NAP) 2014 which can affect the automotive business of our client, like Ford. Moreover, media clippings must be scanned in a softcopy form and send out to client through email at 11am sharp on a daily basis in order to keep them alert constantly about their corporate news. Throughout the process I had to learn how to use the Microsoft Office Picture Manager which is new software for me; it was deemed important as Hill+Knowlton required me to edit the media clippings articles & photos so that the final presentation form looks professionally neat and readable.

Lim Min Yuan
Curtin Sarawak
15625074 / 7E0B7821

First day internship at Pustaka Miri

Hi everyone! 

I would like to share to you my first day of internship at Pustaka Miri. Pustaka Miri is a library in Miri. Before I apply at Pustaka, I also tried at few places to do my internship such as Marriott hotel, Meritz hotel, Local Agenda (LA21) but most them require at least 3 month of internship with them. I only manage to do 1 month because the semester break only one month. Finally I received email from Pustaka and they agreed to take me as their intern. I’m so happy and at the same time feeling nervous. The first day of internship my boss, Ms Sofina Tan bring me tour the building and explain to me one by one the function of each room and place. She also introduce me to all the staff in different department. After that she explain to me the scope of work that I will do and her expectation from me. On the first day also she gave me a task, to do a media release and which is good in my opinion because I don’t want just to sit there and do nothing. I rather busy my self doing something because I realize 1 month of internship is a really short time, so I really want to make this 1 month full with activities to help me write the report later.

Above is my first media release that I wrote and she giving it to the journalist to be posted. I’m so happy because my first media release was good and no amended have been made. The other staff also really helpful and give me a lot of advice. I’m looking forward to do more activity and I hope on the next task I will do something different that can test my other skills.

Till next post, stay tuned ya. Take care.