The First Day

In my opinion, there’s nothing more intimidating than the first day of a new job. Make that the first day of a job doing something you want to do for the rest of your life, and the pressure gets a thousand times worse. So when my first day of my internship at Wesley College came around, needless to say I was very nervous!

There are many things to think about, like what to wear, what to say, how to act, all to ensure you ‘fit in’ to your new environment. So after getting advice from friends and family, I stuck with my (well advised) black and white corporate clothes, and began my new journey walking into my new office with the confidence that I would learn from this experience, no matter the outcome.

After the initial introductions and a quick campus tour, it was time to get settled in and do some work. I’d revised the night before some of the ‘PR101’ skills we got taught in second year, hoping I’d be able to handle any tasks given to me…

Honestly, I had nothing to be worried about – my biggest challenge was remembering everyone’s names! Even my first tasks – simple things like reformatting documents and inputting data from spreadsheets to the College website – were rewarded by my new colleagues with support and many thanks, making me feel very welcome and that this wasn’t going to be as intimidating as I first thought.

So for anyone about to embark on a new chapter of their working lives, my advice for your first day would be to be confident, be yourself, and don’t be afraid to get it wrong. Especially in an internship, everyone just wants to help you succeed. So ask as many questions as you can, learn from all the experience around you, and most of all, don’t forget to have fun! There’s only so much you can be told about working in the ‘real world’, the rest you have to learn yourself.

I’m so excited to embark on this journey with the Wesley Community Relations Department, and can’t wait to see what my future here holds.

Blisters, Boardrooms & Blogging: My First Day Interning

My first day as an intern at Magnetize was almost a disaster as I missed the train I was meant to catch and had to run through the Perth Underground in order to make the connecting train to get there on time - giving myself terrible blisters in my smart new business pumps.  Having been badly sunburnt the day before, I was pink, patchy, puffed, and got there with a minute to spare, not feeling like I would make a great first impression to those in the sleek Subiaco office containing Magnetize, a boutique integrated communications company. 

Melissa, my supervisor and the Marketing Manager, was a fellow Mandurah local, and could understand my travel panic (and sunburn woes).  I was introduced around the office, and to my dismay not only did most of the workers comment on my sunburnt appearance but the majority of their names went straight in one ear and out the other.  Oops.. not a good start.

Melissa put me to work compiling an Excel database of potential targets for a new business. I got interrupted several times by colleagues poking fun at my sunburn. It was embarrassing, but did set me at ease.  The database took me a good few hours, and I felt disappointed with my slow work.  Surely a PR practitioner would be able to whiz through this type of work in no time at all!  As it was only my first day, I tried not to beat myself up too much.

Magnetize share an office with an accounting firm, and it is a good experience to be surrounded by the different industry and listen to what's going on.  The businesses seem to work well in the shared space, and I can see how working in one consultancy could be very different from one firm to another.  I think in future I will be looking to work in a consultancy as opposed to in house.

Later, I was sent a blog post to edit – English and writing being my strong point, I was relieved to be able to do something fast and well.  I emailed the edited copy back to Mel with a great sense of achievement.  My final task for the day was to flip through an automotive magazine and compile a marketing contact spreadsheet for potential advertising. 

At the close of my first day, I wasn’t sure how I felt about my new internship.  The majority of my day had revolved around marketing – would I be able to achieve what had been asked of me as the internship continued?  Would I learn lots?  Would I enjoy it?  Hard to say from just one day, so I knew all I had to do was my best and to take each day at a time.

First day as an intern – complete!

First Day of Internship

Today was my first day at work, FINALLY!

I have been waiting for this since three months and here I am, in a place that I didn't even know existed in Mauritius. The environment is quite relaxing, no noise pollution or whatever, a bit too relaxing for me, in other words you just want to sleep under a tree and appreciate the nature.

As it is a very small company, (6 employees only, including me) it was quite difficult to feel comfortable as they already knew each other and I was the only new intern. Frankly I wanted to run away from this place but thank God, I have a very good friend who told me, “You've got to pull yourself together and take control of your emotions!”

She was right, it’s not the work that sucks, it’s the way you relate to the work itself. Everything depends on the way you see things, I decided to take it positively and do the work seriously, I did what I could and even my boss was impress by my work.

At this precise moment, the day went out quickly and smoothly. I was asked to find specific costing for an event that the company is supposed to organised. I was asked to find different venues, caterings, photographers and book publishers for the event.

What I learned from my first day at work is that good contacts are essential in public relations, without them, organising an event is impossible.

Thank you for reading my first blog entry and stay tuned :)

Anne-Laure Ferry
15886512
CTI (Mauritius)

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

Kirby Scanlan - Blog Post #1 The Deep End....

My first day of my internship was Momentum Forum Events’ first big event of the year. So when I say I was thrown in the deep end... I mean it. I arrived early to the office and was immediately sent to a computer to return emails and then write a media release (not 24 hours ago I had told Barbara (founder and CEO of Momentum in my interview that media releases were probably my weakest PR skill so either she was putting my skills to test straight of the bat, or she was just too stressed to care). After I did that, she proofed it and it was sent straight off to channel 7, ABC and SBS. In the hope that one or all of them would show up at the event later that day. 

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I then drove myself to the PCEC where I met other interns and got straight to work on the 400+ gift bags. By the time we had finished them it was almost time for the event to start. It was quite exciting and glamorous, Barbara along with the MC and Charlotte Dawson (who was this year’s testimonial speaker) were getting their makeup done by Saviour Faire (major sponsors of the event) and once all the “ important people” got taken care of, we all got to get some bright lipstick put on us too (Momentum’s event trademark)! Soon after, people started arriving in herds and our next task was to usher people to their correct seats, we had a massive seating chart which we all had access too but not too soon after the first person got seated that we realised that there were A LOT of mistakes on the seating chart, as well as guests wanting to sit with friends etc – this, I found was quite stressful, mainly because not having worked on the lead up to the event and not having helped with the seating chart or was familiar with the guest list, I felt like a fish out of water and struggled with ideas on how to rectify the situation, but we got it sorted eventually, it just meant that, before  the event had already started, we were already running at least 30 minutes behind schedule. 

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The rest of the day was much more calm and organised, I helped with the drawing of the raffle and the live auction and got to sit and take in the whole event. I must admit, I have done lots of work experience before for many different large and small companies, and I have never been so looked after as I have at Momentum. All the volunteers get a table AT the event, in the ballroom with everyone and we get the same three course lunch as all the guests, which I was very impressed with. I got to listen to and later meet Charlotte Dawson, whose speech was very moving and inspiring and at the end got to meet some of Barbara’s clients and have a glass of champagne with herself and her family to end the successful day. 

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I felt this was a great start to the internship, and although I realised (of course) that everyday wasn’t going to be like this, It really made me excited for the next event and to actually be there from the very first promotion or media release all the way up to the event day and then see that through, it also gave me a very detailed insight into the great work that Barbara and Momentum does for different causes and made me very honored to get to be a part of it. 

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