Bad Blood...Internship went bad!

An internship is one of the most exciting units you can have as this is like giving you a real taste of the future profession you want to be. However, some organisations do this just to get free labour even they don't have a proper internship program. It is a very frustrating experience that’s what I can say.

I got this internship and started really well as I met the head volunteer and discussed what I can contribute to the organisation. She is happy about me as I have previous experiences in event managing that I can contribute to the organisation. I gave my availability and also asked is the organisation can provide an official email to communicate with prospective sponsors and donors. She said she will get back to me but did not happen. I tried to communicate with her using email and she sent me an email to just do things for her without any direction. I felt unhappy about it as I was expecting that I’ll get guidance with them about doing things but it’s just my wishful thought. I like working independently but without a clear vision where I’m heading is not a great feeling.

One day she sent an appeal letter and told to use that for getting donations or sponsors. However, I proofread the letter that was made by two interns also and said that this letter needs to be revised as information is too much in an appeal letter. I edited it and submitted to her and explain what are the problems in the first letter she sent. After this incident, I did not receive any email. I don’t know what happened but yes I did not receive any reply.

Seven days before submitting my performance appraisal form she sends me the email that she will transfer me to another organisation to do my internship. I was not happy about it and decided to contact the unit coordinator to move to another internship, which I got.

Lesson learnt that in searching internship experience, you need to make sure that the organisation should have an internship program in place and they are committed to giving you the experience that you're looking for.  

Network Ahead!

One of my earliest memories as a young Curtin PR student back in 2010 was my tutors fervor in ensuring we learnt how to 'network, network, network!'

I remember thinking back at how tedious this "networking" business sounded and my head swam with visions of suited men and women discussing topics beyond my realm of first year knowledge. 

This may have attributed to my severe lack of networking experience until I started my work at my current job/internship placement at the not-for-profit organisation MWLP in Campbelltown, NSW.

I was to learn (and quite quickly at that) the power and significance of networking for the not-for-profit. For many NFP organisations the budget left over for marketing and communications can be small and it is the role of the person in charge to try to stretch this as much as they can.
Networking is a budget saving and personal way a NFP can work to circulate their brand within the community at a fraction of the cost! Business owners and professionals will often take a keen interest in hearing what you do and if dome right, remember your name (and hopefully your organisation) in the future.
Moreover, networking is that perfect opportunity to make industry contacts and meet with people who represent organisations you may want (or need) further contact with in the future.
When offering forward a proposal, having that personal contact with a person can be invaluable, particularly in the case of a NFP seeking something in return.

I am proud to say that to this date I have hosted over 40 networking events and have attended just a many, if not more. The contacts and relationships I have made and maintained during these events has been invaluable to me personally and professionally and my trepidation for these types of events is a thing of the past. 

Let's take a look back... what a semester!

If you're reading this, you can probably emphasise with my excitement at finishing off what has proved to be an incredibly busy and challenging semester- and year! I have just come off the back of completing my second internship for the year and I feeling both nervous, sad and excited- all at once!

As I walked out of my internship today, I started to think about all the fantastic opportunities I have been given the chance to get involved with and all the new skills and memories I have added on to my bank of university experience- these experiences in which I hold very fondly and ones that I hope will encourage me to make new mistakes and experiences as I enter into the world of full-time work-scary! Although the transition from student to PR professional may seem daunting, I can already notice a difference in first-day Georgia at her internship, to final-day Georgia who is walking out of her internship confident and ready to take on the world!

If you've been following my blogs this semester, you will have been given a small insight into my experience at Place Activation and you would have read about my tips and tricks for being a fantastic intern. So, what else have I been up to during my internship?

I have attended a number of Place Activation events, including the Creative Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and hung out with roaming magician, Jono Strange- all held on campus, how cool!

I hung out with George, Curtin's Therapy Dog on Get Loud day and I even got to contribute to Curtin's community art canvas.

A progr

s and staff are at home and everyone is welcome. 

I have loved every minute of my internship experience- and it has been far from normal! I have gone from working in an office in the morning, creating spreadsheets and powerpoints, to heading down to an array of campus events, like participating in a performance piece in a sea container!

My internship ride has been a crazy and exciting one, with a few challenging moments of self doubt too. I could not be happier at how my semester has gone, and I'll treasure my time with Place Activation for years to come.

I wish you all the best with your final days of internship, and good luck for those of us still scrambling together our reports...!

-Georgia.

It feels so great to be entering the last week of semester! I finished my internship last Thursday, and now I can finally see the end of the road.

My last day at Cannings Purple was amazing! We had a morning tea with pastries and muffins, followed by a quick speech from one of the managers thanking me for my time there. I followed with my own thank you speech, expressing my gratitude towards all the staff and for the wonderful experience they had given me throughout my placement.

Despite it being my last day, I still worked on projects and fortunately, went out with a bang with a writing task I thoroughly enjoyed. BCG has released their own company Bulletin magazine, designed to share the stories of the company’s projects, events and employees. I was to write three articles that were going to be placed over a two-page spread of short pieces. My first piece was on BCG’s participation in the City to Surf event, followed by a piece on the recent collaboration between BCG and Industry Gold Group. Both pieces were kept to a 60-word limit. The third article I wrote was a 200 word piece about BCG’s Development division, and the new Paradis Apartments that had just been completed at Alkimos Beach. I look forward to seeing these pieces in the Q4 December edition!

Reflecting on the semester, I did find it hard trying to juggle the internship, writing the report, keeping up with my other units, work, and all the other stressors that life throws our way, but I’m glad I did it. I learnt so much from the internship, not only about how PR runs in the corporate world, but also several skills such as working in an office, the importance of developing strong relationships with clients and how to juggle a number of tasks. I am looking forward to working fulltime and earning an income.

Congratulations to everyone for getting through the semester and completing their internships! Judging from all the posts, it sounds like all the students had a wonderful experience and learnt a lot.

The world of public relations is definitely getting a better run for their money these days, as it has become an integral aspect of many businesses. I believe we are all going to do well, there is some amazing talent at Curtin.

To those of you graduating, best of luck for the future, and again, well done for making it this far.

Ciao everyone!

My desk at Cannings Purple

The Beginning, middle...what's the end?

The beginning: Working for a NFP can be increasingly difficult when you do not accept government funding but rather rely on donations and sponsorship from the community. When myself and one of the other interns at ODATWA, Hope, were told we were about to lose our space if we were unable to raise money, we immediately jumped into action! It began with planning low cost fundraising ideas, brainstorming and researching what would be most effective and could be put together quickly...well we chose an event that although did not require too much effort, was a little difficult to organise over the course of a month! We knew if we were going to pull this off that we would need to put in a lot of hard work!

Although I have organised a few events before, Hope was a biomed student who was looking to get into medicine in the next few years, and works part time. Where as I myself have full time uni, work part time, run a small business and volunteer #timepoor. We knew the next month would be a push and that it would be done on a minimal budget.

So what event did we choose? Well  being Gen Y students that watch a lot of Netflix, of course we couldn't resist hosting our very own dodge ball tournament - Dodge For A Cause! We were excited, enthusiastic and it made the hectic month a whole lot more fun throwing doge ball movie puns at one another. For anyone who isn't aware; Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is what we were relating to. 

The middle: We managed to secure Curtin University Stadium for our event #winning, we set up a Facebook event and October 16th was out event date. We had so much interest in the event, however of course do to limited notice, were unable to secure as many teams as we would have liked but lets save that for the next blog post.

We thought about food to put on and decided putting on our own sausage sizzle would be the most effective way as we had a butcher kind enough to donate sausages for this. The event was all over Facebook and even the Curtin Library toilets thanks to Hope! I targeted Murdoch University and we had a lot of response! Our supervisors barely weighed in on the event as they were so impressed with the approaches we had taken to the event!

We had to submit license applications to the town of Vic Park, create a risk assessment for the event, running sheet and logistics along with tournament details and of course advertise and accept registrations for the event...how did we do it?

Thrown in at the deep end for my first week!

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.  

The start of an unforgettable journey at Imagine Communication

One of the most important day of my life, I wake up my stomach tied up in knots, so many questions running through my head: What to wear? What to say? What will they think of me? Meeting for the first time with your future employer can be one of the most stressful day of your life as the first impression you make is essential to whether you may or may not be selected from thousands of candidates applying for the same job as you. Sometimes when getting stressed people tend be tongue tied and tensed, and as this was my first interview I did not know how I would react when placed under such conditions. I followed some simple steps before and during my interview to ensure that I would give off the best impression to my possible future employers.

My preparations before the interview:

1.       It is better to be over-dressed that under-dressed, so I chose my most professional ensemble for this important day.

2.       Be prepared – Days before my interview I searched for and memorized every piece of information I could find on the internet or in articles concerning the company I was applying to. Employers always appreciate it when they feel that you are familiar with the background or success of the company and it also increases your chances of being employed.

3.       Follow the news – Showing your future employers that you keep in touch with the daily national and international news is vital as in the field of Public Relations a lot of media monitoring skills are required.

4.       Practice some French – pains me to say this but in Mauritius if you want to work in the PR field writing in French is an essential skill as most of the press here is in French. I was quite rusty in French after several years of only writing in English so some practice in grammar and vocabulary was badly needed. This really helped as I had to translate a full article from English to French for the interview.

On the day of the interview:

1.       I was ten minutes early to my interview which is essential to make a first good impression as punctuality is an appreciated quality amongst employers.  

2.       I confidently introduced myself to the employers, sat up straight in my chair, took a deep breath and mentally settled down to answer the questions to come calmly and properly.

3.       I tried my best to remain calm during the whole interview to give off the best impression possible.

4.       I forced myself to speak in a fluent manner, that is articulating and talking at a regular pace as when I am stressed I tend to blurt out answers without articulating my words.

5.       Tell the interviewer frankly when I did not know the answer to their question is also essential. It is better to admit that you do not know the answer than to answer and be completely out of context.

6.       Finally, after the tedious task of being interviewed, I confidently shook the hand of the person who’d interviewed me, thanked her for her time and attention.

So I guess all of you are wondering how my interview went after following all these tips and I would say that it went really well for me. I even got a few smiles out of my interviewers with my confident and amicable attitude. I also got the unofficial answer that I was accepted for the internship on the same day of my interview and the official one a few days after by email. All I can say is that my success was sweet and well deserved!

Cheers,

Sophie.

The Royal Show

My day 15 was during The Royal Show week. I get the chance to be part of the WAEC team and help at a booth (stall) that the WAEC had organised. The booth was located at Silver Jubilee Pavilion, booth 324, where it was next to one of the exits.

The purpose of the stall was to get as many people to either enrol to vote or just check whether they are already enrolled and make sure their details are up to date. To check people's details, we had a laptop contained a snapshot of the roll and a 'simple to use' look up system.

The one shift at the Royal Show was to approach as many people as you can. We approached them when they were close to our stand or coming close. The most important thing of approaching people was 'DON'T BE SHY!'

At the beginning of the day, it was very quiet as there were not many people coming inside. We discussed that it might be because it was Tuesday and its after the public holiday and also the weather was not looking too good. But during the heavy rain, we managed to get more people and that actually was our highest peak for the morning shift. During the shift there were one or two people that came to us because they wanted some merchandise but we encouraged them to check their enrolment as well.

To try and get people interested, the WAEC had prizes. We gave out entry forms for a prize when they either confirmed their enrolment via the look up tool on our laptop or filled in an enrolment form. The prizes were a daily prize of a $50 IGA gift card and a grand prize of an iPad Air 2 32GB Wi-Fi.

Working at the Royal Show was a great experience because I got to see all different kinds of people. I was surprised that not everyone was interested to win prizes and they all thought that checking their enrolment was not important and assumed they had already voted, which meant they are enrolled to vote. Also some people didn't even know that there is a state election coming up in March 2017.

I enjoyed working with my intern colleague, Ed, and another WAEC staff, Katherine, who is the senior enrolment officer. I think we did a great job in approaching people.

Although, this kind of job doesn't really link too much with PR, it is still a very good experience in seeing all different kinds of people and using our own techniques to approach people.

I am glad that I found my internship at the WAEC, as it is fun working there and I can get a lot of experience in all different areas! 

Enrol Now!

The WAEC Booth

Merchandise

A Reflection on KiNDLiNG

It is true what they say, events can become ‘like’ your babies. Okay I am not sure if people say this but it is the only way I can describe the relationship between event manager and event. 

I am an aspiring events manager/coordinator/planner, any of those terms, this is the career path I would like to have. Well, the career path I have studied for. 

Interning at AIME has been a great experience in learning all things event planning and seeing an inaugural variety night come to life. I have become one with the stresses of an event, and understand that you cannot control everything. Although stressful, staging an event can be so fun and if it is successful then the rewards are plentiful. 

But let me explain this metaphor that events are like ‘children.’ 

For starters, you worry about the event day and night. You care about its legacy and want it to succeed. You put all your time and effort in giving it the best opportunity to make its mark. Secondly you cannot help but tell everyone about the event. It is a constant conversation starter.  You want everyone to know about it because you are proud of what it will become (and you need tickets to sell). And finally, once the event has been delivered or put to ‘bed’ you can finally relax.

See events are like children, well, sort of. 

 

  Taryn and myself had the responsibility of creating this colourful photo back drop. Pinterest was great inspiration. Our role during the night was to take photos and keep track of names, so that these photos can be used for social media purposes. 

AIME WA’s KiNDLiNG event was not shy of a couple of issues. Not even the most efficient planning can stop external factors impacting an event. A couple of weeks prior, we had several acts that could no longer perform at the event. This put strain on the Events Manager and myself to try find replacement acts within a very short time frame. In addition to this, our volunteer security member had a change of plans and the CEO decided not to fly over from Sydney to attend the event. 

However, none of these issues compared to the stress made from very low ticket sales. The week before the event, only 35 tickets had been sold. 35 Tickets! 35!! At the beginning of the planning process, 350 tickets were expected to sell. This was based on the reason that AIME WA has over 6000 mentors. 

This has been a very important learning curve for me. That a not-for-profit cannot solely rely on its volunteers and other stakeholders to fill seats at a fundraiser event. The promotions side of an event is so significant in attracting community support. The way you target your audiences through different platforms and the extent to which you push the event in media streams. As this was AIME WA’s first major event, and they did not have a headliner act or a major incentive to attract numbers, promotional efforts were so important. Posters and word of mouth would not be enough to carry this event. It needed radio ads, newspaper articles, social media, posters, personal emails, letters and direct communication with schools, mentors and universities to make the tickets sell. 

Thankfully, the week of the event saw a flood of online tickets sell. It is interesting to see how people tend to purchase tickets closer to the event date. We had 200 people walk through the doors. KiNDLiNG was a success and raised necessary funds for AIME’s mission in reaching 10,000 Indigenous students by the year 2018. It was a great night filled with amazing performances and great food.

It was a privilege to be a part of an event so rewarding. To close the gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous community, to inspire and bring unity. 

A photo from the night used for AIME WA's Instagram page. 

The Last Hurrah : Making Recommendations

The Last Hurrah : Making Recommendations

The last day of my internship is long gone and my report well underway, so I figure now is a good time to stop and take a look back at my notes and musing of what I think should be different about PR at Netball WA.

In writing the organisation overview, thoroughly reading the marketing and communications plan and other official documents like the corporate sponsor introduction booklet ('Becoming a Partner Booklet') and the five year strategic plan (2013-2018), some major things stuck out that needed to be addressed to maximise the good that PR could do for Netball WA.

For starters, there were soooo many channels; right from the normal stuff like a range of social media accounts and websites, through to a whole range of regularly sent electronic direct mail. On top of this, across four sectors of the workplace, almost every employee had regular contact with a range of external key publics – from parent of developing players to corporate sponsors. These communications take place without monitoring or significant training from the communications team, meaning that communications coming out of other departments is varied and the communications experience at each interaction differs.

Another strange aspect of the organisation’s operations was the four key pillars of objectives and the four functional sectors of the workforce do not link well, it seemed very odd to have such a serve an imbalance of resources for each of the organisations key objective areas.

Another aspect was the residual impacts of the ‘go with the gut’ communications strategy that was in place at Netball WA until recently. While the team have developed a five-year communications strategy that is currently implemented and seems to suffice, there is very little reference to any research or environmental scans, meaning that decisions to implement or alter strategies are often made with little background knowledge about organisations implementing similar tactics.

As well as a revamp of internal communications to achieve streamlining of work efforts and follow on communications coming out of the organisation, the communications strategy objectives are not SMART (which isn’t surprising due to the insufficient research done prior to their creation).

It was definitely a learning process from day one where operations seemed to be effective and smooth, to the final day when I had notice a number of potential changes. It takes a critical eye to see through seemingly effective operations and onto the areas in which it could be improved.