Yusra’s Internship Wisdom

I have finally come to the end of my internship. As much as I’m looking forward to writing my final report, I’m sad to be leaving such an amazing group of professionals who have welcomed me into their offices and showered me with valuable advise and inspiration.

For this last blog I have decided to share my newfound wisdom as an intern, for those who are yet to complete their internship unit or have only just begun the journey. So here are just a few tips and pieces of advice.

   1. Outlook is your new best friend … and don’t forget the subject heading

Email becomes a major way of communication, from being booked into meetings, reminders, delegating tasks, sending off finished works and in some instances liaising with the media. Receiving so many emails daily fills up your inbox really easily. Remember you’re an intern, imagine how many emails your colleagues are getting, working on numerous projects and having numerous contacts.  Remember to be considerate and always include a subject heading when sending off work to a supervisor, client or even just getting a quote, as your work may get lost in their endless pile of emails.

   2. If it’s your first time working in an office, you’re in for a surprise

If you’ve only ever worked in retail, like myself, then working in an office environment will feel quite unusual. The consultancy I worked for had one guideline for me when it came to ‘office life’; you’re free to do as you please as long as the work gets done. This meant there was freedom to have lunch whenever and wherever, freedom to leave the office as pleased and even take work home if one felt they’d rather do the work from home. 

Being accustomed to a strict routine at my retail job, this newfound flexibility was initially quite hard for me to comprehend and I found I preferred to work a 9-5 day with an hour lunch break.  

  3. PR can be extremely time consuming

There will be times when you will be asked to complete work that is extremely time consuming and tedious such as database work, certain writing tasks, and even some event work. Remember that this is all part of public relations work, you’re not always going to be doing the best jobs, but if you do the small ones well you have a better chance of having a go at the bigger jobs. It’s all about attitude and perspective. Stay positive.

  4. Stakeholders, and other theories are real

Talking about stakeholders and stakeholder theory in countless PR classes can sometimes leave you thinking ‘in the actual business world will professionals use these terms constantly?’ the answer is yes, they will. In fact many of the terms and theories that we learn at Curtin will come up at some point in your internship. So in short yes, those long three-hour seminars pay off at the end.

   5. Always do your research

I’m sure this is a given, but it’s important to always do research before beginning any work. The last this you want to do is miss out vital information or make something look like half a job, solely because you hadn’t done some research into the industry, service or product. As an intern you’ll have to do a lot more research then the rest of colleagues, as you begin to learn more about your industry background and clients.

    6. Account for your time

No matter how foreign it feels to be noting down what you’re working on each minute of the day and for how long, it’s really important. This was the main method used for billing clients and keeping track of what was done. By the end of your internship it will begin to feel like second nature. Plus, as a bonus, I found doing this made me feel more productive, as at the end of the day as I could reflect on all the hard work I’d done.

I hope these little tips and shared experiences can come in handy as you start you internship. Remember to make the most if it, as it will go quicker then you can imagine.

For the last time,

Yusra

Oops…Did I do that? …HELP!

It’s vitally important to double-check and ensure your work is perfect before publishing and sending it out. It sounds like common sense right? Well sometimes we all make mistakes especially in todays busy and stressful world.  However, small mistakes can lead to much bigger problems. I know for sure a client I worked alongside would agree. 

After working with a long term client they decided to host an event for an up-coming development project that would consist of an industry meet and greet, along with speeches from some rather well known mining industry leaders. As we continued to work on some bigger projects for them they decided to plan the event themselves. After carefully crafting the invitations and sending it out to over 500 potential guests, did they only weeks later realised, they had forgotten to attach an ‘accept’ and ‘decline’ button to the email. Naturally, a week before the event they had 0 idea as to who was attending!

In their moment of panic they rushed to call us for some much needed help to sort out the issue and save the event. As it was too late to recreate the invitations it meant that each person on the invitation list had to be personally called (by myself and two other colleagues) and ticked off if they were attending or not. It was an extremely long and tedious job that could easily have been avoided, saving us time and the client money. Luckily for us, we were well prepared with an up-to-date  healthy database of all their clients so we could start making calls straight away, without wasting time looking for contact details.

The event went ahead and was a success, thankfully. So all ended well, although I believe a lesson should be taken from this.  It’s really easy to forget minor details, especially when you have a million other things to do. Preparation is key. Know what you have to do and make sure you've done it all and done it right. Writing a checklist is an easy way to make sure that you’ve haven't missed anything and always make sure you double check that your work it perfect before sending it out no matter how pressed for time you are, or it can leader to a bigger problem. It’s always better to safe then sorry.

Uni Life Meets Real Life

I’ve officially made it past the half waypoint of my internship, and have come to notice a very important activity in public relations that I hadn’t realised before. Over the duration of the past two weeks I’ve found myself helping to create, update and validate databases for not only the PR consultancy I’m working at, but also for major clients.

Some are the databases are internal, consisting of media contacts, that become extremely helpful when creating lists of people or companies to contact when sending out press releases. Other databases I’ve contributed to, are maintained by us for particular clients that allow them to easily organise and access their clients at a click of a button, putting in place a tool for the effective communication distribution internally and externally. 

Having databases makes everyday PR life so much easier, however a great deal of work gets put into them, not to mention just how time consuming and sometimes monotonous they can be. Today I stared the process of creating a database from scratch for the Managing Director to have his entire list of stakeholders right at the tip of his finger.

The first step is to put all the contacts into Excel, including their name, position, company of employment, phone numbers, email addresses, mailing address and any direct meetings, notes and interactions he’s had with the particular contact. Oh and I should mention there are over 400 stakeholders in letter A alone! (Yes there are 23 more letters to go and no, I’m not doing it alone, thankfully)

What’s most interesting is that the finished database will have a section where

stakeholders are classified by Mitchell et al’s stakeholder salience theory with the well-known attributes, power, urgency, and legitimacy.  This helps to define their role to the organisation and categorise their position among others, helping our consultancy make better informed decisions when dealing with specific stakeholders. I believe every third year Curtin University students should be quite familiar with this theory at this point in time, I guess all those long Corporate PR seminars have finally paid off for me.

I've definitely come to experience first hand that stakeholders are the key to good public relations and emphasis should be put on the way they are categorized and managed in organisations, as this will directly alter relationships. No matter how small a stakeholder is they there are still valuable to the organisation, so its important to not overlook them.  

Only now that I’m actually using the stakeholder salience theory and witnessing how it contributes first hand to PR, can I understand how theory’s learnt in University contribute to the real world. Many times as students we learn theories and think we'll never have to use them once we graduate, but this is clearly not the case, it seems many organisations are following the very things we're learning every week in class. 

Sorry ...You're Studying What ?

I’m sure majority of students doing PR Internship have at some point been asked “So what sort of internship are you doing?” followed by a blank stare when you mention public relations (PR). Truth be told, most people don’t know what PR is or what PR practitioners do. In fact I, myself, didn’t quite understand the entire function of PR until completing my first year of PR units.

So with the ‘what’s PR?’ question floating around my life more than usual, and with my new found practical experiences, I’ve spent the last week attempting to create a simple, yet accurate, definition of PR that attempts to incorporate all the different areas within it. So go ahead, ask me what PR is.

“PR is everything”.

I’m sure everyone else doing PR will agree. It feels like…well everything from planning events, to lobbying, to writing, to making sure your clients organisations are running smoothly. However, this definition is still too complicated so I have simplified it further and come up with this definition :

“The internal and external communications that helps organisations to not just function smoothly, but to create a favourable reputation and image.” I like to think of PR as the egg in a cake that binds it all together and gives it that golden glow when you take out from the oven.

At the PR consultancy I’m doing my internship at, the office has been broken up into four different section (corporate affairs, government relations, investor relations and digital and media) to account for all the different areas of PR, even through majority of the time they overlap. This is just one example of how vast PR is. 

Sadly, many still see it as merely just a form of “spin”, whilst others have decided that PR is solely for making unethical practises seem ethical in the light of stakeholder’s eyes. Of cause this is just so far from its actual function. PR is not about glitz and glamour, it’s not about looking attractive (that’s just a bonus), it’s not ALL about publicity, and most importantly it’s not about lying or being deceptive. 

PR is about helping business to effectively communicate within their own organisation and to its publics. With PR advocating for new concepts like stakeholder theory, CSR and sustainability, it’s doing more good than anything else. In fact, take a look at any majorly successful company, you’re sure to find a PR person somewhere, whether there role is named communications officer, events planner or media coordinator. 

Despite PR working to manage perceptions for clients, its seems to be ironic that PR itself has a perception issue. Surely it's time society learnt more about PR and its real role in society.