Keeping WA moving through communication!

Welcome to my blog. I am Caris Dinardo, and this is where I will be sharing my opinions and experiences as a Public Relations Intern at Main Roads.

When undertaking an internship you’re not quite sure what to expect. Whether you will be successful, whether you will learn from others or whether you will be misused as a coffee assistant.

Luckily for me my Public Relations internship at Main Roads Western Australia has allowed me to have a greater insight into the Public Relations world. My first day quickly made me realise that our tutors weren’t lying, communication really is everything.

When going for this Internship I was asked by my supervisor which areas I was interested in working in. Coming to the end of my degree, I’m still unfortunately not aware of what areas in PR I feel most passionate about, but I am a firm believer in the importance of experience and asked to be put in any area that would have me.

So for my first day I was put in the Customer Information Centre. My day started off normally, meeting all the employees, being welcomed to the team and going out for coffee. Automatically I knew I would fit in well because of the amazing work culture Main Roads have created.

I was given the chance to work alongside the manager to see what her daily tasks involved. Checking emails every 5 minutes, dealing with complaints about road closures, traffic complaints, fault reports and the list went on… The phone was constantly ringing and not one call went through to voicemail. The Customer Information Centre team plays an important role in communication with stakeholders, as they are the first on duty to contact for any emergencies or general queries.

Now for the interesting stuff:

As a team, they are hugely important in crisis management. Without their input or communication, stakeholders would struggle to find out important information as they are constantly being communicated through website updates and social media updates.

Unfortunately, on my first day there was a crash  that had 3 fatalities in Geraldton. I witnessed first hand the importance communication plays in crisis management, as the team were constantly ringing the media, the Main Roads team and sharing posts to make sure the effected publics were aware of any delays and the full story of what exactly had happened.

By the afternoon, the team had also had to deal with a possible fire outbreak in the Southern suburbs. Through constant updates on their Twitter sites (which has over 400,000 followers) and phoning media outlets the Main Roads Call Information Centre team were able to alert the community of the possible fire outbreak. Fortunately, I was able to contribute to several Twitter posts which made the public aware of nearby crashes. This was great to finally see how important the role of social media plays when organisations regularly communicate to stakeholders.

Main Roads have recently changed their corporate brand and logo to the focus of ‘Keep WA Moving.’ My experience within the first day made me realise that communication plays a huge role of ‘Keeping WA Moving’ as they are constantly communicating to stakeholders to make them aware of what is happening on Western Australia’s roads.

It was only my first day and it was an eye opening experience. Throughout University I have studied different Public Relations theories. But seeing those theories in the real world made me realise how important communication is to successfully develop strong relationships with stakeholders. Another outtake would be the importance of having a team that is aware of what to do in crises, as the steps you take in those situations are extremely important.

I am thankful to have this opportunity and to be undertaking this Internship at Main Roads. This is only day one and I can’t wait to gain more insight into what they do.

How were all my fellow interns first days?

Until next time,

Caris Dinardo.

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your (working) life

Day one. Let me set the scene for you. It’s 8.40am. I’m sat in the communications office room at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. My boss walks into the office with the greeting of “Good morning Kids!” to my second supervising boss and myself. This is the beginning of what I feel like will turn into a nostalgic tradition. I was not wrong.

He sits down at his desk, turns on the desktop computer, swivels his chair around to face me, and asks the second most profound question of the day “So, why are you here?” My reply consisted of something along the lines of  “To watch, to listen, to learn. I know I can write well, but I know nothing about science and supercomputing. This placement will teach me how to write about topics I previously knew nothing about. It will push my boundaries from the word go.”

Now, I’m not going to lie to you, I was rather impressed at my spontaneous response, which was the truth, but not something I had actively considered, no doubt because it scares me half to death. But then again, nothing worth doing is ever going to be easy.

My task for day one consisted of researching and writing an article for Science Network WA entitled “What is big data?” I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the concept of big data, but I challenge you to do your research and compose a succinct definition that is both understandable for the less scientifically literate reader, yet comprehensive enough to satisfy specialising scientists and journalists.

The only comparative analogy I can give you to demonstrate the difficulty of this task, especially since I haven’t practised journalism since the first year of my degree, is the act of attempting to describe what an orange looks like to someone that has never seen one before. Here you can see the point at which I realise that I am barely doggy paddling through the deep end that I previously referred to as “pushing my boundaries”.

After expressing my struggle to my boss, he explained that you have two choices. He said you can either choose write a piece that dances over the topic and ticks the boxes, or you can get down to the in-depth explanation into what makes big data big. And with the help of some hand-drawn umbrella diagrams, he asked me “which approach do you want to take?” That was the most profound question of the day, because right there and then it made me question what kind of writer, and by extension public communicator, do I want to be? Well, I think I’ll have to get back to you with an answer at then end of day 20.

Both my bosses appear to be hilarious, welcoming, abrupt, kind, real, open, honest and intelligent. They hold the level of intellect towards communications that I dream of possessing. I know that I will learn more from them over the next 19 days than any unit could teach, and despite the doggy paddling, I also know that I will enjoy the next few months more than I could have thought possible.

PR my world- Who said it was easy to find an internship!

Publico/creative

During my first year first semester, I was told that we will be having a PR internship module and my first reaction was Hell Yeah! Time passes and here we are, this is the last line. Searching for an internship was no easy task in fact. I am very glad that we were asked to have an internship as it helped us to enter the real world and to understand how things really are as well as how the procedures are. I did not realise that this could be so difficult. And then I realised what the issue was. In Mauritius many companies either do not know what the PR field consists of or they simply merge PR and HR which I think are undoubtedly two completely different worlds. This is crazy. A human resource manager can do Public Relations tasks but this does not work in the other way. Luckily, the orientation slides really helped me and when sending my curriculum Vitae and my application letter I simply attached the PR tasks which we have seen during the orientation session. The respond from some of the companies where I sent my application was quite quick. I did have some positive responds where I was asked to work in the CSR department of a famous company in Mauritius but unfortunately there was not enough PR tasks to be done within the department. Time passed, it was already the first day of university and again like every assignment or presentation period, I started to stress. And then the miracle came: a call from Publico/Creative. My first day was exceptional. I visited the place and learnt a lot about how the company works which is very essential before starting to work there. My colleagues are wonderful, the atmosphere and the way they work are really amazing. My supervisor explained what will be expected from us (and yes, I am working with a friend from CTI also). My first impression was: the place is wonderful even if it is found in Port Louis, my colleagues and my supervisor are wonderful; yes this will be an amazing experience for me.

See you in the next post,

Graziella HIPPOLYTE

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Charles Telfair Institute

First Day of my new journey...

Hi all,

Hope you all are having fun at their respective work place. Well first of all let me introduce myself. I am Karishma Rughoonundun, a full-time student at the Charles Telfair Institute (Mauritius). I am doing my internship on a part-time basis at the British American Investment (BAI).

So first of all, let me tell you how i secured my placement. You people need to know it and I hope no one ever repeat the mistakes I did. So I was waiting until I get my PR results because i was not sure if I had made it. This was mistake number 1! Because by the time I waited for my results, my classmates had already secured their internship.So I started to hunt after I got my results which turned out to be pretty good actually. Second mistakes was to send my application letter and CV only to Communication and PR agencies because I blindly thought that it  would be the best place for me since it was already within the PR  capacity and thus for me it would have been the best place. NEVER DO THAT! I have learnt to never limit yourself because as you, there are several people seeking for the internship that also from different universities. So following that I applied almost everywhere I could and I started getting positive responses from a few. The first company to have contacted me for the interview was BAI and just after the interview my boss told me I can come as from next week. Following my interview with BAI, several other companies contacted me but I had to declined the internship because there was something at BAI that really left me mesmerized and I knew for sure this is where i belonged. So from there started my new journey...

My first day went pretty much okay. I was bit stress because I had never worked for a big company like that before. But hours were enough to get me back to the track. The very first job I had to do was media monitoring. I was told every morning we need to read and monitor the news to know if there are articles about our clients and stuffs. We needed to read like around 7 newspapers or so. I felt bit nostalgic because it had been long since I last read newspapers like that. The only times i used to read almost all the newspapers were for the Current Affairs quiz tests for Journalism; so it brought back the memories of those time. Luckily for me, it happened to have 2 articles on one of our clients and I was showed how to proceed with the media clipping.

The second half of my day went into doing a media release. On my very first day, I saw how its all different from the things we do at university. The media release template and everything else is so different. To be honest, I had some trouble with that media release and I had to actually do that trice. I was really stressed out because I thought I was on the right track until I was told I was not. Following that, my supervisor carefully explained to me where I went wrong and gave me another media release to work on which happened to be slightly better than the first which I will talk about later on.

Well that`s all about my first day. I am eager to hear about your first day guys.
Let`s take it as a challenge and make it  a wonderful journey :)

Thank you and see you soon


karishma Rughoonundun
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Struggling between work and studies.

Greeting!!

Hello everyone, my name is Joanne Ting. This is my 8th semester in Curtin University Sarawak Campus. 

I am taking Bachelor in Mass Communication, major in Film and Television and Public Relations.

Because of I am planning to extend a semester in Perth so I decided to take three units only in this semester, including PR 393, so that I can work and studies at the same time during this semester.

Im a 22 year old from Bintulu, Sarawak (about 2 and half hours drive from Miri), and yes Im not far from my home town, so I can always drive home anytime.

I completed my internship at Corporate Communications Department in Curtin Sarawak. 

I remembered the first day, I was super excited and panic. Exciting because this is my first time working while, panic about the strange environment and people that I am going to meet.

But everything turned up nice as my colleagues are so kind and friendly.

In this 20 days of internship, I've learned a lot from my supervisor, Ms. Marcella and all my colleagues in the office. I feel thankful to my manager, Nicholas Leong, who willing to take me as his intern.

As it was the beginning of the semester, there was not much events going on. 

The first few days, I was sitting in the office doing media monitoring and press clippings. Through the process, I've learnt about how to calculate the value of a piece of news (sizes and prices from each media outlets). 

After I have done all the media clippings, my colleagues would assign me some works like writing tender and key-in academic staffs' information as record. 

I was so worried because I have not really done anything related to Public Relations. But, luckily, there were some events coming up which I can involve and learn. Wish to know? Stay tune to my next entry.

Take Care.

Kind Regards,

Joanne Ting

15109536

First Day of my PR Placement

Hey guys,

Unfortunately my invite would not work till the weekend however i will detail in 3 posts the amazing journey i went through this semester.

I am Jun and i started my placement at Colosoul Group Inc. which is a multi-media marketing agency in Subiaco. My first day at the job was intense because of the change in a direction of the company and the shift of roles between supervisors. I was handed this job by the previous person who also did his placement through curtin.

I was so nervous going into this job because it seemed that my role in the company would be significant, as my boss immediately took me out to take notes during a client meeting. Thinking that all i had to do was update all the social media for the company, i was asked to write a client agreement form and start a Public image re-branding plan straight away.

This takes me back to all of my public relations classes, especially 201 and 220 where we had to write plans for not for profits and also media releases and professional writing. It definitely came in hand when i had to write up the agreements and contracts because i realized that i am the face of this company and i had to have good english to be able to oversee that my boss is getting what she wants and is looked at in good light.

Thats all for now,

Jun

Me and Fortune PR

Hello Everyone, 

The Public Relations 393 (Professional Practice) module required me to carry out a 2 months term internship in a company that I’ve chosen. I had the opportunity of being placed in one of the best Public Relations consultant in Indonesia, Fortune PR. I was placed in the division of NBD (New Business Development).

Fortune PR is a full-service public relations consultancy based in Jakarta, Indonesia. It is a subsidiary of PT Fortune Indonesia Tbk and a partner in Worldcom Public Relations Group. It was started in 1984 by Miranty Abidin (President Director) and has partnered many  private companies, government and non-governmental institutions in building reputation, public trust, as well as brand recognition.

During my first week, all of my colleagues were really helpful. They taught me how to handle the project and built a proposal. They also asked me to help them giving some ideas for an event. In Fortune PR, they treat an intern as their team which means that an intern also their part of family. Therefore, they will give the intern opportunity to make a proposal project for their clients.

Although i just realized that the real PR world is like a jet coaster, everything is going to fast, more clients and more proposal. For example, in one day, we can have 4 – 5 clients and the deadline for the proposal is around 1 week. But for me, Doing my Internship in Fortune PR was one of the best experience I’ve ever had. From Interview via Skype, brain storming for proposals, built a proposal and share our room with Board of Directors. I also gain my knowledge about PR industry and improved my language skills, increase my networks, and more sensitive to analyze something that could become a problem. This experiences will help me to prepare my self to face the real industry of PR.

Thank you for reading, until my next post. 

Cheers,

Della Patricia Mandiro

LUCT

So awkward...

Hey P.R. Bloggers,

After being at my placement for over three weeks, it’s officially time to stop procrastinating and actually post something up on this blog; in saying that, I swear this is most likely THE last introductory post to be up for the semester.

In this short period of time, the number of awkward moments I’ve had would most likely equal to the amount of times the world has seen Britney Spears’s happy bits. Most of us would have had that horrid experience of meeting a teacher we once had outside the classroom and we ALL know how awkward that can be. Well try being surrounded by all of them every single day.

Yes, I am currently completing the PR393 placement at an institute filled with all sorts of traumatic moments which I spent 5 years trying to get out of. Rossmoyne Senior High School is located just ten minutes south of the Perth’s CBD. Founded in 1968, this independent public school is now one of Western Australia’s leading school in academics, music and volleyball.

Rossmoyne Senior High School

Only graduating three years ago, my oversized forehead is still somewhat fresh in the memory of those teachers I’ve had. So as you can imagine, it was somewhat ‘interesting’ to constantly receive that same ‘oh my god, unless you failed your TEE, what are you doing here’ expression from them.

However, to be honest this experience hasn’t been all bad. Being in a familiar surrounding, has, I believe enhanced my experience as an intern. I discovered that if you deliver a good job to any work assigned, word does get around to teachers who once ‘hated’ you, and you’ll eventually be sipping on the same diluted coffee with them during morning tea.

The past few weeks have been somewhat of a whirlwind experience for me. I started this placement not knowing what to expect; what the public relations sector at an educational institute is like; and if there is even anything relevant for me to do that relates to this unit. However in a short period of time, I had liaised with several journalists including Anne Gartner from the Canning Times, Maria D’Agostino from School Matters and Amber Gorrie who is the Media and Communications Officer of the Department of Education. In that time, I have been fortunate enough to have three stories printed by the Canning Times and made a (I like to believe) positive impression on Maria and Amber. To me, this was absolutely surreal as it’s amazing to actually apply the concepts and techniques we spent the last few years learning into a real life situation.

In addition to those little heart-skipping moments, the some other projects I worked on include writing articles for the school’s monthly newsletter (which was printed for the 1600 students at the school); organizing the seating chart for the Year 12 Valedictory at Curtin Stadium in October; updating any ‘Latest News’ on the school’s website www.rossmoyne.wa.edu.au ; along with a few side projects including assisting Year 8 students with their assignments on the promotion of their ‘product launches’.

With only a few days left and an untouched 5000 word report, I hope everyone is a tad more organized than I am and have enjoyed their time at their respective placements. I look forward to updating you with more awkward moments and trivial achievements the next few days.

-Bryan

An amazing start to the week

I am probably one of the last to begin their internship this late in the year for Professional Practice. However, despite the nervous rush to getting at least 20 working days under my belt, I am so very excited.

Today was my first official day working at my placement with the PR and Marketing Department at Hollywood Private Hospital. I am very lucky to also have a previous insight into the way the hospital works as I have been employed as a receptionist for close to four years now at Hollywood.

However, I loved the sneak peak into the wonderful department of PR which is miles apart from what we are used to at the front desk.

The team consists of the head of marketing, an event and sponsorship coordinator, an art director, a researcher and of course the public relations liaison who I am mostly working with. They are a lovely group to work with and all have a great attitude towards team work which I know will make it a brilliant place to learn from.

My day began with a friendly hello to everyone and a de-briefing from Clare (PR liaison) about what was needed to be done over my placement. Already excited about the fact I got to come along to help her with a short photo shoot for the Hollywood STAR, which is a quarterly magazine distributed within the hospital, I spent the morning proofreading some of the articles for the magazine. It was a really interesting and surprisingly fun process as it tested me on how well I could actually perform the task. I felt it quite a big responsibility on my first day but one I was more than pleased to do.

For the rest of the day, I organised stories with short paragraphs detailing information about events and anything newsworthy for the hospitals fortnightly web newsletter named ZING (taken from the last part of Amazing, the hospitals brand). It is a new email based newsletter of Hollywood Highlights which keeps the hospital staff informed on the latest news and events. For example, the latest ZING will include a snippet on R U OK? day which raises awareness for the prevention of depression and suicide and is coming up on the 15th September. Hollywood is supplying a barbeque for gold coin donations to help fundraise for the cause. These little stories just make sure the staff now what is going on around the hospital. I find it very useful as a staff member myself.

There are also so many events coming up for Hollywood, Glengarry and Joondalup hospitals as the team at Hollywood represent all four Ramsay Health care campuses in WA. I will probably help out on a few of these events, such as Doctors parties, staff events and award ceremonies.

Overall, today was very insightful and more importantly exciting as I look forward to the other few weeks ahead. It has definitely reinforced that this profession is one that I would really enjoy working in as it brings a sense of excitement and accomplishment into an everyday working environment.

Hope you are all enjoying your placement too. Let me know what your favourite part about it was.

Kate Millar

13643087

First Post - Gabrielle, Curtin Bentley, 1 Aug 2011

Hi everyone,

My name is Gabrielle Martelli and I am from Curtin Bentley (WA, Australia). Although I have completed 11 days work experience so far, I have just been given access to the blog so this is my first post! I am doing my internship at Presbyterian Ladies' College. PLC has a very large community relations (PR) department and I jumped at the chance to gain work experience here.

About Presbyterian Ladies' College:

Learning about PLC and the history of the college has been an integral part of my internship. As with any PR job, you must have a general knowledge of the history of the corporation you are working with in order to carry out your duties effectively.

PLC was founded in 1915 and today is a Pre-Kindergarten to Year 12 day and boarding school. PLC has a wide mix of cultural backgrounds with many indigenous and overseas students. The majority of PLC's students are tertiary bound and PLC is one if the few schools in WA offering the International Baccalaureate.

My first day:

On my first day I met Chavaune Francis, the Director of Community Relations and Colette James, her colleague and my supervisor. Colette introduced me to the community relations office and then gave me a tour of the school and introduced me to most other staff members that I would be liaising with on a regular basis. The office is an open plan design, it is very modern and spacious and is brand new. Unlike the rest of the school that is filled with the school's tartan check pattern and school crests and photos, the community relations office is very plain and stark. Colette informed me of the very strict rules in the office. These include: no eating in the office, you must answer other colleagues phone calls if they are out of the office and there must be two or more people left in the office at all times.

My duties:

Colette, my supervisor works at PLC as the alumni co-ordinator. Colette is in charge of all major school events and reunions. As the school had just finished sending off their quarterly newsletter titled Blackwatch, most of my duties for the remainder of the internship were to be event planning and co-ordination. I was given an event to look after from start to finish - Founder's day. So far, I have really enjoyed the event planning part of my internship and I have used many PR skills gained at Curtin to assist me in this. Some of my event planning duties included: making a detailed event plan, forming checklists, delegating tasks, creating invitations, organising flowers/centrepieces, creating a menu and making service order booklets. Along with the interesting parts of event planning in my internship I have also completed a few boring secretarial tasks such as sorting through mail, sealing envelopes and data entry.

My next post...

In my next post, look out for a hilarious meeting I had with old PLC collegians, a piece published in the local newspaper and some media monitoring (where I came across some not-so-great reports of PLC!).

Thanks for reading!

Gabby Martelli