That first week!!

Hello there!

I'm Kimberley, from the Charles Telfair Institute, Mauritius.
I am actually writing from the office, I've got some time after a hard day's work. Overall I feel like working in the PR field looks a lot like what we have seen during our studies, while having some differences, of course!

I've been doing a lot of media monitoring so far, which enabled me to better familiarize with the firm's clients and to understand how demanding and time consuming it all is. I've been so scared at first to miss important articles in the newspapers concerning the clients that I ended up reading every article instead of just passing through, loosing a lot of time of course!

In those few days I've also learnt a new thing; press digests.. Never heard of them before! It actually is a list of all the times the client or its competitors have been mentioned in the media in a given month. I thought it was kind of boring to do, but in the end, it is very useful to the client, in order to know what is being said about them, or their competitors, or if they should in the future generate more coverage to compete more on the media sphere.
And today I was asked to draft my first media releases.. STRESS! I was wondering what I would be writing, if I would have enough information to have a decent media release.. In the end, turns out it was not so bad. My supervisor told me it was good and only needed a few corrections.. I was quite proud of myself..
To sum up, that first experience in the PR field, so far, is not as bad as I thought.. I am learning new things, confirming what I already knew, and improving my self-confidence concerning my skills..

See you later people!

Kimberley Cunden
CTI MRU

Building up a Professional Network

Hello readers,

I'm back to keep on talking about my internship and my life in the shoes of a public relations "professional".

During my internship I had a great networking occasion which was presented to me. I was given the opportunity to go the InfoTech at the Swami Vivekananda International Centre, the SVICC.

This fair was organised by the National Computer board and was used to give the chance to companies and universities to showcase emerging technologies and also to prospect future and potential employees and students.

Apave IO was not amongst the showcasing companies but we were able to effectively enhance our corporate contact list by meeting potentials clients directly during the fair.

This gave me the opportunity to also start and build up my own professional network. Meeting with potential clients helped me in creating relationships.

I even got the chance to be taken into photo by one of the major stall of the fair that is Nokia, for their promotional event.

(Me at the Right side)

For a public relations student, having the opportunity to be present at those kinds of professional fairs really helps in the “first impression” process. I really understood the importance given to how you may or may not well represent the company and even yourself as a professional. First impressions are essential and this fair really helped me understand how as a public relation professional first impression is just vital.