The end of an internship....The begining of a season

 Hey all

I officially finished my internship requirements with the Perth Heat Baseball club last week. This has been a great experience for me, allowing me to do something I love in an industry that I am passionate about. Whilst I have completed my 20 days, I have decided that I will still assist the Perth Heat when I can during the season. I enjoyed my time in the office, and am committed towards ensuring that the communication plan that I drafted in place see's its way through a full implementation. It has been nice already seeing some of my suggestions included into regular operations.

It was also useful to work with other interns at the Perth Heat. We were all new to the organisation so we fed off each others confidence to create work that was of a high standard.


Here are some of the key things that I took out of my internship experience

1. Not all organisations are the same - I was lucky that I found myself in a very relaxed environment. On my first day I showed up in dress pants and a business shirt, only to find that everyone at the organisation dressed casually in shorts and t-shirts. I also found on my first day that there were no direct working hours. I would get there at approximately 10am (as that is when most staff seemed to arrive) and was encouraged to finish when I felt as though I had completed enough work for the day. A lot of the time this meant submitting work to my supervisor at 3-4pm and then going home. Eventually I adjusted to the nature of the office, and enjoyed the relaxed environment.

2. Communications is really a jack of all trades - I found that throughout my time at the Perth Heat I was completing work for a variety of departments, not just marketing and communications. Often I would do work relating to membership, sponsorship and even IT. I believe that the strong communication skills enabled me to complete these tasks head on and not be afraid about heading into unknown territory.

3. Sporting organisations are often hectic and detail focused - I know this may seem like a bit of a contradiction with my first point, but despite the relaxed nature of the office it was still a busy place, especially in the last few weeks leading up to the season. At times the office was more of a revolving door for meetings and briefings with clients. There were a number of occasions where I was the only one in the office, and had to handle phone calls and deliveries, and this was simply another new experience that I enjoyed. There is also a high attention to detail in the communication that is put out by sporting organisations.


(There was meant to be a photo here of me with the team, but there was an issue with the camera. I will still endeavour to get this photo for my own sake.)


So now that my internship is over with, and my final semester almost over too, I feel as though I am ready for the workplace. Sure I will miss the relative ease of university life, but am very excited about the challenges ahead and the opportunities that will present themselves.

For the last time
Simon

It is definitely not a final goodbye...

Hi all,

I feel very nostalgic writing this blog right now and believe me folks, it is not the same feeling as I wrote my first blog a month back when I had just started my internship. I have completed 30 days of my internship on a part-time basis at Marcom, an In-house Communication agency for the British American Investment.

There are a lot of things I have learnt and faced different challenges. During my last week at Marcom, I was asked to conduct research about our conglomerates and give some recommendations on how they could improve. It was really a tough job since I had to scrutinize their Facebook page, websites, blogs and anything else that talked about them and record it. I was even asked to provide links of blogs who talked about our conglomerates ( both negative and positive). I thought it was the same as the social media power-point presentation I had done previously but it was not the same.

This time things were different. I had to monitor almost everything that was being said on the clients and record it. It was a mini business report. The aim behind it was to scrutinize what they public thinks of our conglomerates and why is it so. This was done so as we could evaluate the effectiveness of our strategies used. This would not only tell us how effective the strategies were but also tell us what people are expecting and what should out next step be. It also helps the organisation to identify new market opportunities.

It was indeed to easy job as I had to go through a lot of things; A LOT and I had to read every single thing being said about our conglomerates. Yes it is time consuming and needs a lot of patience and attention but like I have said in one of my previous posts, WHEN YOU ARE IN THE COMMUNICATION FIELD, YOU DO ALMOST EVERYTHING!

So this is it people! I have loved sharing every moment of my internship be it the good or challenging parts and I have also appreciated that some took the time to respond to my blog.
And as the title says it all, this is not a goodbye but just a disguised hello from the future endeavors.

I wish everyone good-luck with their internships and report.
Keep us updated with your internship journey.

Karishma Rughoonundun
15636461
CTI Mauritius

All the good times must come to an end.

 

These seven weeks has really flown by! Being here at TAC for three days per week has really been valuable and a good learning curve for me. This internship especially gave me an insight into how it works in the public sector. Something that I quickly realised when working in the government is that everything takes a longer time when it comes to proposals and how rapidly those to changes can be implemented. Although I have been making suggestions to the outlook of the website, drafting up a website business plan, organised surveys, drafting speeches for a social media presentation and so forth, these methods cannot just start to get used. These suggestions have to go through a whole process of levels before the decision is made and they decide if it is important to the organisation or not. Sometimes, this might even take between 3-6 months, and if it is approved, it might not even be relevant anymore. I am not sure if I like that when discussing the public sector, I do not know if it is the right position for me to begin my career because it might just be to slow paced to what I am used to. But I suppose, if a position occurs that may suit your qualifications, you also need to start somewhere when you are a fresh graduate from university to gain knowledge in the PR industry, you cannot expect to score the top job in your first employment. In essence, my time at TAC has been a good experience and has left me with serious thoughts about my future decisions.

I wish all my readers the best for the future and I hope you all achieve your future goals.