Consultancy>In-House

Nearing the end of my degree, I've noticed the talk during class changing.  Sure, there's still the usual 'Oh God, I forgot to do the readings! Did you do them?!' or 'Do you think the tutor will let us have a break so we can go get coffee while sneakily staring at the good looking barista?" But, like I said, things are changing.  Now, you hear everyone discussing where they'd like to eventually work.  Consultancy, In-house, not-for-profit- there's plenty to choose from, but which is right for YOU.

Even in my group of friends in class, there's still varying answers even though we all seem to have the same interests outside of university and work.

For me, it has always been consultancy.

I began my university journey studying nursing straight out of high school.  A big change to what I thought I wanted to do with my life. True to my initial instincts,  I decided it wasn't for me, so deferred and entered the workforce.  It was then that I landed my first administration role.  It was at Devahasdin Public Relations and where my love for PR began.

Devahasdin Public Relations is a boutique consultancy operating in West Perth which focuses on five key services: publicity, marketing, events, promotions and writing.

The core team working in the office daily consists of Sandra Devahasdin herself, three other account managers, account support/administration and on my placement days, me :).

So yes, there I was at 19 in my first 'proper' job and being overwhelmed at the fast pace but incredibly exciting environment I had found myself in.

It was after working at Devahasdin for 6 months that I decided to get straight back into studying and applied at Curtin to study a Bachelor of Mass Communication, promising the team that I would be back once I was qualified.

And here I am, nearly completing the first half on my placement.

Being at Devahasdin has shown me how demanding the field of PR can be, but also how rewarding.  The team at Devahasdin have once again instilled in me that this is what I want to be doing, I feel like I'm in the right place.

What I love about working in a consultancy environment is that every staff member has the same attitude towards PR and believes it is important.  We've heard in class before how some in-house PR professionals struggle to convince a CEO that Public Relations is worth spending some of the budget for or that it is important enough at all.

Consultancy is all about PR and there is no struggle at work to convince your boss that the job you're doing is actually valuable.

In my first ten days at Devahasdin, not only have I gained a large amount of knowledge about the PR field, I have also learnt that working in a consultancy is exactly where I want to be.

Speak to you all again soon!

Claudia x

"It's not what you know, it's who you know" - True?

It has come to and end. This is my last blogpost about my time at NEUW Denim in Melbourne. To sum it up, it’s been a fantastic experience where I’ve been exposed to everything one can possibly imagine. I’ve learnt a lot about both myself and others in a working environment. The last week mainly consisted of preparations for their up-coming brand conference the following week, which I will be attending.

As I previously mentioned, I have gained plenty of knowledge within a range of different areas. I thought I should share three important lessons I have learnt:

• The actual importance of Return On Investment (ROI)My previous work experience has been from larger businesses and budgets, when ROI sometimes gets lost in the bigger picture. Of course, this is not very efficient. After spending four weeks with a small successful business, the return on investment question always pops up in my mind prior to making work-related decisions.
  
• “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know"
  This is true to a certain extent, or what do you think? Networking is a crucial part of public relations – across industries. At Curtin we are encouraged to attend events and get our name out there, which is something I very much would like to emphasise on. Sometimes you get given an opportunity or position because you know someone or because you have established a positive reputation. Many vacant positions these days never get advertised.
  
• It's all about telling a story 
  NEUW is built upon a great personal story. Throughout my three years at university, we have always been taught about the importance of storytelling when delivering a message. And in real life, this is exactly how it's done. It is all about building up a credible and long-lasting relationship with the public, so they themselves choose your product instead of a competitor's.

I hope you have been enjoying to read about my journey. For those of you who haven’t heard of NEUW make sure you look it up. If you have any questions to me in regards to my internship or anything else - please leave a comment below.

All the best with your placements!

Sara

In-house Video Interview

Hello everyone,

This is my third blog post and i will be sharing about the process of video interview done in-house.
The company I intern in provides in-house video interview as a value add service for our clients.

In the third week, i learnt the setup, layout and questionnaire for the filming to be smooth at the first trial.
Setting up the equipment was pretty easy, the tough part is the layout, angle of camera lens and the sound recording. As we would need to include a logo of our company, the clients name and brand in the video, we had to ensure that the background is plain white with no pictures. Before the interview, we also had to advice the interviewer and interviewee on their dress code. On screen, clothes with stripes or fanciful prints are strictly not allowed as the it gives an optical illusion effect on screen and it looks like there are a thousand ants crawling on the persons body.

The angle of the camera have to be at eye level with the persons in the video and usually only the distance is adjusted to ensure the camera view is clear and shooting the persons from above or below. During the interview, i encountered problems with the sound recording as the equipment is very sensitive to background sounds, i had to ensure everyone in office is not moving around. As our office is small and everyone is in the same room, there's a level of difficulty, thus we had to retake a few shots but luckily it was my colleague i was interviewing and not a client.

Usually the questionnaire is given to the client in advance to allow them to better prepare themselves. Questions  may be asked twice for backup as at times the first shot may not be as good and the use of video editing software come in handy to make the video perfect!

In short, it was awesome learning the tips and tricks on doing a video interview and stay tune for my final post on video editing!

See you soon,
Yi Jing
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In-house V Agency- Whats the best path?

Hello all,

My name is Ben Hennessy and I’m doing my work placement at a charity group called Rocky Bay. Rocky Bay is a not-for-profit organisation that provides disability services to more than 1000 children and 500 adults across Western Australia. My initial decision to approach Rocky Bay was the fact that they were a not-for-profit company and would essentially appreciate any help they could get. This relationship would be mutually beneficial to both parties because it means I would be given more responsibility, which as it turns out I have.

I am just over half way through my placement at Rocky Bay but I am only doing one day a week. Only doing one day a week has had its positives and negatives. On the positive side, I have had the chance to work on a number of projects because I have been there over an extended period. One the negative side, it has been difficult to get stuck right into projects because by the time I come back a week later the assignment has passed. This hasn’t always been a huge problem as Rocky Bay’s PR heavily revolves around event management and fundraising, which requires several weeks of extended planning.

 I have to say I am grateful to the team at Rocky Bay for their support and showing faith in me by giving the responsibilities they have. In concluding this post, I wanted to ask what everyone else thinks on the issue. Having spoken to a number of fellow PR students, many have gone out trying to get work in established PR firms and agencies. As students coming to the end of our university degrees, are we better off going for smaller in-house jobs to fine-tune our PR skills?

I look forward to your responses,

Ben