Experience, experience and more experience

I went to a a group meeting a month or so ago and we discussed if we thought we were prepared to graduate and what could be changed to better prepare us. The common theme throughout was that people gained the most knowledge from the experience they got at their internship. In light of this, I really believe that we should be required to have at least two internships to graduate.
I think that we have great classes and teachers in our college, but nothing can really prepare us for the real world like the real world experience that we get from internships. With that in mind, it seems only logical that we should be required to do more than just one. For some of those go-getters, they have gone out on their own and done more than what was required, but for others, they won't do it unless they are forced. Those people may just need the extra push to get some more experience.
By changing the required hours to 5-6 or requiring a minimum of two internships, I think it would prepare the students a tremendous amount more. I think it should be something that the college thinks about and encourages students to do.

Business Minor

I think that every person in Mass Communications (and really every college student in general) should be required to take several business classes. This would make it pretty easy for most students to just add that business minor. I think classes like that would be SO beneficial, not only in the PR field, but in life altogether. That is one thing that I really wish I would have added early on in my college career. Classes like Finance would be great to have even if you have no plans of pursuing a future in that field. In the grand scheme of things, it would be nice just for your own personal knowledge to know that information.
The heads of colleges should meet and come up with new criteria for graduating, and I think everyone should be required to take multiple business classes. They may not be loads of fun, but I think that people will appreciate them later on.

If I had a do-over

I've been thinking a lot about what I would do if I could "do-over" college. There are a couple of things that I would change.
First, I would study abroad. I did get a chance to intern in NYC and that was awesome, but I think every student should study in another country. Think about it, when is the next time you are going to have the opportunity to live in another country for a couple of months? Probably never. This is the time to do it. Once you get out of school you think, hey I should go to Europe (or at least I think about this...), but once I get into my first job, that isn't going to be so easy. I would want to spend at least 2 weeks going to different countries and exploring different historical sites, and let's be real - what new employer is going to say "Sure, take those two weeks off and enjoy!" Not likely. So the moral of this story is STUDY ABROAD!
Also, if I had a do-over I would get a BA instead of a BS. Not only would knowing a second language be HUGELY beneficial in this day and age, but this would have allowed me to major in English as opposed to just minoring in it. When I looked into this, I was already well on my way to getting a BS and BA would have required several extra semesters, something I just didn't think I could do. So don't be afraid of those foreign languages- Go for it!! This will make you very marketable later :)
I hope this doesn't sound like I haven't had a great college experience, because I have. I love majoring in PR and my sorority has been a great networking tool. Overall, I am very satisfied with my time at Kansas State thus far, there are just a few things I would change if I had the opportunity.

To blog or not to blog

After our discussion in class on Monday, I found myself just randomly thinking about the pros and cons of blogging. After weighing the two, I found myself in favor of blogs. That is to an extent though.
I think it would be really easy to be misleading on a blog and I definitely think you should be careful with what you are writing. After all, anyone can read it and there have been law suits in the past stemming from blogging. But blogs are a great way to read others' opinions.
One of the cons that kept coming up in class was that blogs are not based on actual fact, but rather on what some random person is writing. I think this is a valid point, but at the same time, I think that the ordinary, reasonable person reading the blog is already aware of this.

Paying Interns

After spending an entire summer in New York City, working 45+ hours per week and getting paid $10 per day, I feel pretty strongly about the need to pay interns. I realize that interns are a great way to get incredibly cheap labor at the cost of less experienced work, but it is incredibly difficult to motivate yourself when you know that you are working for approximately $1.11 per hour.
Once this summer, I was even in charge of recruiting a student from a film school to shoot a video for us. It was stressed to me that I was to make sure that the students being interviewed were well aware that they were not going to be paid. I loved that job -- grrr...
I can understand the fact that there are a lot of people out there looking for experience and I know that if I refuse to take an internship because it isn't paid, they won't care because it is likely that they can find someone else that will work for nothing, but I just feel that it is an unfair way to get cheap labor. At my internship this summer I felt like I was frequently doing jobs that the regular employees do, yet getting paid next to nothing while they brought in a salary.
I'm not asking for millions... I would be happy with minimum wage!

my amazing discovery

Going on with my recent obsession with job hunting, I started wondering what I can be expecting to make when I find my first job. I have these amazing visions about what it will be like to have a steady paycheck that gives me more than what I'm getting at my $6 an hour internship (oh what we'll do for experience). But my problem was that I wasn't sure what I should even ask for as my salary. I noticed that several of the employers of the jobs that I was looking at want you to give them what you want for a salary. In this there is quite the predicament - you ballpark a figure that is too low, you sell yourself short and settle for less than you could be getting OR you overestimate and the potential employer throws out your resume. Pretty intense stuff. So anyway, I was curious so I checked out the usual salary.com and it wasn't much of a help. I wanted to see something specifically entry level, but it was giving you a general idea. So, I googled "salary for entry level PR" and guess what I found... an entire site devoted to soon-to-be college grads looking for advice and jobs. The site is www.entrylevel-pr.com. I originally found the blog first, and it had really great topics and advice, but this is the main site. I still need to keep looking around, but it seems to be a pretty helpful place for someone like me. I know the blog was written by a woman who was working in PR (maybe in HR) and was in charge of hiring people. So she knows what she is talking about when saying what they look for on resumes and things like that.
So, this is my latest discovery and I hope that someone else can benefit from it as well :) Happy job hunting!

On the job hunt...

So once again, I'm posting about the job hunt. I can't help it - even though I don't graduate for another 8 months or so, I feel the need to search site after site looking for a potential job. I change my mind once every two weeks or so though, so maybe within the next two posts I'll have a different life goal!
But for right now here is what I'm thinking: Big city (okay, no difference there) working at a PR agency. I'm thinking agency right now mostly because I really don't know what I want to do. My thoughts are that if I work for a PR agency I can get a broad idea of PR. Plus I think that there are positives about working at a large, established firm. One of the other obstacles I have run into is the simple fact that a lot of places aren't looking for an immediate post-grad. Almost everything that I run into is for 3-5 years experience and let's be real - that isn't me. And to be honest, I'm a little scared of the real world and the idea of being thrown into a job that I have no idea what I'm doing is daunting. Working at a large firm, I would probably start out with a paid internship and after three months or so, hopefully be promoted to a Jr. Account Exec. I'm confident that I can work my way up so right now this is looking pretty good.
I already spoke to someone at Edelman about applying for an internship for after graduation in Portland, OR, so I'm feeling pretty good. I just hope everything works out. Real world here I come... well that may have been slightly premature... real world here I come in eight months. Okay, much better.

Career- say what?

Lately I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do after I graduate and I really just can't seem to figure out what or where that is. My original thought was to pick a place to live and then just go there and apply for a ton of different jobs, but I find myself wondering if that is the best idea. I do a lot of random job hunting and I think a better idea may be just looking for the job that I can see myself in the best and then go after it.
The problem with this is what my good friend's hippie boyfriend told me -- go to a place that makes you happy and it will all fall into place. He said that if you follow a job you end up somewhere that you may not like that much and you'll just be there for the job. I see his thinking, but my problem is that I don't know where I even want to go. I swear I have a different place in mind every week! This week it is Portland, OR, last week Toronto and the week before it was San Francisco so.... what to do??
I think probably the best bet is a combination of the two. Follow a great job, but make sure it is in a city that I can enjoy. The real world is coming fast and I'm excited, but all of these decisions are making my head spin!!!!!!

Career Fair

I recently attended a day at the career fair on campus and found myself to be severely disappointed. Before I went I looked at the website and looked for potential employers in need of newly graduated PR people. And what did I find? Not a whole lot...
I went ahead and trekked over to Bramlage (mostly on the encouragement of my boss) and walked around checking out the booths. I made one trip around to see if anything looked interesting and basically felt pretty awkward. Employers kept making eye contact with me, but it felt really weird and I just kept going. I mentally noted places that looked mildly interesting, intending to come back on my second trip around. I felt on the verge of stupid with my little name tag reading Public Relations when everyone else was Engineering or Chemistry. I saw one employer that caught my eye and got up the nerve to talk to him. I had no idea what they were about, but their visuals looked interesting and I at least wanted a little more information. The man looked at my name tag, saw Public Relations and went "eee... hmmmm.... uhhhh... Yeah, not sure we have anything for you." He didn't even know what PR was! I stumbled around looking for an explanation, but I was already nervous and felt silly approaching this engineering firm, so I didn't get anything to intelligent out. Turns out the company has a marketing section which he said "told us to get new colors because our old ones gave the a boring impression. So they revamped the marketing so that it is more pleasing to look at." Which is aka creating a brand identity. So as he explained this I chimed in "oh yeah, well that is one of the things that PR technicians do -- working with branding and brand identity." But of course, he was sent to the career fair to recruit engineers and therefore knew nothing about the marketing division. I got a piece of paper and was sent on my way.
And after this whole experience, I was pretty irked that the university makes such a big deal about helping students find jobs after graduation with great things like career fairs. It seems to me that they are forgetting some majors entirely. So all in all -- not very happy with that experience and have come to the conclusion that I may be better off just fending for myself when it comes to my future career.

Creating and Maintaining Press Lists

One thing that I found very beneficial this summer at my internship, was the way the company managed their press lists. They had a program that allowed every employee to enter new contact information for new press people. There was also an option to add notes about these particular contacts. Our main boss was very, very strict about making us write something for every time that we spoke to someone; whether it was on the phone, in the showroom, or at a random fashion party, we had to write it down.
I think this is very helpful when creating relationships with other people in the business. We wrote down the date that we spoke to them, what we talked about and any other pertinent information. I wrote down things like "So and so told me about the new dog she just got and how it was keeping her up at nights." Although this didn't pertain exactly to our business relationship, these types of things were recorded because it helped us build a more personal relationship with them. The next time we talked to that person we made an effort to ask if their dog was still keeping them up at night -- this way they know that you are paying attention to what they are saying, even if it is something trivial.
PR is all about networking and creating/maintaining relationships with other people in the business. By taking a little extra time to jot down notes about your last conversation, you can help build those relationships into something that is beneficial to both of you.

YouTube

One of the big things that I got to help participate in was creating a short video to use on youtube. Our main objective was to get my main boss more into the public eye. We wanted her to become a host on a show on QVC and in order to get the job, you have to send in a two-minute clip of you to show your on-air quality. We decided that we could hit two birds with one stone by just creating a video for both the QVC application and to post on youtube, which was our latest idea.
Youtube is a place that anyone can put anything. It is free and it gets tons of hits everyday, so promoting our business on the site seemed very logical. In order to cut costs we enlisted the help of a student at a nearby film school (and of course we didn't pay her -- interns don't get paid. period. I'll get into that rant in a later blog...). So we shot the video with the idea to create a short version to send to QVC and a longer 8-9 minute video to be aired on youtube. We had the idea that we could create a bi-monthly segment that we would air on the website.
The summer was spent planning for this and towards the end we finally got the finished QVC video. It looked really good, and I was really excited to see it posted on youtube and to hopefully see my boss someday on QVC. But alas, I searched for the company on youtube just the other day and found nothing... maybe they are still working on it, but I'm guessing that along with many other great ideas, it got shoved to the back-burner so they could focus on another great idea.
But I thought posting on youtube was an inexpensive, ingenious idea and I would suggest people think of that as an alternative way to reach the public. But beware -- you must be original and creative when making your video or you will be left in the dust. People go to the site to be entertained, so you must find a way to keep your audience's attention.
Think about that, and if you know of any aspiring filmmakers, perhaps you can get them to do a little something for you before they become great :) It could happen.

power of speech

One thing that I discovered in my internship this summer is the power of speech. The ability to be able to talk to many different types of people is something that is beneficial, not only in the business sense, but in everyday life. Techniques can be used to persuade, calm, enthuse and so much more. Some people are born with the innate ability to just talk to people (maybe the guy that can talk himself out of a ticket time after time after time), but most of us have to fine tune our own speaking skills.
One of my jobs this summer was to RSVP my boss to several fashion events. The events were meant as networking opportunities for my boss, so that she could keep up-to-date on the ever-changing fashion world. This duty always struck fear into my heart because I had to convienently leave out certain "aspects of her job." Or as I call it -- lying. Well, not technically lying, so much as just leaving out some of the truth. In order to get her into these parties I had to leave out the fact that she was doing PR for our showroom and focus on how she has been a contributing editor for overseas magazines. The reason for leaving out the PR bit was because they would not want her to come knowing that she is part of their competition.
So, after multiple calls and successful RSVPing, my boss decided that I had talent on the phone and was able to somehow "get my way." I never really thought much of myself as a talented speaker, but as I watched other interns struggle with word stumbling and dead silences on the phone, I recalled many instances in my past where it was part of my job to talk to people and the constant practice made me a much better speaker. Four years of sorority recruitment gave me two solid weeks a year on talking to random people about anything I could. Sometimes it was easy, but sometimes it was very difficult to get people to speak. I also looked back at my work experience and found that many of my jobs required me to speak to all kinds of different people. Working in retail required me to speak to everyone; on the phone and in person, and I became aware of the different approaches to customers and making the sale.
I guess what the point of this blog is just that being able to speak to people is invaluable and can help you so much in the professional world. And, the best part is that you can practice and fine tune your skills! One thing that I try to do is talk to people in elevators or waiting for the bus. Forcing yourself to speak to people not only lessens the uncomfortable silence, but helps you get better at your speaking skills.
So force yourself to step out of the box and start talking to people!

press blasts

For my first post I really wasn't sure what I wanted to focus on. I'm still not sure, though I have some blossoming ideas, but because I haven't had a chance to sit down and really think the "themed" ideas through, I thought about relying on old faithful and just talk about something that I learned at my internship this summer.
Everyone is always looking for a fresh new way to get information out, without falling into the boring category. People are constantly bombarded with information and it is our job to make ours stand out so that people want to read it. It was this way that we discovered a great new way to contact the press in the fashion world.
I did PR for a fashion showroom and had a blast learning about everything this summer. One of the hardest things to face as a PR practitioner in the fashion realm is getting in touch with editors and getting the clothes into magazines. These people are shown hundreds of items of clothing for one layout and even then some clothes that would have been perfect for it aren't even seen because the editors don't know about them. This is why we created our mock company magazine and sent it out via press blasts.
We came up with the idea when we were trying to acquire a new brand for the showroom. We created a faux magazine cover and then magazine layout that showcased the brand and our company. I created a mock interview of my employer asking questions that were meant to show the brand in question how good we would be for them. The company enjoyed this concept and appreciated our work to dazzle them.
After our initial press blast, my boss decided it would be a good idea to continue the faux magazine pages and send them to our press contacts. I created layouts and stories for all of our lines in the showroom. We now had a way to step above the masses with our innovative way of showing our product and providing information about it. I enjoyed making the blasts and the company benefited from them.
My only regret is that I was already on my way home from New York when the got in the shipment of scratch and sniff jeans... I could have done the best press blast for something like that!