What Now?
This is a question that I’m sure a lot of us are currently asking ourselves.
What do we do now? We’re on the road to graduation, finished our internship and handing in the last of our assessments, or preparing for upcoming exams. I’m sure the answer to this question will be different for each of us.
Some of you may have been lucky enough to land a job form your internship, giving you somewhere to start your career. Others are feeling lost and overwhelmed about what lies ahead for us, others may be taking a break from thinking so much after quite a few years of study behind us.
For me, I’m the latter, taking a break from thinking so much. After going from high school to university, I’m finally all educated out and ready to think about what I really want from my future (as cliché as this may sound). I feel as if I’m such a small fish in such a big pond, and can’t wait to start finding my place in this industry. I’m eager to gain some more experience and to further explore what Public Relations has to offer.
My internship was the first bit of experience that I have in the industry, so I definitely will be looking for some more experience somewhere along the line. It has become ever so evident to me that experience is one of the key things employers look for, they want you to be ready for the job. Not only this but as an employee, it helps you to feel confident when looking for a job, and starting a new job, makes you feel that you’re the right person for the job.
I wonder how many of you have previous experience before starting your internship? This would have helped you when finding and starting your internship I’m sure. Has it also changed your opinion of where you’re going now that you’ve finished?
I’m currently feeling as if I have had such a small taste of such an extensive industry and I can’t wait to go back for more.
But for now,
Goodbye and good luck to you all.
What Have I Learnt?
As I’m coming to the end of my internship I’m beginning to think about what i’ve learnt and how my view of the industry has changed… I’m sure many of you are doing the same!
Reflecting back on my first day of my internship I had no idea what to expect, after three years of studying I had zero real world experience!
The first day was spent interviewing some of the League players so that we could make some videos to post to Facebook, this was a pretty good introduction for me as to what I would be doing. Getting information to boost our Facebook profile.
For the first few weeks of my internship this is predominantly what I was doing Facebook post, after Facebook post. After spending a day creating a social media schedule I felt there wasn’t much more I could do here. Unfortunately this coincided with my mentor making a career change and leaving her position at the club, which left me a little lost for a few days with no direction on jobs to complete.
One of the main things that I learnt from this time was how to handle a sudden resignation of a key employee. A few of the main points I took away from this were;
- Assign someone to reply to all key emails explaining the absence of someone at this point in time but that there will be someone new to fill in the position soon.
- Apply an automated reply to emails to explain situation briefly.
- Re-schedule all meetings
By doing these three things it will tie over the period of time between finding someone new to fill in the position. If this however takes a little longer further action should be taken with communicating with clients and associates.
With the nature of a WAFL club, I learnt a lot about the importance of stakeholders. For the WAFL your stakeholders are the heart of your club, and it is important to communicate appropriately with them. It was something I had only ever thought briefly about before, but seeing how PTFC communicate with their stakeholders I noticed how important it is to show the stakeholders the importance that they have towards your company and communicate with them accordingly. A lot of how PTFC did this was relevant to the things that I have learnt throughout my degree which was interesting to see these theory practices put into real life situations.
These are my two main experiences I will be taking away from my internship, hoping they will help me handle situations when I enter the working world of PR.
Leave a comment below of what you’ve learnt in your internship.
Oops! Lesson Learnt
My first mistake as an intern! Lesson learnt: Never be too scared to ask for help, or feedback.
Let me explain…
A couple of weeks ago the Marketing manager who I was working under left the job to move over east, this then saw me under supervision of a new marketing manager. In her first week on the job it was time to piece together and send out the fortnightly newsletter that Peel Thunder send out to all of their members. As I had put together 2 newsletters by now the new marketing manager gave me the job of putting this one together, assuming I was full ball on everything that went in there.
Whilst piecing it together I was unsure if the content I was putting in there was correct, and the right kind of content they wanted. Sure I had done the newsletter before but I had always been told which content to put in there; payer interviews, player profiles, post match reports etc. Where as this time I was playing a guessing game based on the information I had put in to the last two newsletters.
Once I had finished putting it together, had my supervisor and two other staff members proof read it for mistakes, I then sent it out to close to 1000 members. Almost as soon as I send it out I hear the CEO yell from his office “You haven’t sent that newsletter out yet have you?!” UH-OH!
As it turns out all 3 of the proof readers and myself had missed out on a few large mistakes in the newsletter. Although I had un-educately kind of disregarded the newsletter as only about 20% of the people we send it to actually open the email, it turns out those few people who do open the e-mail read it carefully. They will also call the club to point out any mistakes… Whoops!!
After realising this, I then went in to speak to the CEO to get an idea of the content he would like to see in the newsletter, and how I needed to fix the mistakes that were in there. After this I re-wrote the newsletter in a new and improved format, mistake free (!) and sent it out again to the members explaining to disregard the previous newsletter which is what I was instructed to do.
Two weeks after this incident I’m happy to say I put the newsletter together all by myself and it got a job well done the first time around… Yay!
If you’re interested check out a copy of this weeks newsletter here http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=81f06b69f04cf64c827c453a9&id=6615f6b720
Let me know of any lessons you’ve learnt since beginning your internship in the comments below.
Finding My Place as an Intern
April 21.
Welcome to day 10 of my internship, what a crazy few weeks it has been immersing myself in the ‘real world’ of a nine (9:30) to 5 job! Whilst I’m still feeling slightly out of place within my workplace, learning the dynamics of the place and still feeling like I’m the newbie badge on, I’m enjoying learning how things work around here and seeing the other members of the work team interested in what I have to offer!
It’s been interesting interning at Peel Thunder so far, as I have a VERY limited knowledge regarding football! Luckily for me though my knowledge on public relations isn’t so limited. I have been working under the Club’s Marketing and Sponsorship Manager which has been great. She hasn’t studied any Public Relations or Marketing so everything that she does has been self taught (with the help of Google!). But what has been great about this is that she does not simply pass me off as an intern who doesn’t have much to offer her, which is what I was particularly worried about when beginning my internship. Infact she is always asking me for my thoughts and ideas on projects, and about the correct practices that I have learnt at Uni.
From my observations so far Public Relations doesn’t have a particularly large place in Peel Thunder’s operations as far as best practice is concerned. I’ve been told that the team receive very little training in the area. As PTFC rely very heavily on sponsorship money for things to happen around the club, I can’t help but think that they’d benefit greatly from having a close focus on Public Relations practices, especially regarding stakeholders.
I’m beginning to offer advice and my opinion on how they are able to connect with their Stakeholders on a greater level so that they are able to get the most out of their working relationship with them. I’ve offered suggestions such as making the stakeholders feel apart of the team, sending them regular information letting them know what’s happening at the club, inviting them to games, luncheons and other events that happen on a weekly basis. I’ve also suggested that they contact the sponsors first whenever they’re money is being used for something, or to let them know if we are promoting them being a sponsor, or just for anything they might be interested in. I noticed that it was often the sponsors chasing us up on how their sponsorship is being put to use, or what they’re receiving out of it as a company. I researched a few articles to help me have some advice to offer, one that I found came in handy was this article.
Overall these past few weeks have been a great introduction to the club and I’m looking forward to seeing how I can grow and give the knowledge and thoughts that I have to offer in the coming weeks… Watch this space!