Meet my best friend: Microsoft Excel!
Public Relations: the glamorous world of client dinners, events and Cosmopolitans! Or at least according to Samantha Jones in Sex and the City. Unfortunately, the reality can prove much more mundane. She had me fooled!
Today i’m here to introduce my new best friend. She’s organised, helpful and sometimes infuriating. You may know her; Microsoft Excel!
Before beginning my internship, I truly didn’t expect so much of the industry to rely heavily on colossal data spreadsheets. I suppose it makes sense, the world of Public Relations is built on contacts and publics whose details have to be stored somehow!
Since beginning my remotely-based internship almost three months ago, i’ve learnt a whole lot about my new friend Excel. We’ve become well acquainted as i’ve entered endless influencers, media publications, journalists and radio presenters. Even though it sounds easy, formatting spreadsheets without having a mental breakdown is, in my eyes, a skill that takes time, practice and discipline to master.
The purpose of this blog post is to remind future internees of the important place that digital literacy and proficiency plays. Not only in the Public Relations industry, but across all industries.
Excel is not a new piece of software. Actually, it’s been around since the late 1980s (who knew!). However, putting excel aside, employers are beginning to expect more and more digital literacy from university graduates, with a plethora of brand new softwares, programs and applications, each of which require different levels of understanding and knowledge to accurately be utilised within a business. As the generation who grew up in the age of the digital revolution, the expectation is that we know how to utilise and leverage digital programs and softwares to optimise productivity and effectiveness of businesses. This is an area that is often not taught in schools or universities, leaving us to our own devices (literally, our own devices).
Being able to prove digital literacy and proficiency in line with your employers needs can increase employability ten-fold. You become an asset to the team when you are able to master and employ digital technology that nobody else within the organisation can. This should be an are that more university students are focussing on prior to their graduation into the big bad corporate world!
So, make a new best friend! It doesn’t have to be excel, any digital programs that are frequently required to use within your industry of choice will do. Get familiar with it, master it and ensure you communicate your digital proficiency to future employers. After all, the more you know the more valuable you become to an employer.
Right Attitude, Right Time and Right Place: My Journey from Intern to Part-Time Employee
Recently I asked my supervisor, what made somebody employable in her eyes. She told me, “motivated and a go-getter” is what makes someone employable to her, as someone with a plethora of experience in the world of media and communications, she has worked with a lot of people and discovered that those with a self-starting attitude are those who tend to succeed.
I took this advice in my stride and begun working on tasks more efficiently and with more initiative. This is not just an important PR tool but a skill required to be successful in any industry. Doing the small things can be really noticed, not only were the tasks I undertook throughout my internship done quickly and usually up to standard, only requiring minor edits, but I took initiative to set up some analytics tools to track progress, readily make suggestions to digital content templates and experiment with different ways to improve engagement. While some internships may have pretty strict guidelines to go off, I was given a lot of freedom with the tasks I undertook and thankfully I was able to make the most of it, apparently impressing my supervisor in the process.
Showing initiative in starting and finishing projects is crucial to succeeding in your internship.
As a somewhat introverted person going into a new workplace was daunting however I knew that I had to “fake it till I made it” and be open to conversation with these new colleagues. Being able to connect with these people really helped me through my internship, especially with it being a small company I was able to connect with people in all the different departments.
Because of my apparently impressive self-starter attitude, being able to share with my colleagues about my life, such as my football results and other university major and a little bit of luck, I was offered a part-time paid position at the end of my internship. Because I was able to share something so little like my other major, they were comfortable enough with me (due to my hard working attitude while there) to employ me in a Search Marketing and copywriting role. Although I would like to say that this was all me, I have to factor in that I was in the right place, at the right time with a previous employee in that position moving down south to pursue her journalism career, however if I had not shown initiative or been open with my colleagues there is no way I would be in the position I am today.