Things have been crazy over the past couple of weeks. Now that my life has calmed, let’s get back on track. Advice for graduates is everywhere, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to it. 23 Pieces of Advice that College Graduates Don’t Want to Hear by Valerie S. Johnson gives some good advice that we might need to listen to. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Show up at work. It’s not like class. You just can’t skip.

2. Deal with your debt before it gets worse. Step one: Stop charging.

3. Don’t rush to buy all the expensive toys and trappings of adult life. Just be patient.

4. Spend less than you earn. There’s a difference between a “want” and a “need”.

5. Start an emergency fund. Bad things happen, so be ready.

6. Put time and energy into worthwhile friendships. It may be hard to make time, but your good friends are worth it.

“Graduates, go forth and conquer the world. Follow your dreams. Take risks. Have fun. But please follow some of this advice. Otherwise, in the not-so-distant future, in a not-so-distant galaxy, you’ll wish you had.”

We will try.

In the spirit of addressing every topic associated with finding, getting and keeping a job in PR, I thought is was time to utter that four letter word that we all think about but rarely utter: cash.

According to salary.com, the average yearly salary for a “public relations manager” is $78,917. The number that is often thrown around for PR professionals with less than two years of experience hovers around $40,000. In case you didn’t know already, the latter group is most likely us.

Now that you are comfortable with the reality of our first of couple years in PR, let’s get some advice from Jon Morrow, author of the blog On Moneymaking. How I Got a Six-Figure Salary Right Out of College outlines three tips for making more money right out of college.

1. Start building your resume early. Your relevant work experience is crucial to landing a good job.

2. Get noticed by the right people. Networking within the PR industry while in college is essential to your success.

3. Forget about doing what you love for a while. The odds of you landing a great job are higher if you remain open minded about job prospects in different branches of the PR industry.

image from wpclipart.com

PR is all about relationships, and getting a job in PR is clearly no exception.

It’s trivia time. What percentage of positions are filled through traditional means such as the classifieds or resume Web sites? The answer is eight percent, according to Kevin Laws, author of VentureBlog. That means that 92 percent of jobs are filled, says Laws, through extended networks.

But how do we make these essential connections? We have to learn to network. Luckily for us, people like Kevin Laws are here to offer some practical advice. He says that “networking is about serendipity: making your own luck.”

Laws offers six tips for networking. And for me, there were three tips that stood out.

1. Just do it. Make sure you are never wasting an opportunity to meet a new person.

2. Be specific. You’ll better stick in your new friend’s head if you offer specific information about what you’re looking for.

3. Don’t ask for anything but advice. Instead of asking people to help find you a job, try asking them if you can get their opinion on the industry, community, company or whatever. They’ll probably be more inclined to help you.

image from oneitaly.biz

I’m a newcomer to blogs and blogging. I’ll admit it. I had heard about the revolutionary medium for information and entertainment, but I was a true skeptic. After some research and this blog assignment in my advanced PR writing class, I have begun to learn more about these things we call blogs. Obviously, I have been converted and now see the error in my previous thinking.

I know all about the positive outcomes of blogging for PR purposes and beyond, but I’ve read very little on the darker side of the blogosphere - the consequences no one wants to talk about.

So, here they are, several of the negative aspects of blogs and blogging for those of you who have yet to fully submerge yourselves in the treacherous world that is blogging.

1. On the average day, you will spend more time reading blogs and blogging than you will talking to your friends, being in class and sleeping combined.

2. Unless your parents are blogging themselves, your mom will forever refer to it as “blobbing.”

3. You’ll read the same information over and over but will be unable to resist clicking through to the next page about Brittany Spears’ newest tragedy.

4. Whenever something interesting, exciting or humorous happens during your day, your first inclination will be to find the nearest computer and blog about it.

5. Addiction is inevitable - see point one. Soon, as celebrities are checking into drug rehab, we will be introducing ourselves at BA: Bloggers Anonymous.

“Hi, my name is Katy, and I am addicted to blogging.”

“Hi, Katy.”

6. There is tons of advice on writing a blog, 10 Tips for Writing a Blog, 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang, but there is little to nothing out there on how to recognize and overcome your blogging addiction.

So, what’s the moral of this tragic story? We’re all doomed. So, we might as well enjoy it.

Photo courtesy of my mom, Renae, who is very proud of my “blobbing.”

As a journalist and PR student you are taught to research, research, research before you act. But what if a couple of days after a job interview, you find your have researched, discovered and sleuthed your way into not wanting the job at all? They offer you the position because life is cruel. But how do you say no?

Penelope Trunk, blog author of Brazen Careerist, offers four tips on How to Turn Down a Job Offer.

1. Be Nice. Thank the person for the opportunity. Trunk also advises complimenting the company in a small way. In my experience, you’ll want to get off the phone as fast as possible, but don’t forget common courtesy.

2. Follow Up. Trunk says you should do something within the next week or so to show the person that you want to keep in touch with them and the company.

3. Suggest Someone Else. Many companies participate in group interview sessions, and if a fellow interviewee stood out to you, drop her name.

4. Assess Your Own Conduct. Turning down a job will be even harder if you jerked them around or waited until the last minute to decline.

The bottom line is declining a job offer is hard and if done incorrectly could hurt your reputation in the PR community. Make sure you’re taking the time to decline respectfully. Don’t burn a company you may need to cross in the future.

image from positivesharing.com

I’ve been blogging a lot about interviewing for the PR job you want, but let’s flash forward a couple of months. You got the job. But after all the preparation for applying and landing your dream job, what do you do now?

While offering more information on keeping your new job in PR, I’ve begun to stretch my social media legs by venturing into the frightening exciting world of podcasting. Check out my first podcast, “So, You’ve Got the Job. Now What?”. It covers everything about your new job, from things you should know about your PR career, to communicating with your boss to outsmarting office politics.

The information came from three great blog posts.

Five Things All PR Students Should Know About Their Choice of Career by Steven Silvers, author of Scatterbox.

Conversation with the Boss by Lauren Vargas, author of Communicators Anonymous.

Office Politics 101 by Colin McKay, author of Canuckflack.

image from busylifeproducts.com

Transparency in public relations is essential. Regardless of the situation, being honest and forthright with information is your only option. And your job interview is no exception.

You will encounter an array of interview questions in your search for a job, but odds are you will always be asked to state your greatest weakness. This is perhaps the most challenging inquest you will confront, and it is important to face it well-prepared.

How to Communicate Your Weaknesses offers up ten steps to identify, understand and reveal your flaws and still come out on top. The article also offers additional tips and possible pitfalls, which are helpful. Here are some of the highlights.

1. Understand the question. When an employer asks about your weaknesses, the faults are not the most important thing. What they are looking for is self awareness about your weaknesses, and what you do about the challenges.

2. Avoid the most common mistake. “My biggest weakness is that I tend to do everything right all the time.” Ok, so you would never really say that, but coming up with a fake negative will probably just irritate the interviewer. You’ll also come across as lacking self awareness.

3. Be clear and concise. Try not to overstate or ramble. You have advanced warning about this interview obstacle. Know your answer before you go in there and answer succinctly.

Interviewing for jobs is a stressful experience for literally everyone. And honestly airing your weaknesses to your potential boss seems shockingly counterintuitive. However, if we can learn to present our own challenges with poise and fidelity now, we will be perfectly prepared to communicate the issues of a company with even greater skill and transparency in the future.

image from artist Jim Daly

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are the new frontier in media, marketing and communications. From Facebook’s sponsorship of presidential debates to Obama’s nearly immediate efforts via Facebook, MySpace and several fully-loaded websites, it seems that even the most archaic practices of our nation are turning to social media to get the race won.

Facebook and MySpace are giving candidates the platform to introduce themselves, their qualifications and their ideas, so why aren’t soon-to-be college graduates treating their public blogs, Facebook and MySpace pages the same way?

We all know that today companies have access to even the most heavily guarded online information. We’ve heard the stories of graduating seniors who were denied the job because the company found not-so flattering subject matter associated with the potential employee. We know the deal. We hear the stories. Yet, we fail to act.

If candidates from Obama to McCain are successfully marketing themselves on Facebook, why aren’t we?

It’s a sad fact, and one that I would like to forget, but we are getting older and will soon be graduating from college and childhood. But instead of packing up your Harry Potter books and old teddy bear to mark this transition, why not clean up the junk on your Facebook profile? Take the lead from the politicians whose job it is to successfully sell themselves: put your best profile forward. You won’t regret it.

Could a bad cup of coffee land you in hot water?

It seems that many organizations are venturing in to the world of employee blogging. From Microsoft employees to restaurant chefs, companies are looking to employees to blog agreeably about their job and the company they work for.

The most interesting example I could find was the Goodwill Ambassablog written by Goodwill Ambassadors and operated by Goodwill Ambassadors of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. Part promotion and part personal journal, each day the three authors blog about their experiences and interactions at the San Diego Airport.

Employee blogs seem to be successful and offer a unique glimpse into the work days of employees. But as more and more companies capitalize on the free promotion and employee-reader interaction that employee blogs provide, I begin to wonder if employee associated blogging is really as good as it sometimes seems.

Google Inc. may agree with me. In January 2005,Google removed some personal blog posts from a new Google employee because of content that criticized the company.

In the future, if employees are required to blog about certain topics and with provided viewpoints, will the blogosphere become a restricted forum? Will companies be allowed to control all employee content, even on personal blogs?

As the number of random affiliations between companies increases with the concentration of corporate ownership, where will the rational limits on employee content stop and the crazy company expectations begin?

If, for example, you are doing PR for a large agency who represents hundreds of clients. One day, while blogging on your personal blog after work, you offhandedly mention that the morning coffee you got from the cafe down the street was terrible. You go on to say that luckily you had such an amazing day at your amazing job that the bad coffee just didn’t matter. You find out later, however, that your firm represents that coffee shop in some distant division or has some obscure partnership and that top execs are angered by the negative publicity for the shop in your blog post. They insist you remove it.

Should a company have control over an employee’s freedom to express her opinions? Eventually, as more people begin to blog, will companies strive to monitor even personal blogs for content that could negatively impact the company, its clients or its affiliated organizations? Who knows?

image from whatscookingamerica.net

PReparing for an interview can be a stressful and taxing process. From your shoes to skirt to blouse to blush, dressing for an interview leaves many job seekers, like myself, more than a little nervous.

There are a lot of websites, books and articles that offer advice on this all important day (or days). Almost all of them provide the same information, but wetfeet.com’s “Dressing for Success in Interviews” is the best I’ve found.

Some of the basic rules for women are a well-tailored, neutral suit, minimal makeup, understated jewelry and pumps.

But one of my biggest concerns about interviewing for a job in PR is how to look polished in a basic suit while also showing some personal style. And wetfeet.com agrees that you’re less likely to make a distinctive impression if you stick to a simple, sapless suit.

How do you look stylish and chic while also following the basic rules of interview attire? Most articles agree that the level of acceptable personal style varies based on the company, but that expressing who you are within the guidelines of basic interview style is important.

As a future PR practitioner, it is important to cultivate your personal image, performing PR for your most important client: yourself.

photo from jcrew.com