My Adult Life: Week One — The Seven Truths of Starting a New Job.
I’ve decided that contrary to conflicting opinions, real, adult life begins when a person starts at a real job – one at which you work five days a week (or more), where you’re at the absolute bottom (or maybe a just a head above it), and one that is generally remarked by those closest to you as a “career” (i.e., a job that you plan to do for longer than just until you find a better one). This is all very interesting to you, I’m sure, but if you’re wondering where this is going…
This week I started my new “real” job as an almost-bottom-of-the-totem-pole PR girl. And the experience of my first five days has led me to several truths about starting a new job. Although these hard won tips are based from situations in my PR life, I’m sure that they must apply to other industries as well. Here we go…
Number One: You might like the people you meet, but you wont love everyone. It seems like a no-brainer, but really, some people just wont be your favorite flavor. Try to be understanding and patient. Give them a chance, and they might just surprise you.
Number Two: Regardless of how much you sleep, you will be exhausted. (I’ve got my fingers crossed that this extreme fatigue dissipates soon).
Number Three: You might not be where you want to be, either positionally or locationally. So what if your cubicle is next to the men’s bathroom or in the basement next to the office supplies? Everyone starts out at the bottom – you wont be there forever!
Number Four: They want you to look busy. True, you should be asking for something to do if you’re without a task. But if on any given day, you’re boss or team is too busy to babysit you, you should at least look like your working. Researching the company and its competitors, reading your job manual or tracking media coverage with a Google Alert are great ways to keep yourself looking and being busy. Note: If you think I’m telling you to avoid actually working, let me clarify. You’re just starting out and will probably not be very busy at first. Instead of Facebook stalking your friends or standing around looking bored, do something productive.
Number Five: Being yourself may not be the best idea. That is, if being yourself means casually swearing like a drunk truck driver, winking and blowing kisses at every hot guy that walks by or ending all sentences with “fo’ shizzle, my nizzle”, you might want to tone yourself down a bit… at least until your second week.
Number Six: Everyone will know you’re the newby. Whether it’s your overly conservative or way-too-college casual wardrobe, your over-the-top friendly, caked-on smile or your child-lost-at-the-supermarket face, the people in your office will be able to tell you’re new from a dozen cubicles away.
Number Seven: You wont be new forever.
Is there a new job truth you’ve discovered? Let me know.
image from onesourcedevelopment.com
Fattening Up Your Resume for Today’s Job Famine.
Unless you’ve been drunk for the past several months, you are probably aware that our economy isn’t doing so well. For recent college graduates, this probably means that getting a job will be harder than expected. But there is hope.
According to Livingston Communication’s blog The Buzz Bin, although the economy sucks, new media continues to thrive, and by highlighting your new media experience, you can rise above the rest.
Social Media Beefs Up Resumes provides five tips to bolster your resume.
1. Highlight past experiences, like your personal blog and social networking, as much as possible.
2. When you talk about social media, don’t just chat about blogs. Remember that blogging is another way of building relationships and engaging in two-way communication.
3. Check out your personal Google search results. Make sure you walk your talk.
4. Although social media experience is great, be careful not to specialize. A well-rounded resume is still important.
5. Be able to cite examples from other successful social media efforts besides your own.
image from georgetowncustomhomes.com
Dear Webmaster. I suck.
With the rapid growth of social media, bloggers are now a huge subsection of the media to whom we public
relations people are pitching stories. Here’s a couple of quick tips on pitching bloggers from The New PR.
1. Don’t begin with “Dear Webmaster.”
2. Don’t talk to bloggers like they’re stupid.
3. Don’t pitch blogs that are clearly unrelated to your content.
4. When you have the blogger’s name, use it. And make sure to spell it correctly.
Also, do your homework on the blogger, so you don’t say something completely off-base or just plain stupid. Unlike traditional media, bloggers control a medium with which they can tag you publicly as a loser by blacklisting you or your company. Good luck and pitch wisely.
image from insurancetechguru.com
Real World Advice (the actual real world, not the show)
A couple of days ago I had the opportunity to chat with a young PR professional who works at a highly regarded boutique firm in Portland, Oregon. I asked her if she had any tips for recent grads who are trying to get jobs in PR. Here’s some of the advice she offered.
1. Take time off before you jump in. Agency PR is really demanding. And if you’re not mentally prepared, you’ll burn out. (I hope my dad is reading this)
2. NETWORK! Meet people through PROpenMic, LinkedIn, Facebook, PRSA chapter meetings or wherever. Build relationships and ask for advice.
3. Do your research and narrow your prospects. Blanketing your resume to every organization in the google search for “PR” in your town usually doesn’t work.
4. Once you create your short list, get connected with someone who works there. Keep an eye on the agency’s clients and keep a conversation going by referencing publicity they generated or interesting trends you see in the industry.
I’m off to enjoy the last week of my college life. Cheers!
Let’s Talk About Money, Baby.
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 internationalpropertyinvestment.com
Is it really who you know that counts?
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
The Darker Side of Blogging
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 c
lass 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 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.”
“So, You’ve Got the Job. Now What? My First Podcast
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
Employee Blogs: Friend or Farce?
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
Your Most Important PR Client: Yourself
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
