There are a lot of benefits to work experience, especially in a time where a degree is no longer rare and doesn't put you at a higher standing. It definitely works to your advantage to cover your CV in work experience of various types to show that you're diverse and have also worked in a similar industry or just worked in general.
Work experience also helps you get an insight into your career, confirming or challenging any assumptions you had previously made. Coming to a PR company was me trying to get an insight into all the jobs in the writing industry, as i chose journalism as it seemed to be the natural career choice for a writer and you can't expect to be a successful novelist and live off that. If every PR company is like this one, it's definitely a branch that i would consider! (Although I'm pretty sure it's the people that really make Remarkable great).
Thank you for an amazing 8 days here, I've learnt a lot (hopefully - I have a 5000 word portfolio to write about it!) It's been great to meet the whole team, especially those upstairs folk! I hope to see you in the future.
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
The Oh So Intimidating Future
The next steps after this are to continue studying at Winchester university. I have my final year to go complete with a glorious 8000 word story and 3000 word rationale to do amongst other assignments. So that should keep me fairly busy!
My future aspirations (and other cliched phrases) are basically just becoming a journalist, but I know that's a hard industry to crack. I'm going to try and do as much work experience as possible next year and after I finish my degree so that I have a chunky CV. To be honest, I enjoy writing so any job that involves that will suit me well. I've definitely enjoyed my time here and would love to come back and do some more work experience if you'll have me!
I'm currently planning a large road trip across America which I will chronicle on a travel blog, hopefully this will also help my standing and increase my writing portfolio for prospective jobs and careers. Unfortunately, journalism involves working your way up from the bottom, making numerous hot drinks and clearing out the stationery cupboard that's wedged shut! But I can do that.
My future aspirations (and other cliched phrases) are basically just becoming a journalist, but I know that's a hard industry to crack. I'm going to try and do as much work experience as possible next year and after I finish my degree so that I have a chunky CV. To be honest, I enjoy writing so any job that involves that will suit me well. I've definitely enjoyed my time here and would love to come back and do some more work experience if you'll have me!
I'm currently planning a large road trip across America which I will chronicle on a travel blog, hopefully this will also help my standing and increase my writing portfolio for prospective jobs and careers. Unfortunately, journalism involves working your way up from the bottom, making numerous hot drinks and clearing out the stationery cupboard that's wedged shut! But I can do that.
Tuesday, 15 April 2014
The Office
Tucked away from the busy Winchester high street, Remarkable is situated perfectly (except for the lack of parking courtesy of the new double yellow lines painted last week).
My favourite aspect is actually the building itself, a renovated pump house. With it's little corridors, multiple levels and fire escapeesque steps, it's definitely the coolest place to work! The floor space is open plan and encourages chatting and banter, which is here in abundance anyway. The PR team are up on the mezzanine which is great, until the summer, when the air con would need to emulate the arctic. There's a cheeky little radio playing some music to keep the atmosphere bright and lots of conversations flowing between colleagues. Despite the open plan layout, the office is never too loud to work in, which amazes me, because when i'm usually writing an assignment, the littlest noise will distract me for a good 10 minutes - that's probably a testament to how much I'm enjoying the work i'm given here too. It's very light and airy due to the large windows that line the walls, maintaining a more informal ambiance.
I love watching people interact here, everyone is friends and I have no doubt that any event or night out organised with the folk here (especially the PR team) would be an absolute riot!
What did I do?
My first day at Remarkable, I was shown around by the lovely Emma and introduced to the whole team (a super friendly bunch!) and the excitement of fire drill procedures. Then I was shown to my own desk which, i'll be honest, made me feel really important and professional. I'm 20 and working at a desk still makes me feel grown up, like a 7 year old walking in my mum's high heels!
Emma designated me my first task, which was to research the local area near a site a client has just received building approval for, so that Remarkable could go and support the local community who may feel unhappy or slightly put out by the future changes. This didn't take too long and soon I was introduced to Gorkana, PR's best friend. I used this database to create a media list of Magazine VIPs for another client, to send press releases too. I used Gorkana more than a few times over the 2 weeks I was there, it seems to be the centre of a lot of administrative tasks.
Of course, I was also given writing tasks to do. Press releases. I enjoyed writing the two Gemma sent me, Cash Converters and Penn Pharma. The former was fun because I got to research a lot of television and World Cup statistics to throw in, and football and technology are two topics I know. The Penn Pharma release was slightly more challenging, I had to ring my parents and get some of their wisdom (having worked 20 and 25 years in the pharmaceutical business). Once I was informed, I was able to write up a full page.
Within my list of tasks, I also had some very daunting tasks, those that (god forbid) involved ringing people.
From my daily observations here, being able to talk confidently and frequently on the phone is a prerequisite for PR and something that everyone here has mastered. As a serial texter, it's not something I tend to do often. However, as a professional (I have a desk) I swallowed the fear and proceeded to ring magazines for voucher copies, supermarket chains with partnership prospects and the framing company for prices and times. As stupid as it sounds, I actually felt accomplished every time I put the phone down.
There was one large job that pretty much dominated my work experience here at Remarkable, a mammoth task on Excel that spanned a total of two full days (on and off for three). Here's what it involved:
- Compiling email statistics (who opened a specific email and who also clicked a link within) into another spreadsheet
- Collating these statistics from days into weeks
- Laying out these weeks (February to April)
- A lot of mental maths
- Focus, so no employee is mentioned twice
I actually enjoyed this longer task. I could just plod my way through it, and a splash of colour helped liven up the Excel layout a bit!
In the last week, I was assigned a couple more press releases and the longer task of compiling tea and coffee bloggers for a company who want their own campaign to win new business.
It was quite exciting to know that Remarkable worked for Aldi and Cash Converters, high profile retailers! My time here was fairly filled, which I enjoyed. I also always felt that I could do the assigned tasks, which is great, no one wants to feel lost and need constant help. It also wasn't all easy, some jobs required a lot of research and time, which I liked, I was actually contributing to the business.
Emma designated me my first task, which was to research the local area near a site a client has just received building approval for, so that Remarkable could go and support the local community who may feel unhappy or slightly put out by the future changes. This didn't take too long and soon I was introduced to Gorkana, PR's best friend. I used this database to create a media list of Magazine VIPs for another client, to send press releases too. I used Gorkana more than a few times over the 2 weeks I was there, it seems to be the centre of a lot of administrative tasks.
Of course, I was also given writing tasks to do. Press releases. I enjoyed writing the two Gemma sent me, Cash Converters and Penn Pharma. The former was fun because I got to research a lot of television and World Cup statistics to throw in, and football and technology are two topics I know. The Penn Pharma release was slightly more challenging, I had to ring my parents and get some of their wisdom (having worked 20 and 25 years in the pharmaceutical business). Once I was informed, I was able to write up a full page.
Within my list of tasks, I also had some very daunting tasks, those that (god forbid) involved ringing people.
From my daily observations here, being able to talk confidently and frequently on the phone is a prerequisite for PR and something that everyone here has mastered. As a serial texter, it's not something I tend to do often. However, as a professional (I have a desk) I swallowed the fear and proceeded to ring magazines for voucher copies, supermarket chains with partnership prospects and the framing company for prices and times. As stupid as it sounds, I actually felt accomplished every time I put the phone down.
There was one large job that pretty much dominated my work experience here at Remarkable, a mammoth task on Excel that spanned a total of two full days (on and off for three). Here's what it involved:
- Compiling email statistics (who opened a specific email and who also clicked a link within) into another spreadsheet
- Collating these statistics from days into weeks
- Laying out these weeks (February to April)
- A lot of mental maths
- Focus, so no employee is mentioned twice
I actually enjoyed this longer task. I could just plod my way through it, and a splash of colour helped liven up the Excel layout a bit!
In the last week, I was assigned a couple more press releases and the longer task of compiling tea and coffee bloggers for a company who want their own campaign to win new business.
It was quite exciting to know that Remarkable worked for Aldi and Cash Converters, high profile retailers! My time here was fairly filled, which I enjoyed. I also always felt that I could do the assigned tasks, which is great, no one wants to feel lost and need constant help. It also wasn't all easy, some jobs required a lot of research and time, which I liked, I was actually contributing to the business.
Introduction
For the past 6 days, I have been doing work experience here at Remarkable PR Winchester.
I currently study Creative Writing at Winchester University just up the road and took a module wherein a complete some work experience. It's pretty important to get some experience of the actual industry under your belt because most people's response to my degree is, 'oh. What do you want to do with that then?' To tell you the truth, I picked Creative Writing as a degree because I've always just enjoyed writing and didn't want the focus to be redirected into various media industries which usually comes with journalism degrees.The good thing is that writing can be attributed to any industry nowadays, I've even done some experience in a pharmaceutical company before. I had to put together a presentation trying to market a new cancer drug (that was a different and very sciencey job).
I want to try and experience as many types of business connected with writing as possible before I enter the big bad world of adulthood and getting a real job (gasp). So when I saw Remarkable PR, I was keen to go there. I'd heard a lot of good things about PR but there's also a lot of assumptions you make, like isn't it all just schmoozing and brown-nosing? I wanted to see everything that they do in PR as its often the behind the scenes team that make big businesses look good.
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