Many companies are inundated with requests for work experience, or potential employment, and Warwick Emanuel PR is no different. In the current economic climate it’s more important than ever for graduates and jobseekers to do all that they can to make a good impression and get ahead, and some of the approaches we receive are very memorable, but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.
Annabel John is currently a student at Cardiff University where she is studying French and German, but would like to pursue a career in Public Relations when she graduates. She has just spent a week with us after completing placements with two other local companies. Annabel impressed us with her excellent covering letter, previous experience and the fact that she had spent most of her summer holidays working to get even more under her belt!
Here she advises fellow students and jobseekers how to make an impression for all the right reasons.
With my final year of university about to start, it is time for me to start applying for graduate schemes and looking for a job. It is quite a daunting thought but after this summer, I am actually rather excited about it. Having had a gap year and studying French and German, which is a four year university course, the road to the ‘real’ world is quite a long one for me! I am quite lucky in as much as I know that I want to have a career in Public Relations and I have had quite a successful summer in terms of work experience and internships. I have gained experience into quite a few different areas of PR through placements at three different agencies and I am sure that this experience will be invaluable to me in the future. But how did I go about getting these placements?
The first thing I did was to revamp my CV. Yes it sounds quite basic, but things like my GCSE results are no longer as important as other skills that I have acquired since then. I tried to identify the skills that are significant to a career in PR and highlighted things I have done to develop these skills. It is important to only include relevant things as nobody wants to read a 5 page long CV! I have always been told to try and keep it to two pages.
A good covering letter is crucial. Nobody will even bother to read your CV if you have written a covering letter that is littered with spelling and grammatical errors. It is essential to make your covering letter personal. A paragraph or two explaining a little more about yourself is quite important- just highlighting the skills you have, ones you would like to develop and such like. Research the company that you are asking for work experience too, explain why you want to go there in particular. Most people send out a lot of requests for work experience, and I have been told about one or two horror stories where people have forgotten to change the company name in a covering letter! A stupid, avoidable error which could be the difference between getting a placement or not! If you are planning on sending your CV out on mass, then double check details like that! A quick phone call to the company to find out who the most appropriate person to send your letter to is also important.
If you are fortunate to be offered a placement somewhere then make the most of it! The first thing you will probably be asked is what you would like to get out of the placement so have a think before arriving. For me, this has been great because it meant that I have been given lots of tasks that have helped to develop certain skills, for example I can now write a pretty good press release- and very little gets changed from draft to issuing which is quite exciting. Dressing appropriately is another easy thing to do which will make a big difference. It is almost impossible to change somebody’s first impression of you so look smart on your first day- from then on you can gauge how everyone else is dressed and adapt accordingly! Enthusiasm is probably the final thing which I think is of the utmost importance. You may be given slightly mundane tasks to do initially but everyone has to start somewhere! Do these efficiently and enthusiastically and it will not go unnoticed. Anyone in a job knows what it is like doing an internship or work experience- I guarantee you will be given more exciting projects too!
This summer has proved to me how diverse and interesting PR is and has strengthened my knowledge that this is the career for me. My placements this summer have given me that extra bit of confidence and determination to try to stand out from the crowd and succeed in breaking into this very competitive career path…well hopefully succeed anyway!
Written by Annabel John – future Public Relations practitioner
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