Public Relations Matters

 PRCA 3330 Students

Join PR OpenMic. Spend some time in class looking around within the site. Respond to the following questions in the Comments area of this blog posting. You can either put your entire comment in the posting, or provide a hyperlink to your own blog and respond there.

• What is the most beneficial area (or areas) of PR OpenMic? Why?
• Who are some “big name” PR practitioners who have already joined PR OpenMic?
• How do you think you could benefit from PR OpenMic?
• How could you contribute to PR OpenMic?

Objective

Share the highlights (and maybe the lowlights) of your experiences in this PRCA 3330 course

Requirements

Prepare and present a short speech summarizing a top ten list for this class. Consider the most important things you got out of PR Writing. Be sure to include:

• how your writing has/will/could benefit your client
• your strengths as a PR writer
• your challenges & what you’re doing to overcome them
• other points as you see fit

Deliverables

• A presentation (two to five minutes), complete with introduction, body and conclusion
• A professional-looking PowerPoint presentation

Worth

• 50 points
• BONUS Possibility: Additional 25 points for posting your presentation to your blog using SlideShare no later than 9:00 am on 25 April. See the WordPress FAQ on how to embed the code for your SlideShare slide-deck into your blog.

What’s the purpose of a resume? It’s not to get you a job. . . instead, it’s to provide a positive first impression that MAY garner an interview for you. The advice below comes from my years of being – and listening to – hiring leaders. If you’re lucky, hiring leaders may scan your resume for up to 15 seconds before they determine if it’s worth pursuing further.

• Tailor your resume to the specific position that you’re applying for. Use the same phrasing in your resume that you’ve found in the employer’s want ad whenever possible.
• If you have less than 10 years of experience, it’s best to stick to the traditional one-page resume. Each additional 10 years helps you “earn” an additional page. (If you want or need to provide more details, offer the URL of your LinkedIn profile. See my profile.)
• Pepper your resume with terms that are relevant to the career field and industry in which you desire employment. Phrase your work experience in terms that are relevant to your career goal.
• Use reverse chronological order (most recent first) when listing your experience and education.
• If you are still in college, it’s okay to leave your high school on your resume if you have available space for it, especially if you did something noteworthy during your high school years. After you graduate from college, leave high school off your resume.
• Always start every bullet point in your experience section with an action verb. Use past tense for previous jobs and present tense for current jobs.
• If you have little paid work experience, provide details on projects done in classes to show that you are prepared to enter the working world.
• Volunteer experience counts too! Don’t forget to include service projects you’ve been involved with.
• Explain acronyms and cryptic group names on resumes. A potential employer will not automatically know that SOCS stands for Society of Communication Scholars, ILA stands for International Listening Association, or that PRestige is a public relations firm made up of college students.
• Many employers assume that if an organization’s name includes greek letters, it’s a social fraternity or sorority. If you belong to something Phi Kappa Phi, indicate that this is an honor society.
• What to do about that GPA? If it’s above 3.0 (on a 4-point scale), you may want to include it. If it starts with a 2 or lower, definitely leave it off. Or, you can include your GPA just in your major if you’d like, for example “3.4 GPA in Major.”
• Before you graduate, you can still include your anticipated degree on your resume. For example, “Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations expected in May 2008.”

For entry-level public relations positions, Jennifer Abshire of Abshire Public Relations & Marketing offers these additional suggestions:

• Leave the objective off, or customize it for the specific position you’re applying for. Don’t use a generic one that you found on a template somewhere.
• Include all your work experience, even if it seems not directly related to the position. (The worst that will happen is that it will show that you are a hard worker.) Abshire holds in high regard people who are well rounded and street smart, rather than with a high GPA and no work experience or community involvement.
• Send a few samples of your writing or design work along with your resume.
• If sending your resume (and samples) electronically, make one PDF file that has all the information in it, rather than sending multiple attachments. (For an inexpensive and easy-to-use program for creating PDFs, try CutePDF.)

After you’ve created your resume, have several people proofread it for you. Set it aside for a while. Then measure your resume up against this Resume Checklist.

Save the Date: Connect ’08

Public Relations Matters Podcast

It’s the time of year when many public relations students are scrambling to secure an internship for summer or are thoughtfully planning their internship search for fall.

As I was driving home from Georgia Southern University today, I listened to an episode of the Inside PR podcast. One of the big topics for conversation from this podcast was interns. It was interesting listening to the five hosts of Inside PR share their tips and pet peeves about interns; their discussion about interns starts almost 10 minutes into the podcast. (Hint: If you are interviewing for an internship, do not express your disdain for all tasks administrative. There are administrative aspects of virtually ALL PR professionals’ jobs.)

If you are a member of PR OpenMic, check out Kaye Sweetser’s tips on finding an internship by using Twitter. Dr. Sweetser warns, if you discover an internship opportunity on Twitter, odds are good that the company will “probably look at your Twitter to get a feel for you before the interview.”

Once you’re involved in your PR internship, India PR Blog’s Palin Ningthoujam suggests 10 things you should learn before finishing it. Pay special attention to the number of times he mentions the importance of effective writing skills.

And, as I discussed earlier this week. be sure to sweep clean your digital dirt before you begin your internship (or job) search. Your future employer will likely be doing as much research on you as you do on the employer.

When you’re preparing for a job (or internship) search, it’s time to be sure that you don’t have any “digital dirt” that a potential employer may uncover.

Imagine you’re in a job interview right now. How would you answer this question? “After our interview today, I am going to look you up online. How do you think my impression of you will change after I do this?”

Think about what’s visible in your Facebook profile, MySpace page, your blog, Flickr photos, LinkedIn profile and anywhere else that you’ve posted info about yourself. Check to see if others have tagged you in photos. Even if you’ve made your info “private,” it’s still possible that the information is accessible. (Even if a web page is taken down, you may still get to it through the Way Back Machine if you know when it was accessible.)

A discussion on this topic at PR OpenMic brought several things to consider:

” We google/facebook/myspace everyone we hire, and it’s pretty much standard practice out in the trenches.” — Michael Dolan

“I have, in the past, Googled and Facebooked my students before each new semester begins. The stuff I’ve found. So, I copy the photos and, when classes start, put the photos up on the large screen in class as I call roll. My point to them is, “If I can find it, your potential future internships and employers can find it, too.” Freaks them out, but certainly makes the point. Again, only rarely, but still … the stuff I’ve found… yikes!” — Robert French

“A good point a new PR professional brought up when speaking to one of my classes is blocking your friends list from public view. Who you associate with can be digital dirt sometimes.” — Beth Evans

Let me close with a profound thought by a PR practitioner in Washington, DC :

“Just ask yourself: Would they trust their organization’s reputation to someone who can’t keep his or her own intact?” — Felipe Benitez

Just some food for thought.

In my PR Writing courses that I’ve taught over the years, it seems as though the biggest struggle for the students is writing using Associated Press style.

To help combat this, I sought feedback from a variety of public relations practitioners and faculty members, trying to come up with a list of what PR writers REALLY need to know (cold, without even looking in the AP Stylebook) about AP Style. The most helpful advice came from colleagues on PR OpenMic, a new social network for PR students, faculty and practitioners. (See the individual responses I received in the PR OpenMic PR Writing Discussion Forum.)

The most important (and sometimes confusing) parts of AP Style for PR writers are:

• dates (especially when to abbreviate)
• addresses (especially when to abbreviate)
• names (when to use titles, etc.)
• numerals (when to spell out, when to use digits)
• datelines (which cities need to be identified with their states)

Many PR writers can also benefit from brushing up on standard grammar. My favorite site for general grammar advice is Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl. Consider subscribing to Grammar Girl’s podcast through iTunes.

Additionally, I found several websites that help my students with AP Style: see http://del.icio.us/listeningmatters/APStyle.

In today’s PRCA 3330 PR Writing class, the students shared presentations they’d developed on a variety of top ten lists regarding working with the media. Below you will find their presentations: