Nice to see you again. Follow me, @SydneyOwen. Thanks for being here!
Okay, so the story goes that Gen-Y is all kinds of entitled and we expect the world on a silver platter and all that jazz.
I disagree. Until it comes to PR students looking for PR jobs.
Now, disclaimer – this is a general statement and obviously does not apply to a great deal of PR students, especially the ones I’ve been fortunate enough to mentor this year. But this does apply to people who send me one-off emails looking for a job. It may apply to you. It may not. But in general – there is this stigma about PR internships vs. entry-level positions. So on with it.
NEWSFLASH: If you want to work in Chicago (or NYC, I’d imagine, but I don’t work at an agency in NYC so let’s stick to what I know), in PR, at a big-name agency, chances are, you probably have to intern first. Period.
This is not a step back. This is not anyone undermining your education. This is not in any way insulting your intelligence. Or the institution you come from. Or all of the internships you had before you graduated. Or all of the clubs you were a part of that “got you ready” for real life.
This is how it goes. And it works.
And it’s a great thing! I thank my lucky stars EVERY SINGLE DAY that I went through the internship program at Weber before I was hired full-time. You know why? Because EVERY SINGLE DAY when I was an intern, I was learning something new – something that is expected that AAE’s (the next step beyond intern) already know. I would have drowned if I hadn’t been an intern first.
What’s more is – when you’re an intern – you have a pool of peers to fall back on, to rely on, to bounce ideas off of, and most importantly, to help you answer your questions. There are constantly interns on staff here – we have a rolling program where we have people joining the team all throughout the year. It’s fantastic the way it’s set up. When I sat down at my intern desk – there were two girls who had been there for six weeks already. There were two girls who had been there for four weeks. I was new, but I was surrounded by interns who already had the skills that I would eventually need, who could answer the questions I would eventually have.
And, to be completely honest with you, I thought I knew a lot coming in. I really did. I thought I’d walk in there and rock the house and to an extent, I did. But not as much as I thought I would. I knew the principles of PR, how to do research and I could come up with a hypothetical SWOT analysis like the best of them, but believe me when I tell you – I had no idea how the business works (and I’m still learning about that part ) and I had no idea what agency PR actually entails.
NEWSFLASH #2: Your college education doesn’t teach you ANYTHING about company politics, how an agency is run, or how you’re actually going to do your job.
At least mine didn’t. And I came from USF – one of the few accredited Mass Comm programs in the country. I thought I had a super-solid foundation for what I was about to do. I did, kinda. That being said, if you’ve gone to school, majored in PR, work at an agency now and you can say “yeah, I learned how to do this in INSERT NAME OF PR COURSE HERE,” I want to talk to you. Like, now.
School doesn’t teach you real life. School teaches you the principles about the industry so you can kinda get it and kinda understand what the hell is going on inside those four walls.
Public relations is SO MUCH MORE than what I learned in the classroom at USF. I learned more in my 8 weeks as an intern than I did in two years of PR-sequence-specific courses.
So to anyone who is still in school and looking for a job in PR, I say this: embrace an internship opportunity. More than likely, it’s paid. If I can survive in Chicago on an intern salary with all of the crazy expenses that I had when I moved here, you can too.
Embrace it because though you think agency life may be for you – and then come to find out – you may hate it. Embrace it because you can ask questions, and make mistakes, and learn all kinds of new things and have those “rookie moments” because you’re new to this whole thing. It happens.
Embrace it because if you get the opportunity to be an intern, and you rock the house, and you do really solid work and you have a skill set that sets you apart – you will get a job. Maybe not with the company that you originally intern for – but you will find work. I know dozens of interns who have gone through the program here that now have full-time jobs elsewhere. Getting your first step at a big-name agency will open up tons of doors for you. Seriously.
So stop thinking that applying for or accepting an internship at an agency is a step back or settling. I know we all dream and hope to have a job lined up after graduation because we can wave a degree proudly in the air. The fact of the matter is, there are a lot of degree-waving people. So consider an internship, even if it’s a “step back” from where you had originally pictured yourself after college. It’s not a step back. It’s a step forward. But if you see it as a step back, be it financially, a step back in “title” or what have you, it may be the best “step back” you’ve ever taken.
I know mine sure was.