“Get Experience To Get An Edge”

Anya Court, graduand of University of Birmingham, writes about her work experience placement at Haslimann Taylor:

So you’re a student weighing up your career options. How about a glamorous PR job – an endless orgy of champagne-fuelled launch parties, tottering into the office in designer heels and hanging out with celebrities? If this is your impression of PR, then clearly you haven’t done work experience!

Before I embarked on a work experience placement at Haslimann Taylor I wasn’t so naïve as to think a career in PR fitted the jaded stereotype of Eddy Monsoon, or even her modern counterpart Lauren Conrad, but I’ll admit I still had only a vague idea of what the ‘day job’ entailed.

If you really want to find out what a career is like, asking people already working in that sector, googling ‘PR’, or allowing yourself to be influenced by films and television is just not enough; you have to experience it for yourself. It is also now more vital than ever to get work experience under your belt to give your graduate job applications an edge. Not only are there more graduates generally, many of whom want to pursue popular careers like PR, but we are in the midst of a recession which means less entry-level opportunities for graduates.

The best advice I can give to students is that it is never too early to begin getting work experience. Your first and second years at university are ideal for building up your CV because you have spare time in which to do it. Come third year, with the pressure of a dissertation, numerous essays and your finals suddenly it dawns on you that you haven’t even thought about your career options, you’ll wish you hadn’t spent all your summers boozed up in the Balearics.

You may even find that a period of work experience will completely change your career ambitions. During my A-Levels and first and second years reading English at University of Birmingham I had my heart set on newspaper journalism, so began to build up my portfolio and CV by writing off to local, regional and national newspapers to get any work experience I could.

I undertook placements at my local hometown newspaper as well as at The Sunday Mercury, a regional tabloid newspaper based in Birmingham, and two nationals, The Sunday Mirror and The Times. I got a lot out of them, finding that I had to show journalists and editors that I was capable and build a good relationship with them before they allowed me to write articles, some of which I’m proud to say were published.

My aspirations changed however when I attended a talk organised by my university careers service where Bron Eames, managing director at Haslimann Taylor, conducted a presentation on careers in PR. I decided to give work experience there a try, to see life on the other side of the fence, and found that PR involves much more variety than I’d thought, with no two days the same.

Work experience at Haslimann Taylor is very well structured, with a clear and organised programme of work in place – a contrast to the newsroom where I had to beg and plead for meaningful assignments.

I found that PR can be a thankless job at times, with hours spent phoning time-pressed journalists who often see you as an unwelcome distraction to the job in hand. I begin my spiel, and then hear a tapping down the phone line and realise that they have continued to type, phone held between ear and shoulder, and are only half-listening to me while I try to sell-in a story. I have realised that to succeed in PR you have to take this kind of thing on the chin!

In my opinion, Haslimann Taylor offers excellent work experience placements. In the weeks I have spent with the company I have gained knowledge of most of the agency’s clients and have completed a variety of jobs from writing press releases, to working on client websites and helping organise events to attending a client meeting. There has been the odd tea round, but less than you’d imagine as even the MD Bron chips in!

Having spent a total of seven weeks at Haslimann Taylor, I now feel confident that I understand what a career in PR truly involves. Over the coming weeks as I begin my search for my first proper PR role, I will actually know what I’m talking about and can demonstrate a portfolio of real client work I have completed. It’s an edge I hope may just make the difference for me in this undoubtedly tough year for graduate recruitment.

Anya Court during her work experience placement with Haslimann Taylor