Public Relations News – Page 20

April 28, 2013October 15, 2013

Keys to unlocking that first job

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Debra Auerbach is writer and blogger for CareerBuilder.com and its job blog, “TheWorkBuzz.com.” Below is a summary of her advice from “College graduates who understand the job market have the best show at success.”

She says recent studies find 53 percent of United States employers plan to hire recent college graduates this year — up significantly from 2011 and 2010 and even up slighly from last year.

Here are the headings on Debra’s important tools and tips to help. See her blogs for more information. (By the way, next week’s LL’s blog will be an article written for Rowan University’s Public Relations Student Society of America’s award-winning newsletter PRomo on “Landing that first job or internship.”

Understand the Job Market
Be Open to Different Roles
Research salary Information
Make Non-work Experience Count
Show Enthusiasm and Professionalism

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April 21, 2013October 15, 2013

Three rules of (Damage Control) Crisis Communication

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Check out the many strategic communication tips in The Public Relations Practitioner’s Playbook for (all) Strategic Communicators. Visit www.larrylitwin.com

1. Get information out early.
• Respond within 2-4 hours (quicker, if possible) – if only as an
acknowledgment that you are on top of the situation.
2. Get it out yourself.
• The spokesperson should be a high profile representative of
the organization.
3. Get it out on your own terms – control the message.
• Tell it First
• Tell it Fast
• Tell it All
• Tell it Yourself

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April 14, 2013October 15, 2013

Strategic Communicators can take a page from a championship coach’s book on communication and leadership

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So how does the coach of a national champion college basketball

team turned president and coach of one of the most storied pro

basketball franchises in history define a leader? In quite simple

terms, it seems.

Rick Pitino is the only coach in NCAA history to win national championships with two colleges – Louisville in 2013 and Kentucky in 1996. His Louisville title came on the same day he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

In his book, Lead to Succeed, he breaks down leadership into a

10-point game plan:

• Have a concrete vision – in other words, be clear about your

vision for the group’s future.

• Be your own messenger – direct communication is important not

just on major issues, but on the day-to-day matters, as well.

• Build a team ego – it is the difference between mediocrity and

being something special.

• Act with integrity – don’t cut corners or bend rules; it will only

undermine your effort.

• Act decisively – you won’t always be right, but you must be willing

to put your ideas and yourself on the line.

• Be adaptable – you must change, and so must those around you

or everyone gets behind.

• Be consistent – have a strategy for when things go wrong to get

through it quickly without panic.

• Maintain focus – this is a discipline, so you must train yourself at

it, learning from the tough times.

• Live for the future, not in the past – short-term goals to manage

the present, long-term goals for the future.

• Act selflessly – leader leaders are judged by the successes of the

people they lead.

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March 31, 2013October 15, 2013

Crisis Communication: Communicate early and often

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• Contact the media before they
contact you.
• Communicate internally first, then
externally.
• Put the public first.
• Take responsibility.
• Be honest.
• Never say “No comment.”
• Designate a single spokesperson.
• Set up a central information center
(staging area).
• Provide a constant flow of information.
• Be familiar with media needs and
deadlines.
• Monitor news coverage and telephone
inquiries.
• Communicate with key publics.
• Be accessible.

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March 3, 2013October 15, 2013

Internships become the new job requirement

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While some university programs no longer require internships, students are urged to pursue them. Here is a March 4, 2013 report from: www.marketplace.com. The numbers speak for themselves. This links you to the podcast and story:

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/education/internships-become-new-job-requirement (copy and paste if link is not working properly)

By the time most kids are in high school, they’ve probably heard some career advice along these lines: get into a good college, pick a marketable major, keep those grades up, and you’ll land a good job. But that doesn’t quite cover it anymore.

In a survey out today from Marketplace and The Chronicle of Higher Education, employers said what matters most to them actually happens outside the classroom.

“Internships came back as the most important thing that employers look for when evaluating a recent college graduate,” says Dan Berrett, senior reporter at the Chronicle. “More important than where they went to college, the major they pursued, and even their grade point average.”

Colleges have been listening. This year the State University of New York, or SUNY, system is piloting cooperative education on nine of its campuses. In co-ops, students work in paid jobs with faculty supervision and earn credit toward their degrees.

“Our goal is that all 465,000 students who enroll annually at SUNY have some sort of experiential education experience,” says SUNY chancellor Nancy Zimpher.

Kristin Hayes is one of the first students at Stony Brook University, on Long Island, to do a co-op. She’ll work part-time helping care for disabled adults at a group home run by the non-profit YAI Network. Hayes is a biology major and plans to apply to graduate school to become a physician’s assistant.

“To be a competitive applicant, you really need to have a variety of experience,” she says. “I really wanted to get more experience in the field.”

David Carter wishes he’d followed his professors’ advice to do an internship in college. He graduated two years ago from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he studied mechanical engineering. In spite of good grades and a practical major, Carter hasn’t been able to find work.

“If I had done an internship, then I wouldn’t have been sitting on my thumbs the last two years, trying to find a job,” he says.

The numbers back him up. In a recent student survey, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 63 percent of paid interns in the class of 2012 had at least one job offer when they graduated. Of those who did no internship, only about 40 percent had an offer.

About the author

Amy Scott is Marketplace’s education correspondent covering the K-12 and higher education beats, as well as general business and economic stories.

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February 24, 2013October 15, 2013

More interview tips — Have YOUR questions, too

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As “CareerBuilder.com writer and blogger Debra Auerbach advises, “When preparing for interviews, many job candidates spend the bulk of their time researching the company and practicing answers to classic interview questions. While both are important, it’s just as essential to prepare some questions of you own.

“Remember, the hiring process is a two-way street, so,” she urges, “ask questions that will help you determine whether the job is right for you — make sure you are entering into an employment situation where you will be set up to succeed.”

Auerbach has seven suggested questions (check out The WorkBuzz.com):

1. What are you seeking in the ideal candidate for this position?

2. Can you give me examples of the types of projects I’d be working on?

3. With whom would I be working most closely?

4. What are the short- and long-term goals for this position?

5. What do you see as the biggest challenge for the person who assumes this role?

6. How did this position become available?

7. What do you like best about working here?

Check out Auerbach’s website.

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February 17, 2013October 15, 2013

Who or whom? Here’s a simple trick

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(From ragan.com — news and ideas for communicators. Sign up for its RSS feed. It is a valuable resource.)

No need for a full semester on grammar; the clue lies in a single letter.

By Daphne Gray-Grant

Do you lose sleep over rules of grammar?

I usually don’t, because I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where both parents insisted that I speak correctly all the time. My father was a writer and, frankly, a snob about English. His mother (who died before I was born) was from Oxford, and he spoke with an English accent his entire life, even though he’d never stepped off North American shores.

We were required to pronounce the word tomato, toe-MAW-toe, or get in trouble. Trust me, there were no ain’ts in our house, no sentences without verbs, and no double negatives.

As a result, I can usually count on my ear to guide me, even when I don’t fully understand the grammar rule.

The one exception? Who versus whom. I always have to think really hard about which word to use, even though the grammar isn’t terribly complicated.

I think my hesitation arises because so many people don’t bother using “whom” at all; they just say “who.” As a result, my ear (and likely yours) has never been exposed to the necessary “training” to make the correct choice.

So, here is the rule: Who is a subject, and whom is an object. If I yell at my son (because he just ate the last cupcake), then I am the subject and my son is the object. The subject of any sentence is the person doing something, and the object is having something done to them.

You use “who” when you are referring to the subject and “whom” when you are referring to the object. How do you figure that out, you ask? Well, the quick trick is to answer the question with either “he” or “him”:

Take: Who/whom were you yelling at? And ask yourself which of the following makes more sense:

I was yelling at him.

I was yelling at he.

Clearly the first choice makes more sense. Him. And because “him” ends with an M, you need to use whom (which also ends with an M.)

Let’s try another example: Who/whom won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2012? Now ask yourself, would you say:

S/he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2012.

Or,

Her/him won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2012.

Clearly, the first choice makes more sense, so “who” is the correct word.

Actually, that was a trick question. No one won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2012. The judges declined to award a prize that year.

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February 10, 2013October 15, 2013

5 key traits of a successful PR professional

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This story first appeared on PR Daily in February 2012.
To be successful in the world of modern public relations, there are certain essential characteristics that one must possess to fight adversity, capitalize on opportunities, maintain a positive image, encourage word of mouth, and build strategy.

While drafting this post, I jotted down 17 must-have characteristics. But I whittled the list down to these top five:

Thick skin. This is definitely not a profession for the timid or faint of heart. Modern PR pros need to develop the ability to withstand personal and brand criticism, and not be easily offended.

Resiliency. You are going to get knocked to the mat quite often, how quickly you can recover from and adjust to misfortune or change often acts as the barometer of your personal and brand image. Since you are most likely the face of your brand or provide counsel to those that are, developing or coaching resiliency is a key characteristic of a PR pro.

Attention to detail. Digital communication has placed brands on the slide and under the microscope requiring meticulous review and careful planning of all communication to media and the community. An infinitesimal error can be magnified 1,000-times and although few expect perfection, egregious errors, especially on first impressions, can shift the tides of sentiment from positive to negative.

Creativity. To say in today’s society that consumers are inundated with content and journalists receive a deluge of pitches daily is a radical understatement. Often, what tends to resonate best is creativity born of ideas outside the norm. Learn to be creative.

Relationship builder. In PR, relationships are everything. The core of our profession is the ability to build rapport and bridge communication chasms through quality conversations that build strong relationships. What characteristics would you add to the list?

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February 2, 2013October 15, 2013

Ragen’s PR daily says ‘Stop the madness! Rules for using the exclamation point’

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You too may subscribe to this RSS feed. Go for it at:

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/13860.aspx#

A recent study reported on PR Daily found that “43 percent of online daters consider bad grammar a ‘major’ turnoff.”

So I think it’s safe to say that bad grammar can affect relationships. And so can punctuation. Does anyone remember the “Seinfeld” episode in which Elaine breaks up with her boyfriend over his failure to use an exclamation point?

In case you missed it, Elaine’s boyfriend had written down some phone messages, one of which said that her friend had baby. Elaine found it “curious” that he didn’t think someone having a baby warranted an exclamation point.

“Maybe I don’t use my exclamation points as haphazardly as you do,” he quips.

When Elaine later tells Jerry about the break up, he responds: “It’s an exclamation point! It’s a line with a dot under it!”

RELATED: A punctuation mark for the mildly enthused

Oh, no, no, no, Jerry, an exclamation point is so much more than just a line with a dot under it. It is one of the most exploited, abused, overused, and misused punctuation marks in the English language. I can’t count how many times I see an exclamation point after the most mundane statements.

“Thank you for setting up your account with us!”

“Your order has shipped!”

“Laura!”

“I’ll see you at the conference!”

Why all the emphasis? Does anyone remember what we were taught in grade school? “If everything is emphasized, nothing is.” And this is exactly what our style guides tell us.

From the Associated Press Stylebook:

“Emphatic expressions: Use the mark to express a high degree of surprise, incredulity or other strong emotion.

“Avoid overuse: Use a comma after mild interjections. End mildly exclamatory sentences with a period.”

Likewise, from The Chicago Manual of Style:

“Use of the exclamation point. An exclamation point (which should be used sparingly to be effective) marks an outcry or an emphatic or ironic comment.”

The American Medical Association Manual of Style—which I use in my day job as a medical writer—takes an even more conservative approach.

“Exclamation points indicate emotion, an outcry, or a forceful comment. Try to avoid their use except in direct quotations and in rare and special circumstances. They are not appropriate in scientific manuscripts and are more common in less formal articles, such as book reviews, editorials, and informal essays, where added emphasis may be appropriate. If they are used, limit their use to one.”

In the words of novelist Elmore Leonard: “Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.”

PR Daily readers, care to comment on the use and abuse of this “line with a dot under it”?

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/13860.aspx#

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