For the entire The Philadelphia Inquirer Nov. 7, 2011 “Marketplace” tip, mail: larry@larrylitwin.com. It will be mailed to you. To comment: larry@larrylitwin.com. You are also invited to check out Chapter 13 – Speeches – in The Public Relations Practitioner’s Playbook.
At some point in your career, you are likely to be asked to give a speech – whether it’s to co-workers, managers, industry colleagues or clients.
Let’s be honest (says The Philadelphia Inquirer), “Only a few people actually enjoy speaking in public. For all of the rest of us, here are eight tips on making the experience not nightmare-inducing. Perhaps, it can even be fun.
According to Tribune Media Services: “Good interviews aren’t always based on basics – less obvious action can help raise your profile.” To comment: larry@larrylitwin.com
When interviewing for a job, it’s important to speak clearly and to be honest about your past
and potential. It’s also essential to research the company beforehand so you’ll be able to successfully navigate the interviewer’s specific questions about the company’s industry. But not all jobs are won or lost by following the most obvious of interview rules. Here are five secrets of a successful interview:
1. Don’t turn down a glass of water or cup of coffee if offered. It puts you on a more personal level with your interviewer and gives you a minute or two to scope out the office for possible clues on talking points, as well as a chance to regain your composure. Also, the cup or glass will give you something to do with your hands during awkward quiet moments. And, you will be able to attack that dry-mouth more effectively if a drink is nearby.
2. Ask questions, but don’t insult the interviewer. In other words, you won’t need to tell your interviewer the obvious with thinly veiled questions like, “Why are there so many open positions?” Questions about the company’s performance should be handled Carefully, as well. Consider asking, “How will this new hire be able to contribute to the company’s future growth?” is more subtle and effective than, “Are you guys still losing money?”
3. Whenever possible, give specific examples of the ways the company or company’s product already has impacted your life or how it will impact it in the future. If you’re interviewing for a position with a grocery store or department store chain (WawaTarget, Walmart, etc.), mention your weekly trips to one of their store locations. If you’re courting a furniture company, mention how you’re looking forward to decorating your new home with a specific couch or table. (Get the idea? Work your personal experiences into the interview – but do NOT overdo it.)
4. Don’t rush. Most interviewers block out at least an hour of time for each person they speak with. Don’t feel the need to tell your life story in the first 10 minutes. Instead, find ways to attach important pieces of information about yourself with various answers. You won’t lose points by taking your interviewer on occasional detours. In fact, he/she may be more interested in your explanation of how you learned the importance of personal responsibility when you worked your way through college than your routine answer as to whether or not you prefer to work in a team setting or alone.
5. Give your interviewer something to remember you by. At this point in the candidate selection process, most job seekers are fairly similar, considering they’ve all been called in for an interview based on separate resumes. Your interview is your chance to stand out. Mention something exciting you did over the weekend or ask about a photo or object on your interviewer’s desk. Aside from striking a personal note, you’ll be able to reference this in your Thank-You Letter — something as simple as, “Hope you’re able to catch another large-mouth bass this weekend.” This gives your interviewer something to remember you by, hopefully further separating you from the others that he interviewed for the job.
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Nov. 20, 2011) carries a Monster Worldwide, Inc. full page on “Using your looks for career success (without going overboard).
You can link to it right here. Please read it and heed Robert DiGiacomo’s words (for Yahoo HotJobs). He knows of what he speaks. [To comment: larry@larrylitwin.com]
As the Courier-Post’s Celeste Whittaker notes in a recent column. Major League Baseball “swings and misses” with its dress code. Not that Whittaker doesn’t agree with it, she just doesn’t believe it needs to be codified.
MLB’s dress code apparently evolved last year when the New York Jets had the controversy with the sideline reporter Inez Sainz of Mexico’s TV Aztec. She was alledgedy, according to Whittaker, “wearing tight-fitting clothes and low-cut shirts and claims she was essentially harassed by players and coaches.” “But,” says Whittaker, “Sainz’s wardrobe is not typical for a media member.”
Here is MLB’s list of what media members may NOT wear:
see-through clothing
ripped jeans (distressed jeans)
one-shouldered or strapless
bare midriffs
“excessively short” skirts, dresses or shorts
visible undergarments
tank tops
flip flops
anything with a team logo
The bottom line: As I often communicate to Rowan University and other students — male and female — dress appropriately. And, when interviewing for an internship or job, dress for the position you are a applying for. You get only one chance to make that first good impress impression.
Cape May County Herald.Com (Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011) ran this piece on Atlantic Cape Community College’s annual public relations panel discussion. This year’s topic was Crisis Communication. The panel traditionally runs the day before Thanksgiving.
To comment: larry@larrylitwin.com. My Rowan University students were inited to attend and many did. Here is the article by Al Campbell. [See pictures below]
COURT HOUSE – When the worst happens, how will good public relations smooth the road to the future?
That’s what a panel of publicists discussed Wed., Nov. 23 with communications and public relations students from Atlantic Cape Community College and Rowan University at the Third Annual Public Relations Panel Discussion.
Assistant Professor Joy Jones introduced her students and visitors to the Court House campus to some local PR pros: Barbara Murphy, owner-partner, Fish with Feet LLC; Lenora Boninfante, Cape May County communications director; Larry Litwin, Rowan University professor; Corinthea Harris, Atlantic Cape student, 2011 Communication Major of the Year and intern at Suasion Communications; and Kathleen Corbalis, APR, Atlantic Cape’s executive director of College Relations.
Youthful publicists of the future heard about some recent tragedies: deaths of four Mainland Regional High School football players, a girl’s death on Morey’s Pier Ferris wheel, a carjacking at an Atlantic City casino, and Hurricane Irene.
All those, and the ongoing Penn State University sex scandal as well as the shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech, served as examples of what can happen in business, education and in government, and how they were handled, or mishandled, by public relations officials.
Boninfante cited the importance of keeping the public informed by use of every available means, as in Hurricane Irene, when an
evacuation order largely cleared the county a week prior to Labor Day Weekend.
“My job is to make sure you are informed,” she said. Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, she said there was not as much focus on preparedness as now.
“You have to have a plan, that’s the most important thing you can do when faced with a crisis, so you are not scrambling,” Boninfante said.
She noted the importance of social media, but added that, if someone posts inaccurate information, instead of engaging that person, it is best to simply post the truth from an official standpoint.
Litwin, a former KYW and ABC reporter, covered the MOVE tragedy, long before any of the students in the room could recall, in Philadelphia when 11 were killed and 65 homes destroyed in a massive fire.
Litwin, in his 42nd year of communications, said he had been discussing in his Rowan class the Penn State crisis.
“Penn State did everything wrong,” he said. The university knew this was going to break,” he said. Officials knew of at least part of the “horror” since 1998, Litwin said.
Still, there was silence and no plan on the part of the university to contain or control the flow of information from the executive office.
He cited the “golden hours” when the “media wants it immediately. They want to get the message out. Within those two to four hours, you have to address the media because they are getting the story,
say ‘This is all we know at this stage, but we are gathering the facts,’” Litwin said.
He urged, “Tell it first, tell it fast, tell all, and tell it yourself.”
“Penn State told nothing. It wasn’t the chairman of the board who spoke, it was their vice chairman who spoke,” he added.
Virginia Tech, on the other hand, was ready with a staging area for the media, and maintained a constant flow of information to the media. They had someone monitoring incoming news, and made sure they were communicating with their key public, he said.
Relationships are vital with editors and reporters, said Litwin. Those are invaluable when a public relations professional must be available to handle the situation when bad news breaks, he said.
Corbalis recalled a time when she was new with the college in the 1980s, and the college president called her in to inform her with the news that controller was believed to be embezzling funds.
“I give him a lot of credit for that, and how he handled a crisis,” she said.
She noted the president kept her informed through every stage of the matter. He learned through an internal investigation, contact law enforcement agencies, and hid nothing from her.
“I was in my 20s at the time. I was made aware, on a confidential basis of everything that was happening,” she said.
Subsequently, the controller was arrested and charged.
“Atlantic Community College, as it was known at the time, had a statement. We were first with it. We told our story, and took responsibility. We expressed concern, and reassured everyone no student money was involved,” Corbalis said.
“It was a well constructed story. That’s not what happened at Penn State. We were giving information. We were open, transparent and above board,” Corbalis added.
Technology has changed how public relations officials meet crisis, Corbalis noted.
She cited an “act of God” thunderstorm in 2003 when lightning struck and a power surge wiped out all power to the Mays Landing campus.
There was no website, no power for four days, and no social media to communicate to students.
Corbalis took it upon herself to produce paper fliers that were handed to each student as they arrived on campus.
News media today, with immediate means of dispensing information, as well as text messaging to each student would negate the need for all that work, she said.
Part of a public relations person, said Corbalis, is to monitor the client’s on-line presence, and to garner bad as well as good data that may be stated about the client.
She cited an example of social media, Facebook in particular, at the college when students were complaining of course books not being available for purchase at the bookstore.
She gathered that information, and informed the person in charge of that department of the problem, so it could be corrected as quickly as possible.
All agreed that, whenever possible, it is best that a company chief executive should be the source of information in a crisis.
Boninfante said every New Jersey county, municipality, school and nursing home and hospital is mandated to have an emergency response plan.
Included in those plans, she said, is a communications plan. “It has to be a piece of your plan,” she said.
She cited the idea of a “dark website” one that is ready at a moment’s notice to be used to disseminate information should a crisis occur.
say ‘This is all we know at this stage, but we are gathering the facts,’” Litwin said.
He urged, “Tell it first, tell it fast, tell all, and tell it yourself.”
“Penn State told nothing. It wasn’t the chairman of the board who spoke, it was their vice chairman who spoke,” he added.
Virginia Tech, on the other hand, was ready with a staging area for the media, and maintained a constant flow of information to the media. They had someone monitoring incoming news, and made sure they were communicating with their key public, he said.
Relationships are vital with editors and reporters, said Litwin. Those are invaluable when a public relations professional must be available to handle the situation when bad news breaks, he said.
Corbalis recalled a time when she was new with the college in the 1980s, and the college president called her in to inform her with the news that controller was believed to be embezzling funds.
“I give him a lot of credit for that, and how he handled a crisis,” she said.
She noted the president kept her informed through every stage of the matter. He learned through an internal investigation, contact law enforcement agencies, and hid nothing from her.
“I was in my 20s at the time. I was made aware, on a confidential basis of everything that was happening,” she said.
Subsequently, the controller was arrested and charged.
“Atlantic Community College, as it was known at the time, had a statement. We were first with it. We told our story, and took responsibility. We expressed concern, and reassured everyone no student money was involved,” Corbalis said.
“It was a well constructed story. That’s not what happened at Penn State. We were giving information. We were open, transparent and above board,” Corbalis added.
Technology has changed how public relations officials meet crisis, Corbalis noted.
She cited an “act of God” thunderstorm in 2003 when lightning struck and a power surge wiped out all power to the Mays Landing campus.
There was no website, no power for four days, and no social media to communicate to students.
Corbalis took it upon herself to produce paper fliers that were handed to each student as they arrived on campus.
News media today, with immediate means of dispensing information, as well as text messaging to each student would negate the need for all that work, she said.
Part of a public relations person, said Corbalis, is to monitor the client’s on-line presence, and to garner bad as well as good data that may be stated about the client.
She cited an example of social media, Facebook in particular, at the college when students were complaining of course books not being available for purchase at the bookstore.
She gathered that information, and informed the person in charge of that department of the problem, so it could be corrected as quickly as possible.
All agreed that, whenever possible, it is best that a company chief executive should be the source of information in a crisis.
Boninfante said every New Jersey county, municipality, school and nursing home and hospital is mandated to have an emergency response plan.
Included in those plans, she said, is a communications plan. “It has to be a piece of your plan,” she said.
She cited the idea of a “dark website” one that is ready at a moment’s notice to be used to disseminate information should a crisis occur.
Below is the panel (from left to right) Kathleen Corbalis, APR, Atlantic cape Community College; Corinthea Harris, public relations major, ACCC; M. Larry Litwin, APR, Fellow PRSA, Rowan University associate professor; Lenora Boninfante, Cape May County communications director; and Barbara Murphy, owner-partner, Fish with Feet LLC.
M. Larry Litwin, APR, Fellow PRSA. Professor Joy Jones, ACCC is below followed by Kathleen Corbalis, APR, ACCC executive director of college Relations. and Corinthea Harris, ACCC public relations major.
Kaitlin Madden of CareerBuilder, has some advice about making the most of holiday parties. To comment: larry@larrylitwin.com.
She says, “Create connections that lead to future job opportunities.”
First of all, Madden suggests “being friendly with those you meet. They may provide important connections or job leads later on.” Madden lists these five tips:
1. Find a connection
2. Present a professional front.
3. Don’t be late.
4. Be interested, not interesting.
5. Don’t force the work subject.
You can check out Kaitlin Madden — and should — using Google or another search engine. She has excellent tips, including what to wear. Please keep in mind, “You are always communicating,” say Jack Horner and Mike Gross (Rowan ’03) of Jack Horner Communications.
Paul DeNucci, author, The International Networker says, “Remember that events are never about you. The way to win friends and great contacts is to make others comfortable in your presence. Be interested, not interesting.”
Advice from Larry Litwin, “Keep your business card handy. Be ready for an exchange as you complete your elevator speech.”
Remember: YOU are a brand. Package tourself properly.
Madden offers this “What to wear” advice.
In general, when picking out an outfit, Lupo offers the following guidelines:
Look polished, not overdone.
Remember that you are sending out a message about yourself professionally in the way you dress, and you want to be sure that your message is consistent. Tomorrow morning, you will wake-up and go to work with these people — conduct yourself accordingly.
Always be tasteful, not overtly sexy. If you’re on the fence between something sexy and something more conservative, go conservative.
Remember Visual Therapy’s rules. Ask yourself: Do I love it? Is it flattering? Is this the image I want to portray? Is this comfortable? (This includes shoes, ladies!)
With the losses of Andy Rooney and the champ, Joe Frazier, and the horrendous news coming out of State College, last week was a “down” week for many. I have
communicated with many reporters and with my students — even devoting classes to the Penn State case study and how NOT to approach a crisis.
For this week’s blog, I will turn back to Smokin’ Joe. I first met him on Dec. 6, 1970. We remained acquaintances as I moved deeper into sports reporting. Back on that 1970 day at the Nevele Country Club in the New York Catskills, Champ honored me by joining me in a picture. He was there performing with his band, “Smokin’ Joe and the Knockouts.” [See link, below.] Joe was a far better boxer than musician. But he loved music nearly as much as he did boxing.
In case you aren’t sure, that is Litwin on the left. May the Champ rest in peace.
Larry Litwin’s The Public Relations Practitioner’s Playbook clearly lays out what one should do when faced with a crisis.
In response to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain’s mishandling of facts and accusations, this is what experts say. The advice parallels The PR Playbook’s Chapter 14 — Crisis Communications.
This shifting story is a problem for the Cain campaign, says Jack Pitney, who appeared on NPR’s “Morning Edition” on Nov. 1
“This is not good political damage control,” said Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont (Calif.) McKenna College. He says inconsistency from a campaign can be much more damaging than the initial charge.
“They should have been prepared with a response right from the get go. Get your facts straight. Get your side of the story out and stick to it. And an inconsistent response, or even worse an inaccurate response, just worsens the problem that you’re facing.
Pitney says it’s not clear whether this is something Cain will recover from, or whether it’s the beginning of the end for his presidential run.
Republican political consultant Todd Harris says Cain cannot sit by. This is a story will not soon go away (thanks in no small part to 24/7 news).
Says Harris: “If they are simply just hoping that it goes away, I’m afraid they’re going to be as ill-prepared tomorrow and the next day as they have been this past week.”
Harris says a crisis like this bumps a campaign off its message. The campaign loses control. “That’s why it’s so important in a crisis situation to deal with it as quickly as you possibly can to pivot back onto your message, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to deal with it.”
As stated in Litwin’s The PR Practitioner’s Playbook, within minutes of a crisis, gather the facts and then:
Tell it first
Tell it fast
Tell it all
Tell it yourself
Litwin’s books are available at all major bookstores, click and mortar or brick and mortar, and on www.larrylitwin./com.
By comparison, starting salaries in the legal field are expected to see a 1.9 percent bump, while IT professionals will likely see a 4.5 percent increase. The average increase for all office workers is 3.4 percent.The report also reveals average starting salaries for a number of positions in the PR and marketing fields.
For instance, the starting salary for a PR specialist in a corporate environment, with one to five years of experience, ranges from $38,750 to $60,500. PR specialists with more than five years of experience can expect a starting salary of between $59,000 and $82,750, according to the report.
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