Faye Oakey PR.

Today I received the official results from the first year of my BA Public Relations degree at Leeds Met, I’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on the past academic year, and note my aspirations for the future – both with regards to my career and personal endeavors.

Firstly, reflections on the year; some modules it appears I’m much stronger than in others. I managed to achieve two 1sts, and two very nearly 1sts, but my individual module results varied, weaker areas therefore affected my overall for the year. My lowest result was a high 2:2 though, so I’m not complaining. I propose to spend equal time next year working on those areas less interesting to me, as I do on my personal ‘favourites’, in order to achieve a more well-rounded qualification. I am happy to achieve an overall 2:1 this year, although I aspire to get much higher results in year 2, which brings me on to:

What I hope to accomplish throughout the course of my life…

• To graduate with a 1^st
• To visit at least one of the wonders of the world (I hope to do this this summer, I’m working on a plan to visit the Grand Canyon)
• To travel Europe
• To secure a good reputation within the PR industry through work experience, networking on and offline, and maintaining communications in the PR world
• Flip a pancake  
  
• Write a book
• Be on TV - either as a presenter or games show contestant - not too varied
• To leave a positive impression on the world, or those in it
• Go to Thailand
• To climb a mountain
• To meet the Queen
•  To be content and fulfilled, with the family I’ll have, and the career direction I take
• Get married
• Own a treehouse
• To maximise my potential creatively, and spend time on things I’m passionate about
• To travel America  This is something I always wanted to do, last year I spent the summer working at camp in Great Barrington in Massachusetts, during my time in the US I visited New York, Washington DC, Boston, Miami and Atlanta, as well as Six Flags in New England. This summer I’m in Fort Collins, Colorado spending time with my boyfriend who has a scholarship here, so far we have been to San Diego and Denver for trips, so my dream of travelling in America, most certainly came true. 
• Own a house, and make it a home
• Buy a puppy
• Go to Disneyland Florida – I’ve been to the Paris version
• Go to Fiji
• Work a year abroad in Australia or New Zealand
• Visit a zoo  Denver Zoo June 2012
• Ride a horse, or an elephant
• Go skiing
• Learn a second language (I’m working on this one, my boyfriends 1st language is Hungarian, so I’ve been studying a lot)
• Swim with dolphins
• See the White House  September 2011
• Stop biting my nails
• Go dragon boat racing
• Go to Mexico
• Become a blood donor (I’m terrified of needles, so this is a huge one, but I’m determined.)

Now, I know this list may seem a little extensive, but I never said I wasn’t ambitious!

Please see my portfolio of development, which aims to follow my progress as I develop PR skills in five main areas; creativity, presentation, organisation, writing and management.

My current experience ranges from working as Account Executive / “Curator of Good Noise” at creative agency Two Birds One Stone; the youth division combining Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger and Magpie Comms, to writing for online student newspaper The Met Online, and organising charity events and other independently.

http://fayeoakeyprportfolio.wordpress.com/

On this website you will find not only my achievements from my first year studying BA Public Relations at Leeds Metropolitan University, but my CV, contact information, and links to other social media platforms with which I engage; Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest and Facebook, and of course Tumblr (here) and Wordpress (portfolio). 

Placement’s, or work experience if you prefer, are a helpful means of proactive learning during study, or I would say even essential in the current economic climate. Employers are much more interested in what you’ve done, not simply what you’ve written an essay on.

As part of my PR degree at Leeds Met we are assessed on a submitted portfolio of real experience, so for us placement opportunities are a fantastic way to gain that relevant work for real clients and learn the industry on the job.

Recently however there seems to be a lot of speculation around the topic. Not only is there the whole; paid / unpaid debate, but the issue of applications as well. 

It seems that other PR students have set a pretty bad reputation for us, sending out impersonal, uninformed and sometimes really negative emails to apply for work experience. Every PR practitioner I’ve come across so far has mentioned the poor calibre of applications and offered advice on how to approach people for placements, which a lot of the time I feel are simply common sense.

For example, the reoccurring pointer I’ve found is, not to address your email ”Dear Sir/Madam”. Well, its just polite to at least know who you are talking to. It’s easy to research -in particular - a PR agencies employees; most have a profile, or at least a picture and job title of each on their company website. 

So, I’m all for us student’s being offered advice to be more creative when trying to secure placement opportunities and stand out amongst the dozens of other ”I need work experience for uni” emails. But I can’t help but feel that a lot of agencies expect just a little too much. I found one company’s advice before applying for an unpaid placement there asking for us to be offering them new business clients, campaign ideas for their current clients, and to get ourselves coverage in three different types of media in the space of a month. A little extravagant?

My own story to securing my position involved a lot of hard work and creativity, but the application process itself was all great experience, and the end result was a paid position in a creative agency. An incentive to work hard for.

Two Birds One Stone created the ‘Student Apprentice’ as an interview process for positions within the company. Here was the process:

• PR students, and design students from both Leeds University and Leeds Metropolitan University were given the chance to express their initial interest via an email application form.
• Successful applicants were then asked to prepare a speech and take part in an interview process which was recorded by Met TV.
• 15 of us were then arranged into groups of three, and given a brief. We were asked to come up with a PR campaign for a real client: King of Shaves. 
• This was then judged by a panel and the winning team given the opportunity to be part of the TBOS team

The panel was made up of the two founders of TBOS: Adam Burns & Gerard Savva, plus Nathan Lane - the managing director of Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger and Becky Edlin - the creative team leader at Magpie. Shane Castle - Marketing Director of King of Shaves and Alex Epstein - BBC Apperentice 2010 contestant, also sat on the panel.

So as you can see, it was a lengthy process but each stage was amazing practise for each applicant. Not only did I practise writing and presenting a speech, interview techniques, being in front of a camera, networking with industry professionals, preparing a PR campaign from a brief and pitching to a client, but at the end I managed to secure a paid position in a fantastic agency, and I’m continuing to learn a lot through my experience here. 

Networking: ”forming business connections and contacts through informal social meetings” as defined in Collins dictionary.

This is a skill that is more or less expected in the business world, particularly in the communications sector. But, as a student the whole idea of meeting with ”proper professionals” is exteremely daunting when experienced for the first time. Luckily for me Leeds Met’s PR course is known for it’s excellence, with an almost perfect employability rate, and now I know why! We really are encouraged and helped along in all aspects, even areas that can’t be taught in a lecture theatre! 

Through our course tutors, the PRCA arranged a networking event giving us students a chance to network with practitioners, and brush up on our networking skills. An informal chance to chat with professionals, free wine and nibbles, how could I refuse? And even in our own territory. 

The evening really was a nice occasion, encouraging relations with PRCA staff, practitioners from various agencies such as Propaganda and Finn, and PR students from other levels. It also gave a chance to chat with our tutors, overall a pleasant evening. And frankly, I’m not sure what I was so worried about!

Last night I took part in an online conversation: Comms Chat, with Richard Bailey, senior lecturer at Leeds Met and editor of Behind the Spin. It was the first time I’d come across this initiative, which is endorsed by Wolfstar PR, and what a great idea. It is self defined as “the home of Europe’s most popular communications conversation”. I really enjoyed the opportunity to converse with likeminded people; other students, professionals and educators. Plus it was very easy to use and follow, I simply joined in via the Twitter app on my iPhone. The discussion centred around the topic of learning. One of the questions offered was “How useful is a qualification (degree level or otherwise) in PR?” to which I gave my opinion. I tweeted (abbreviated for Twitter): “As a PR student, I see my degree as essential education not only of the industry but in life skills. I’d have had no idea where to start with gaining experience without it. Education allows for exploring our interests for our future career.” Personally I feel this time in education is extremely important for my development; school is a whole lot different to the working environment and university prepares us for that. It’s about finding your strengths, interests and working out what you’d like to pursue in your career. As well as allowing for making mistakes, making friends with people with similar interests and enjoying being young before the world of work. There was also a whole host of other discussion which gave me food for thought and made for an interesting evening. I’m always looking to learn and this is a nice way to network with people who can teach. I look forward to joining in another topic soon.

Last week I had my first professional pitch to a potential client, which made me very nervous! I had no need to be, as soon as we began I felt at ease and ready to go, confirming to me again that this is exactly what I want to be doing in my future career. This week we learned that we won whoo! Go Birds! Giving me a 100% success rate so far, let’s see if I can keep it that way! Challenge to self. There was nothing more fulfilling for me to prepare the pitch, present, and eventually WIN, and I am excited to do it all over again, many times! Later in the month I have been given the opportunity to travel to London to pitch to a new client, success number two? Only time will tell.