Public Relations Development Night

November 13^th 2013, I attended the Public Relations Development Night sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America association, the Hudson business lounge, and Big Shoe Network. This event was valuable to me as a student because it allowed me to practice my interviewing skills to gain experience.  I met with Alyssa Hintzen, who works for Kohl’s and Allison Kubacki, who works for Lightburn for my mock interviews. I learned from them to tie my experience back to the question asked. After the mock interviews, I had the opportunity to conduct an informational interview with Hannah Thulin, who works for C-K. The purpose of doing this was to gain knowledge on how a information interview works. An informational interview can be crucial to help learn about the company you are looking into from an employee who works there. During my informational interview, I asked a lot of questions involving subjects that I always got mixed answers about from an assortment of individuals in professional and nonprofessional careers.  My questions ranged from appropriate social media behavior to how do you find a job that is the best fit for you. Overall I learned from my mock interviews and informational interviews to put my best foot forward and to express my experience back to most questions asked of me. I also feel this opportunity gave me a little more confidence when I go to my next interview.

Steve Staedler, Cision, and B2B

On October 14^th 2013, I had the opportunity to meet Steve Staedler as shared his knowledge in my public relations tactics two course at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. Mr. Staedler graduated from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee with a bachelor’s of art in mass communication. Mr. Staedler works at LePoidevin Marketing as the senior account executive and before working at LePoidevin, he worked at Bellwether Communications as an account executive. He also worked as a reporter at Community Newspaper Inc., and CNI Newspaper. Mr. Staedler is also currently working public affairs for the U.S. Air Force Reserves. He has Mr. Staedler shared his knowledge about Cision and public relations involving business to business (B2B).When Mr. Staedler shared his knowledge about Cision, he logged into his account to let us see more of what Cision is. The most I have ever seen and used involving Cision or something similar to Cision is the hard copy book. He also shared with us that another service like Cision was Vocus. The purpose of Cision is to build media lists and be like an online news room. Cision can also monitor magazines, blogs, etc. about products or service a company wishes to keep track of. Another service he touched on about was Google Alerts, where it will let the user set up a profile and track the information wanted to be viewed. Mr. Staedler later in his presentation shared public relations involving business to business, which I didn’t know much about. He showed the class current and pass projects that he worked on with other companies. One example was tethered tools, where he showed us an article that got published for the tools. He also shared a box that was created for representatives would take to technical schools to share information about a program that they want to promote. The box had information for what they wanted to promote. After the box, we worked on a case study that involved the technical program that wanted to promote. We had to break into groups in class and think about how we would target audiences, build strategies and what tactics we would use for a way to promote a technical education program. After we discussed what we would do with the whole class, Mr. Staedler told us other opportunities we could use. One example was media tours, where the company pays to fly media journalists to see the program in hopes they will write about it for press. He said this is helpful to build relations with the trade press. Overall, I learned a lot for Mr. Staedler and he shared some advice which was to get more involved in writing outside of class. He suggested one way to get outside writing experience from school is freelancing or getting an internship.

What Happen's After Whitewater

I had the pleasure of meeting Amy Paul as she was a guest speaker in my Public Relations Tactics Two course. Amy Paul is a University of Wisconsin Whitewater graduate, who came to give us insight on her experiences to help motivate us for the future. Her presentation started out with a hard truthful statement, "The real world is closer than you think."  A very scary thought that I worry I am not prepared for. Amy Paul shared her career background. She started out working for the Milwaukee county executive office as a public relations assistant. Then moved to working for Bottom Line Marketing and Public Relations as a Public Relationship assistant again. Currently, she is working for Ascedia as the Interactive Account Coordination. Just from her career background I got the understanding she was very knowledgeable about what she was doing. She expressed that the reason she got to where she is now is because of involvement on campus, internships, networking and hard work. She went into explaining the experience she got from the involvement, internships, and networking. What I found more surprising was when she expressed that if you’re not doing any of those things, you may have trouble in the future finding a job. What she said makes sense, however scary to the person who might not be able to do those things. The most interesting advice I got from Amy Paul was when she said, "create your own internship." she explained that all her internships were unpaid, so when she interned for Children's Hospital, Qdoba Mexican Grill, University of Wisconsin Whitewater University Development Office and the Milwaukee Admirals, she put more work into the internship then needed. I found this understandable and impressive. Another thing I found eye opening was when she said if you’re a senior now and starting to network you’re in trouble. This was the one for sure thing I thought I would be alright doing as a senior. Overall some of the information she expressed was hard facts that I may not have been ready to hear, however her experience was a lot to take in and hopefully I gain something from knowing it.

My Continue Journey in PR

My name is Kyle Wiemer, a 5th year senior at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater majoring in public relations with a minor in general business. My current goal is to graduate this spring and obtain a job before graduation. I’m currently working at Lavelle Industries, a rubber factory that specializes in toilet parts. I am six classes away from completing my major, taking four of those classes now and taking the other two classes in the spring semester. The courses I’m taking right now are public relation strategies, public relation tactics two, foundations of advertising and publication layout.  In my public relations tactics two course, I hope to develop better networking skills. I have currently created a LinkedIn account to start improving my networking. I also plan on taking advantage if possible, these eight events our teacher recommends we go to for making connection with individuals in the job market. I am also one class away from completing my minor and i have a wide variety of courses I can choose from however interested in taking a management course. In my continued journey in public relations, I have even started watching the news more, especially with the issues involving Syria. I don't have cable, so I usually tend to go to the new webpage and read as much as I can. I also created a twitter account, one reason being for class and the other reason being for the news updates. I really thought I would hate twitter but so far have found it very useful in finding news articles. This concludes my first blog about my journey through PR.