Professionals offer advice during PR Day

GCSU’s annual Public Relations Day was held Nov. 4 where four professionals from the field came to share their experiences and give tips for landing a job after college. Compared to last year’s event, more certified speakers were present and student attendance increased.

The four professionals spoke every hour on topics that pertained specifically to their job in the company they are employed by. The event aimed to show public relations students, as well as other concentrations of the mass communication major, the importance of the field.

Heather Raines, assistant vice president of the Bobcat Public Relations Student Society of America, believes that PR Day is very important for students to take part in.

“PR Day is a great way for students to come out and network with professionals,” Raines said. “The people that came to speak are very successful in the public relations world. It was awesome to hear their advice and input on their field. It is important for students come and hear their first hand experience since we will all be in the job market in a few years.”

Public relations is the way in which a company is perceived, and representing a company well is important for a product to become trusted and valued.

Senior Lauren Chandley, a special events coordinator for Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), found useful tips for finding a job.

“PR Day is beneficial to all students on campus because the speakers shed light on how to land your first job,” Chandley said. “It was also a great opportunity to network and ask questions about anything from PR trends to social media and salaries.”

The four speakers covered what specific tasks they fulfill in their companies. They concluded their speeches by giving advice valuable to planning a future in the industry of PR and how to apply the knowledge gained in school to make an individual valuable when job searching.

“PR is changing rapidly, in major ways, because the industry is undergoing a lot of growth,” said Bert DuMars, the keynote speaker and vice president of E- Business & Interactive Marketing at Newell Rubbermaid.

The event provided a chance for students to get first-hand communication with professionals in the field and be able to benefit from their knowledge. There were even some students who are not concentrating in public relations that attended.

“I am majoring in advertising and print, but networking is very important and I wanted to hear any advice given,” Rebecca Burns, a junior mass communication major, said.

Students majoring in mass communication regardless of whether they are concentrating in public relations, seemed to find the information in the presentation useful.

The officers of PRSSA, who spent several months planning the event, were unsure of what to expect from this year’s event, but both Raines and Chandley were impressed with the presentations and the attendance of the event.

PRSSA made changes to receive more participation from the student body.

“This year we did a lot more to broadcast the event to the student body. We wanted people to actually know this was going on because we had some really great speakers,” Raines said.

The coordinators were unsure of what to expect from their planning, yet with four certified presenters the student attendance increased and the event turned out to be what they believe to have been a successful event.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 13 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry