Interning is by no means making and fetching coffees like the movies might suggest! Interning gives you the opportunity to gain experience on the tasks that a junior PR practitioner would do. Every agency will have different internship programs, but all have the same goal and purpose: to help prepare you for PR success (a PR consulting career).
So what does a typical day look like for an intern – and how do you excel in your work experience program and impress the company you’re with?
Every day is completely different, but the first and most important thing to do each day is to make a list of all the tasks to be completed and prioritise them. My usual first task of the day is to join the team in the daily media review. Now onto task 2: media monitoring. Some interns may see this as a tedious task, but it is actually interesting to see the types of results we get during and after a campaign! Media monitoring involves searching for coverage relevant to your clients and placing information regarding the coverage on a document. It must be done accurately in order to effectively measure the success of a story or campaign.
It’s not quite lunch time yet…time for another task! I have been given an urgent task to do: quickly help draft some social media posts. I scroll through Instagram, create a few potential captions and the task is complete. After lunch, I commence a more challenging task: drafting a media release. As an intern, writing a media release is still relatively new and challenging. But as they say, practice makes perfect! I dedicate a few hours of my time to draft and edit this media release and move on to my final task of the day: research. Researching can be exciting as it is not often you research the same thing. You may be asked to research anything from past campaigns to finding influencers for upcoming campaigns. Researching will likely involve lots of reading and possibly even watching videos!
Interns are not always at an agency full time, so it is extremely important to let your team members know the status of the tasks they give you. At the end of each day, I let each team member know which tasks I have completed and ask what must be prioritised for the following day. I farewell my colleagues and look forward to another day.
Each day is new, exciting and filled with plenty to do! You will never be bored as someone will always have a task for you. If, for some strange reason, you find yourself with nothing to do, be proactive and just ask. But most of all, enjoy your internship and make the most of it as a learning experience.
