State University Vs. Golf Bag

For readers curious about the title of this post my immediate reaction is: good. The intent was to be slightly less than clear in the hopes of attracting a few more sets of eyes to a curious and arguably downright confusing title of a post.

In short the title State University vs. Golf Bag is an oversimplification of both the real and merely perceived differences amongst both current students/recent grads and employers when it comes to preconceived notions about typical state school graduates and the more highfalutin golf bag toting, country club lifestyle, high society, upper level executive style of manager that new hires want need to impress.

So, what's a young chap who recently got his diploma from a public school to do to fit in? When invited on his first golf outing with customers should he be concerned that he's more likely to have an Iowa State University golf bag than a Harvard golf bag?

The short answer is that worrying only does any good insofar as it can serve as motivation to be prepared in an effort to mitigate whatever worst case scenario is feared. Does it do any good to worry about failing a calculus final? Well, if it motivates you to study hard and put in more than enough time preparing then the worrying actually did do a significant amount of good. There can definitely be a positive aspect to having a legitimate level of concern.

When it comes to conceivably feeling inferior simply because the golf bag you're carrying has the team logos of a school that doesn't rank as well in the US News and World Reports ranking of the top academic universities as the college your work golfing partner graduated from the key is to realize that whatever inferiority issue you're grappling with is probably all in your head.

In many instances the absolutely worst thing that you can do is to let your nerves get the better of you.

Here's the single best piece of advice that you'll hear on this topic and it carries over to job interviews, asking someone out on a date, and yes - going tee shot for tee shot with someone that went to a "better" school.

If you only take one piece of advice away from this entire website remember this next sentence because it might be one of the most sound pieces of advice that you ever hear.

If you're confident be yourself. If you're not confident be confident - ooze confidence.

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Public Relations Summer Internships

Public relations summer internship opportunities are very popular with marketing majors and the reasons for the popularity are quite simple.

Public relations is one of the sectors of the marketing world where any dedicated summer job searcher can have success in landing a spot at a reputable firm. These positions are often prevalent because public relations companies are generally stretched very thin, consequently it is pretty common for them to open their doors to seasonal (summer) staff whenever the opportunity presents itself.

While there are global public relations firms the industry is largely dominated by very regional players that are often broken into such small subsections as specific cities. In most instances PR firms with clout are still smallish companies that in many instances are less than ten years old. The PR world presents an interesting opportunity for an intern because it often offers a glimpse into the world of running a small business and the industry certainly offers the opportunity to someday be your own boss and preside over your own firm.

While the following descriptions of PR firms are not absolute they are believed to be reasonably accurate generalizations.

The PR business can be broken down into three main categories

1. Very large global companies
2. In house public relations departments
3. Small and mid level sized firms

The majority of the discussion in this post centers around #3 but groups #1 and #2 will now be briefly summarized.

Very large global public relations firms are relatively scarce in the current economic landscape. These firms play an important role in the industry but are somewhat limited by the unique niche they occupy. Giant global corporations like Coca-Cola and AT&T have the resources to retain their own in house public relations departments (#2). With multinational corporations employing their own in house PR teams large global public relations companies are forced to cater to midsized companies with a national presence that necessitates paying an expensive public relations firm to manage their image. Because a lot of PR is done on a very local basis there is generally a great deal of demand for boutique local PR shops to handle local clients.

Small and midsized level PR firms are in almost all cases the result of at minimum a pair of career long PR workers partnering up and consolidating their books of clients to start their own shop where they'll take on additional risk and overhead in exchange for the opportunity to enjoy more of the upside in terms of client billing. When these types of PR firms are created the brand new company needs at minimum a small support staff. This support staff is filled with several usually younger employees who aspire to be mentored in such a way that they will eventually be able to learn the business and make the connections necessary to someday open up their own businesses. There can also be numerous perks to working in PR in terms of attending opening and kick off parties. While the hours can be long and the pay reasonably low there instances where the work can actually be considered "fun" - which is more than many people can say about their jobs.

Due to the abundant supply of people interested in exploring careers in PR (an industry somewhat dominated by women) salaries are usually low compared to other industries requiring similar levels of experience. As described above the trade off in terms of current salary is often justified because the work environments lend themselves to providing an opportunity for much larger paydays down the road when the workers of today are the owners and bosses of tomorrow.

While it is not always the case that traditional college internship programs offer public relations positions these are the types of opportunities that are best learned about through networking. In many instances with the right level of resourcefulness and persuasion boutique PR firms that had no intention of bringing on summer interns can be talked into the idea of letting you help out around the office during the summer in such a way that both parties benefit.

As with most businesses along this vein the formula for success is to (a) have a network of billable clients and (b) provide added value for those clients that exceeds the amount you're charging them for your services.

Many professionals both young and old agree that the most worthwhile college internships/summer jobs are those in which the intern has a great deal of exposure and interaction with top level management. These types of situations foster the greatest level of learning and degree of understanding about how a particular business works. Public relations summer internships in most instances offer these unique opportunities for daily interaction with mentors responsible for the success of the business.

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