By: Ian Junwei Gu
As a public relations intern, you may sometimes find yourself sitting in the office and feeling like you aren’t doing anything all that important for the day. Maybe you feel like you’re wasting your time and learning little from the internship? Then maybe it is time to figure out how to maximize your internship.
Throughout my summer internship at Illume Public Relations, an agency specializing in digital media and consumer tech, I have enjoyed the intense and fast-paced working experience with my team. Still, at times I did not have a specific task to do, and the last thing I wanted to do was kill my time by just sitting there scrolling through my Twitter and Instagram streams. Therefore, I came up with several approaches to keep myself busy and maximize the experience.
1) Always Ask
First and foremost, you can always ask your supervisor or co-workers to see if there is anything you can help with. Sometimes your supervisor assumes that you are working on something so they wont assign you another task, especially when you report to a team rather than a specific person. It’s highly likely that everyone might think someone else has given you work.
2) Read all materials that you can access
This may depend on how your company shares the internal documents, but you should be able to access some materials, like emails and meeting notes. For example, when I was free, I would open our Dropbox folder to read the pitches, press releases, media kit and briefing sheets. From these documents, not only did I get familiar with our company’s clients, but I also was able to gain deeper insights to the PR industry. But remember to keep your ethics code in mind all the time and never take or disclose any internal information without authorization.
3) Keep your ears open
A conversation or a phone call can give you ample insights on how the company tackles issues or problems as well. Maybe you aren’t invited to speak during the phone meeting with a client or conversations on new product launch strategy, but you can always listen to these conversations and mark down whatever you find is useful. Again, I am NOT suggesting you to steal any confidential information. It’s just another way to understand how PR professionals work in the real world.