Rachael Thomas
Salisbury University Public Relations Practicum
Final Column
PR and HR. Same Thing.. Right?
When people think of the words “public relations” they often have no idea what this job entails. What does PR do? How are they associated with the company that they work for?
When trying to describe it to me, my boyfriend once confidently stated, “It’s the same thing as HR… right?”
Wrong. I had to tell him otherwise.
Though I had learned a little about public relations in some of my classes, even I was not positive what I was getting into when I signed up for this communication arts track.
My practicum at the Salisbury University Public Relations office has given me the opportunity to learn about what PR offices do, the types of jobs you can get and how I can strive to be the best professional in my future.
Where human resource (HR) jobs work internally with their employees, public relations is a very customer service based job. PR employees answer questions and phone calls about various events, work closely with media outlets and, in summary, try to portray their company in the most positive light possible.
Writing, sending and posting press releases about awards or events, keeping records of articles and distributing newsletters are just some of the things that we did while I worked in the office. Keeping records of all the articles SU is mentioned in is NOT as easy as it sounds.
When SU is mentioned in an article, the PR office is alerted. We print these articles, file them chronologically by date, note their title, describe how the article is related to Salisbury University and link an electronic copy of the article in an excel file. (PHEW, I’m worn out thinking about it!)
The issue that I encountered one day was the whole “chronological” part.
I spent hours flying through bunches of SU clips, writing (In PEN I might add) each article’s information in the binder, in the excel folder and linking them. Finally when I got to the last three articles I realized that they were supposed to be the very first articles I entered.
I was in shock! These articles had to be put in based on the date they were published and I had already gone though what felt like hundreds.
Without telling my supervisor Megan (out of embarrassment mostly), I then proceeded to go back and white out every article that I had filed, renumber and rewrite each one. Meanwhile carefully remembering to add the last three at the top this time.
Luckily the excel file was easier to fix. Because you can add cells in above ones that you have already made, all I had to do was renumber them and add the ones that I had missed above.
Alas, by the end of the day my lesson was learned. It is better to do things carefully than quickly. In the end it will take more time to fix your mistakes than if you had done it correctly the first time.
I learned many other lessons during my time at the SU PR office. One of the main reasons that I learned so much was because of Megan Baker. An SU graduate and former SU PR practicum student herself, she was willing an eager to answer any questions that I may have had, even if it wasn’t about a specific task that we were doing.
I had a lot of questions. A LOT of questions. But Megan was always helpful. She never deterred my curiosity; instead she sparked my passion for PR even more by explaining tasks in detail, adding personal stories and expanding on things so that I could see the full picture of how our tasks were all connected in the PR world.
Some people come into your life and leave a mark that lasts forever. Because of Megan’s guidance I can more clearly see myself working in PR than I ever did before. I found a career that I can be passionate and successful in because of her and for that I am very grateful.
Though there were a couple tasks during my practicum that I did not particularly like, such as my little reentering mistake with clips, all together I had a wonderful experience.
I improved my writing, organizational, and people skills. In the end I learned about what PR professionals really do on a day-to-day basis... and NO it is NOT the same thing as HR.