Testimonial by Wahidah and Zariff.
As a Public Relations (PR) student, the question that we always stumble upon prior to internship is where do we want to do our internship? The pressure of choosing the right place so that you will not be stuck making coffee or doing photocopies for your colleagues. For the longest time, we have always wanted to do an in-house internship at some big corporation, MNCs or GLCs. But somewhere in between, we have also been curious about what it will be like interning at an actual PR firm or agency. Fast forward to today, one week after our internship ended, we can say that interning at Ariff Communications is by far our best decision in 2020.
Despite the COVID-19 outbreak, we still had one month of work from the office experience, and for the remaining months, we worked closely with the team from home. Nevertheless, we managed to learn a few things, including organising events and even attended a media mingling event!
Attention to detail
Our daily tasks at the office consisted of social media monitoring and daily/weekly coverage reports for clients. These tasks have been entrusted to us by our colleagues, and to be quite honest, this daily task has been honing our skills on paying attention to details. One thing we have learnt is that, in PR, accuracy is an important virtue to have if you are planning to make it in the industry. Whether it is delivering a pitch to a client or maybe reaching out to the media, you need to make sure your stories are factually accurate and without errors.
However, human errors do occasionally happen, and in our opinion, still acceptable. Especially when time is not always on our side, and this is where experience plays an important part. With that said, this does not mean that you get to make silly avoidable mistakes.
PR & Social Media
In this ever-evolving time of social and new media, we have learned that being social media savvy is an advantage if you want to grow in this industry. Any PR or communication student can write a pitch, but how many of us know their way around social media? It is important to keep up-to-date with new trends for marketing, being aware of relevant/current key opinion leaders or influencers, and how Malaysians consume news. At Ariff Communications, we get the opportunity to learn a few things about social media content. We were able to contribute to some of the projects where we helped compile lists of social media influencers for future campaigns. For one client, we helped curate social media postings, our colleagues, Dawn and Hannah, have been supportive by letting us express our ideas into each posting, as well as providing constructive feedback.
Networking
We had the opportunity to attend a media mingling event, during which we came to realise the importance of networking and building relationships. We remember vividly how the night went, as it was our first time going to such an event, we could not help but feel awkward (the insecurities of being an intern) compared to these big people from many different industries. However, almost instinctively, we started talking to some editors. One thing led to another, now we are following each other on Instagram and have been exchanging replies on IG stories! For now, you might not know how this will help you, but we believe having met these industry leaders and making these connections will most likely benefit and create opportunities to advance in our careers in the future.
Our internship days at Ariff Communications have been amazing. Everyone at the office is supportive of each other and we are amazed that despite being a small team, they could deliver the job ‘perfectly’. Whenever our press releases are being picked-up by the media, the way Aisya would compliment her team is admirable. We get to witness the team getting their well-deserved praise for their successful efforts from clients. Aizat, Naif and Jared have been helpful in times where we asked questions, they would explain them thoroughly so that we could understand. On that note, we would like to thank everyone at Ariff Communications for giving us the opportunity to do our internship with you. Thank you for being such a great help throughout our learning process!
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