Careers in PR

This week our class had the oppourtunity to listen to two great speakers that both have very different jobs in the field of Public Relations. Melissa Bohl, a UW-Whitewater alumni spoke about her job with GE Healthcare. In this position, Melissa works heavily with internal and customer communications. She uses her PR knowledge to create tools that help sales representatives better communicate with clients. Melissa's job in healthcare PR is much different than an agency job, which I found very interesting. Due to the confidential information that healthcare employees encounter on daily basis, different precautions and tactics have to be used. For example, rather than using conventional forms of social media, GE healthcare created different internal social media vehicles for their employees to use. GE Connect is an online forum that is similar to a blog. This tool allows GE employees to share information about new studies and happenings going on within each dept. of GE. Another social media tool used and created by GE is Yammer which is similar to Facebook. Overall Melissas job at GE was in a very corporate setting and relies heavily on communication skills.

A change of pace came later in the week when our class heard Cory Zimmermann speak about his job at Z2 Marketing, of which Cory is the co-founder. Cory began by explaining his journey to success. Afte high school, Cory got accepted to MIAD and went to school to persue his passion for photography. After graduating, he landed a job with Hanson Dodge design firm. After some success and failure with other agenciesw Cory finally got to where he is today. Overall Cory had some great tips for student. First he said that the first client every student will have is themselves. Your first job, is to find yourself a job! Another thing that Cory opened my eyes up to was that with a job in PR you will eventually accomplish two things; the unknown celebrity, and how to stop second guessing yourself and succeed without thinking. Overall I found Cory to be very insprirational. To find your own inspiration follow Cory and Z2 Marketing on Twitter.
@z2marketing
@coryzimmermann

BMA-MKE

Have you ever wanted some advice on how to propel yourself into the business world? That is exactly what the members of BMA Milwaukee provided to area college students at their Lightening Round Interview and Resume Review event. At the event, students visited three different stations. The first station was a presentation on social media given by three professionals from the Fullhouse Marketing agency. During the presentation, the professionals disscussed how to appropriately utilize and present yourself on popular social media sites often used in job searches. The sites that were focused on included Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter. Stutdent were even encouraged to tweet during the presentation using the hashtag #bmamke. The next section gave students the opportunity to have their resumes reviewed by different Milwaukee professionals. and the third section was a lightening round interview session in which students had six minuets to sell themselves in a mock interview.

Overall, I thought that all of the sections of this event were highly beneficial. However, my favorite section was the speed interviewing. In this section I was able to not only interview with four different professionals, but it was also a great networking oppourtunity. I believe that the feedback that I get during these interviews will really benefit me in the future.