Katie Bultman (first row, second from right) with a group of interns at FleishmanHillard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe Internship Search<\/b><\/p>\n
I decided I needed to go out and find an internship away from home for the summer. I plan to graduate in May, which means I knew it would be my last summer before the real work begins. I wanted to make the most of it, building myself as a person and a public relations professional. Most importantly, I wanted to do it on my own, in an entirely new place with endless opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019ve lived my entire life in small towns. I graduated high school with a class of less than 100 in a town with 3,000 people. I attend a university with only 8,000 students, where it feels like everyone knows each other.<\/span><\/p>\nSo I applied to positions in big cities \u2014 New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland. I wanted something outside of the Midwest. Something that wasn\u2019t too close to home.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd I landed an internship in Dallas. I haven\u2019t been to the South many times and I had never been to Texas prior to the internship. It was crazy, moving somewhere by myself for three months to a place I\u2019d never been. However, Dallas will forever be on the top of my list when it comes to the best experiences in my life.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Work<\/b><\/p>\n
My internship was with FleishmanHillard (FH), a public relations agency with locations around the world. Dallas is one of the company\u2019s largest offices, with clients including AT&T, General Motors and Google. The FH intern coordinators were outstanding and helped everybody immediately adjust to their positions.<\/span><\/p>\nThe first two days at work consisted of orientation, to help us settle in and learn some of the programs we\u2019d be using during the summer, including Sysomos and Cision. We also experienced the \u201cbig reveal,\u201d where we learned which accounts would be our core and flex accounts.<\/span><\/p>\nMy core account for the summer was Google. I was placed on the research and analytics team. My flex account, which was secondary, was General Motors (GM). The interns working on General Motors primarily helped with monitoring blog content about GM and its brands.<\/span><\/p>\nThroughout the course of the summer, I was granted so many amazing opportunities to work with a number of different companies aside from my core and flex accounts, including major energy companies, airlines, banks and even a few nonprofits.<\/span><\/p>\nIn addition, working with the research and analytics team proved to be a great experience in itself. I had never considered working in that area of public relations, but I loved it. A lot of the work I did included building spreadsheets, decks (a simple term for PowerPoints) and plotting data on graphs. It was interesting to see how each company\u2019s social media efforts worked and where they needed to improve. We also compared competitors and tried to grasp which efforts seemed to bring in the most amount of interaction on social media so that we could relay the information back to our clients.<\/span><\/p>\nLessons Learned<\/b><\/p>\n
While at the office, I learned how important it is to always be enthusiastic about your work. People love to work with you when they know you want to be there, so show them. Offer to help with projects you weren\u2019t assigned. Reach out to other members who may not be on your team and see if they need help when you have free time. If you see a project you know how to do, let them know you\u2019d be happy to work on it, even if it isn\u2019t something assigned to you. All those small efforts go a long way, and people really appreciate it in the workplace.<\/span><\/p>\nThis summer was an amazing experience. I learned so much and am forever thankful for the opportunity. Now it\u2019s time for you to face your fears. I urge you to step out of your comfort zone, if given the chance. Make the most of the opportunities you have. You\u2019ll learn so much from your experiences and you\u2019ll have the time of your life. Life\u2019s what you make it. Make it something to remember. And always remember \u2013 the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.<\/span><\/p>\n\u2014<\/p>\n
Katie Bultman is a senior public relations major at Northern Michigan University. She is the Chapter president of NMU PRSSA and an intern at Northern Initiatives. Follow her on Twitter @bultman_katie<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Small Town Dreams Lead to Big City Opportunities \u201cThe only thing we have to fear is fear itself.\u201d \u2014 Franklin D. Roosevelt. Fear. It\u2019s a word to describe an inescapable, unexplainable emotion \u2014 something everyone can relate to. My greatest fear is time. When I think about the concept of time and how fast it flies by, I immediately feel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2894],"tags":[2094,76,1237,2357,1331,126,28,363,2358,2129],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6559"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6563,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559\/revisions\/6563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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