Personal branding – job hunting (part 3)

We have to agree that it is not easy to get a job, especially when you are a recent graduate student with little or no experience in the domain you want.

Check this email:

Dear Evil HR Lady,

I’m a recent college graduate and have been actively job hunting for about 6 months. As the number of resumes I’ve sent out approaches 300, I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong and how I can stand out among the hundreds of other applicants I’m competing with. After Googling “creative ways to get hired”, I came across the idea of wearing a t-shirt with my resume on it. My dream job is to do PR in the racing industry. I’m attending two races in the coming months and I am contemplating doing this in order to get the attention of some race teams and potential hiring managers. Would you recommend wearing a resume t-shirt or does it come across as too desperate?

What do you think ? Would you hire her ?

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Message for Apple employees

10 days ago the wonderful Steve Jobs resigned from the Apple Company. The new CEO is Tim Cook, who served as Apple CEO for two months in 2004, when Jobs was recovering from pancreatic cancer surgery. In 2009, Cook again served as Apple CEO for several months while Jobs took a leave of absence for a liver transplant.

In January 2011, Apple’s Board of Directors approved a third medical leave of absence requested by Jobs. During that time, Cook was responsible for most of Apple’s day-to-day operations while Jobs made most major decisions. Following the resignation of Jobs, Cook was made CEO of Apple Inc. on August 24, 2011.

The email sent to Apple employees:

Team:

I am looking forward to the amazing opportunity of serving as CEO of the most innovative company in the world. Joining Apple was the best decision I’ve ever made and it’s been the privilege of a lifetime to work for Apple and Steve for over 13 years. I share Steve’s optimism for Apple’s bright future.

Steve has been an incredible leader and mentor to me, as well as to the entire executive team and our amazing employees. We are really looking forward to Steve’s ongoing guidance and inspiration as our Chairman.

I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.

I love Apple and I am looking forward to diving into my new role. All of the incredible support from the Board, the executive team and many of you has been inspiring. I am confident our best years lie ahead of us and that together we will continue to make Apple the magical place that it is.

Tim

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Turn on your Light Bulb

It’s amazing how a book can be such an inspiration and how fast can you learn to do right things only if you make some small notes and apply them in real life. Of course, it’s again about “Public Relations for Dummies” 2^nd edition. I also wrote here what I found interesting.

Thomas Edison said that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. Today is about creativity.  How can you turn on the light bulb. Authors Eric Yaverbaum and Bob Bly offers us some great tips:

• Go to a toy store and look around. Can you create a game to publicize your message ?
• Keep a swipe file – a file of promotions that you especially like or that at least caught your eye. Use them for inspiration when planning your own PR.
• Ask employees for suggestions. Reward the best idea.
• Browse the library or bookstore. Or hang out at a museum. Inspiration often strikes in places where you’re surrounded by ideas.
• Look outside your industry. What is a common, successful promotion in one industry may be creatively copied and applied to your industry.
• Read literature on creative thinking.
• Keep a pad and a pen with you all the times to record thoughts as they occur to you.
• Whenever you write down a creative idea, drop it into a paper file or enter it into your computer. Keep a central idea file that you can dip into when you need a new creative inspiration.

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Declaration of Principles – Ivy Lee

In order to understand a domain, you have to start with background information. The history of public relations begins in 1860s, when terms like “publicity”, “press agent” were put together with “business”, “industry” or “company”.

More PR history, here:

Ivy Lee is one of the pioneers of public relations, the one who in 1906 presented what today we call The Declaration of Principles.

This is Ivy Lee’s “Declaration of Principles,” as quoted by Sherman Morse in “An Awakening in Wall Street: How the Trusts, after Years of Silence, now speak though authorized and acknowledged Press Agents”(The American Magazine, vol. 63, September 1906). Update: vol. number was incorrect — the correct number is vol. 62. Page numbers = 457-63; the declaration is on p. 460.

“This is not a secret press bureau. All our work is done in the open. We aim to supply news. This is not an advertising agency; if you think any of our matter ought properly to go to your business office, do not use it. Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated will be supplied promptly, and any editor will be assisted most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact. Upon inquiry, full information will be given to any editor concerning those on whose behalf an article is sent out. In brief, our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply to the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about. Corporations and public institutions give out much information in which the news point is lost to view. Nevertheless, it is quite as important to the public to have this news as it is to the establishments themselves to give it currency. I send out only matter every detail of which I am willing to assist any editor in verifying for himself. I am always at your service for the purpose of enabling you to obtain more complete information concerning any of the subjects brought forward in my copy.”

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Romanian Blogal Initiative

I’m new in the blogosphere, as it is correctly said in social media language and as you can see. 8 hours after applying for the first campaign of Blogal Initiative, I find myself confused. When I’m in this confused.com situation, I always take a piece of paper and I’m writing pros and cons.

Pros:

• last semester, we made a Public Relations for Banking seminar with one of the well-known PR specialists in the domain
• I was an intern for a month in a Public Relations firm and I worked in the B2B department (banking, insurance, IT,investors, stock market, etc.)
• I have an experience regarding banking services and products
• I like and support new initiatives, especially if these are public free
• this project seems to be a good one
• I love love love to be creative.

Cons:

• I don’t really like banking stuff
• It’s complicated to translate it into English (in Romanian I also have problems to understand the banking-words)
• I’m extremely very new in social media.

More pros than cons, so I will take the challenge in a PR Pret-a-Porter style. This means I won’t participate to the blogger’s competition (it kind of amazed me in not-a-good way what is happening on Twitter when you search #refinantare), but I will write about this viral campaign from time to time.

And my viral support looks like this:

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Later edit, I discovered that creativity is not for everyone. After searching #refinantare on Twitter, all the bloggers used the same post as the author of Blogal Initiative, copied and than pasted. Amazing race is gonna be!

If Google can, you can even better

As part of my career, I am also a website editor on a volunteering blog. Days ago, I wrote my conclusions about a book I have recently read, recommended by Ciprian Gavriliu, so I translated the content here. In Romanian, you can find the article here.

“What would Google do?”, written by Jeff Jarvis, launched in Romania in 2009 is no doubt one of the most motivational books I have read since now.

Jeff Jarvis is not one of the Google creators, nor one of Google employees, he is just one of the best known social media person worldwide. Among other jobs, he also teaches Journalism at Superior School of Journalism from City University, New York, and he is a person who understands, explains and motivates with excellent arguments what a business means today, in web century.

If you ever thought to launch your own business, you have thousand of great ideas and more than that, you would like to become an entrepreneur, this book can make (some) order in your priorities.

Google discovers problems and solves them. To sum up, Google works in personal branding terms and it all reduces at finding your own new vision of world.

The book doesn’t sell anything, doesn’t glorify anyone and definitely doesn’t say a malicious word about the completion. It explains, with extremely simple words, what means internet century and what human resources  it has. The book talks about the people behind www.google.com, those names we have never heart, the mistakes that multinational companies have made and how they figure out that Google is their friend, not their enemy.

“This searching engine will control the planet”, said Paulo Coelho. But Google doesn’t want to control something as boring as a resource or a phone company, or maybe a restaurant (although the chef from Google restaurant has written Food 2.0). Some people would like that Google become the owner of a newspaper – like New York Times- or a company, as Microsoft. But no, Google knows who he is. His great, great ambition is to organize the world, not to take charge of it.

As a reader of this book, I have finally understood that my objectives are only mine, no matter how many things will come across. And that money doesn’t always count and that is why so many Google services are free, with a great venue, where hundreds of people worked millions of hours to make the application perfect.

In such books, what I appreciate most is the quality of the tips given. I love to learn by examples, to understand how the engine is working by testing it before knowing more things about. What is Google doing, in fact ? Basically, he puts you in his front page, on the top of everyone else, if you give him the right things:

• distinctive content
• let yourself searched, in order to be found
• after generating links and public, YOU have to explore the benefits, usually by ads
• you should use links to work efficiently
• find opportunities for creating value.

Google helps. And if he can, you can do it as well, no matter where or when you start, only if you have in mind a great project and you are willing to receive both positive and negative feedback. And if all of the critic you get , you’ll invest in the project, maybe you will find the secret of success.

What would YOU do ?

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Hello world!

My dearest,

For  a couple of months, I was thinking of starting a blog about things I like most. Now, the idea is an online project, thanks to Alecs, Ruxandra and Alex.

It’s gonna be a journey in the online world, in social media networks and in the field I want to succeed: public relations. I’m preparing to become a decent online presence, I have lots and lots of ideas and subjects I would like to share with you and experience as well. Communication is the key to success and Internet is just the perfect channel to fulfill your life goals and professional objectives.

About me I could say I’m a beginner, a planner,a strategy thinker and also a fast learner. I love colors, I enjoy spending time with my nephew, I dance tango, I like fashion in a shopping way, I’m a traveler  and I really appreciate quality time spent with nice, pro-active people. I’m the kind of action, not words person, who works with passion, otherwise, better not counting on me.

I guess that in the online world are thousands if not millions of blogs from high achieving young people and clicking on my personal blog will be an amazing challenge. But each one of us has that little something that makes us different. Well I, PR Pret-a-Porter author,  am like an event organizer; a meticulous backstage planner, sometimes a speaker, usually a journalist and always an active listener.

As a child, I have never seen myself in the future doing a particular well-known job. I grew up with my grandparents in a small town, where my grandmother has had plenty of friends. We were always visiting someone or someone was visiting us. My favorite part was to see the fascinating ritual of preparing the household goods for the said visit: fine china, crystal glasses, elaborate food design, new recipes or complicated desserts. Since then, I have kept in mind the word “event”, with this particular meaning: something that happens at some point, especially something important, interesting and unusual.

I strongly believe that in order to achieve success in this field, you must have communication skills as a top quality. My journey in the communication world has begun eight years ago, when  I was standing in front of a microphone, staring at the audience and not talking for a few seconds, which for me seemed like a few hours. Then I started to talk about the project my school won in a national contest, without reading a line from the paper I had in my hand. After that, everyone congratulated me for being such a great speaker. From that moment, I started to develop myself in the communication field, participating in different debates, student councils and school projects. Now I’m an undergraduate student specialized in Public Relations.

All the experiences I went through made me a fine observer of details, transformed me into a patient person, showed me how my body responds to stress and the most important thing, I became a responsible person, who can argue her decisions and maintain her opinions no matter what. Nonetheless, knowing people and specialists in the domain was the biggest advantage, because theory without practice means nothing in the real world. I will soon write about wonderful people I met and how they contribute to my professional or personal development.

All in all, my Hello world! post, the first one, is officially over. The journey began. Thank you !

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.