Tag: professional

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PRofessional: Ali AAsum

Ali AAsum started her career in public relations at a full-service marketing agency in Portland where she helped lead public relations campaigns, event execution, celebrity seeding, and social media strategies for companies both large and small. She worked on accounts like Cirque du Soleil; Feld Entertainment, Inc.; Taco del Mar; BridgePort Brewing Company; Oregon Association of Nurseries; The Portland Clinic; Mountain House; Simple Shoes; Deep Silver and others. In 2009, Ali’s team was deemed a 2010 PR Week Finalist for its Free Tacos on Tax Day campaign for Taco del Mar in two nominated categories.

Possessing strong relationships with local and national media, Ali has worked with and garnered coverage in outlets like Men’s Journal, People, OK!, Surfing, ReadyMade, YRB Magazine, Outside Magazine, Perez.com, Wired.com, CNN, CNN Money.com, Portland Monthly, The Oregonian, 1859 Magazine, MIX Magazine, and NW Palate among others.

Ali earned her bachelor’s degree in 2009 from the University of Oregon, School of Journalism and Communication, with an emphasis in public relations. Prior to graduation, she held numerous internships including The Ulum Group, City of Eugene Adaptive Recreation Services, and MR Magazine, as an editorial intern in New York.

Ali now works as an account executive at bell+funk in Eugene, Ore., where she started in May 2012.

Biography provided by Ali AAsum and Bell+Funk PR Agency of Eugene, OR. Ali visited the UO PRSSA chapter as a guest speaker on November 7, 2012. A big thank you to Ali and Bell+Funk for their ongoing support!

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Biz Stone, succeeding with technology

Each year the PRSSA National Conference offers the opportunity to network with professionals from a variety of industries, giving members a better perspective of how to excel in today’s competitive work environment.

Overall, the goals of the conference is to help students develop the knowledge of public relations and to prepare passionate public relations practitioners for the competitive field. Many different lectures are offered throughout conference to cater to personal interests and goals of each person.

On Sunday, October 14, I had the opportunity to engage in a presentation given by Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, at the 2012 PRSSA National Conference.

An interesting concept that Stone emphasized throughout his presentation was that any one can be successful in humanity efforts with the help of technology. After listening to him speak, I took away seven main points that can be applicable to the public relations field.

    1. Technology continues to impact the changing communications world. Biz stressed that change and technology go hand in hand in the consistently changing communications industry. Similarly to Matt Prince, social media manager of Disney, he mentioned that it is important to convey a story beyond the desktop in order for it to be effective.
    2. Opportunity can be manufactured. Stone continued to influence the audience through the concept that opportunity can be controlled by the individual. He believed that circumstances can be arranged by “you” so that “you” can produce favorable outcomes.
    3. Creativity is a renewable resource. There isn’t a limit to creativity. Creativity can take place in many different forms and can be a successful tool in changing how we function on a daily basis.
    4. There is compact impact in altruism. Relaying a positive message through technology can lead to an influential campaign.
    5. Philanthropy is the future of marketing. People want to give money to an organization that is striving to help a cause, such as TOMS shoes.
    6. Information is not knowledge. With the world producing so much information each day, simply knowing facts is not considered being knowledgeable. Stone stressed that in order to be innovative it is important to expand information that is given.
    7. CSR is corporate social innovation. Corporate social responsibility isn’t a team you want to fear being on. Instead, it is the team you should want to be on. Stone coined an optimistic twist to the term because he believed that the aim of CSR should embrace responsibility of a company’s actions by encouraging a positive impact.

Post by Bianca Bernath, Portland Liaison and member for the 2012-2013 school year. She is a senior at the UO studying public relations. You can reach Bianca at bbernath@uoregon.edu!

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How to get a job in Public Relations

In every class we are in, it seems we are always hearing about how awful the job market is and how bad the economy is. While this is certainly the case, there are a lot of jobs out there and if you are prepared and motivated, you can and will get a job.

8 Best practices for getting a job in today’s market:

1. Be proactive – Put yourself out there online and elsewhere that you are job hunting and make a plan for how you are going to search for a job, where you are going to search for a job and how long you should spend searching for jobs. Tweet companies, visit their Facebook pages, stalk their website and know all about the companies you are looking at.

2. Do informational interviews – As you call companies and research companies, set up informational interviews with companies and firms. This will show you are proactive, you are interested and you are invested. Before the interview, make sure you have questions prepared that are not necessarily covered on the website, but ask them about their schedule, about their clients and more.

3. Do your research – Before you ever set up an interview, pick up a phone, send an email, etc., make sure you do your research on the company. You never want to be unprepared for a question about the company or their clients you should be able to answer, but are not able to answer because you did not look beforehand.

4. Monitor and clean up your online sites – I think this is one of the most important. We are constantly told to clean up our Twitter, Facebook, blog and more…. and we absolutely should. All it could take is one bad tweet, one bad photo or any little thing for a company to toss your resume and for the opportunity you could have had to slip away. Clean it up!

5. Be open – When you start the job hunt, you might have a specific job or ideal placement in mind, but things do not always work like that. You have to have an open mind when searching for a job. Be open to a new city or a new responsibility and it could really help you.

6. Use your connections – While you have been networking online and conferences [or you should have been], make sure you use those contacts you made. Reach out to them for job leads and for possible recommendations. Knowing someone can take you a long way. My professor told me that 60-80% of available jobs are not actually posted online. This means those available jobs are going to people the company knows or they are going to someone people in the company know.

7. Do not give up – While job hunting can seem like a job itself, do not give up and do not settle. While a $70,000/year job may seem very enticing, make sure it is really want you want to do for at least 1-3 years before you accept it just because of the money. Even if you do not get a lead for a few weeks or a few months, do not give up! Keep looking. If you do not find a job, try doing another internship if you can. Internships can often lead to jobs later.

8. Put your materials online – While you are job searching, put some of your materials from your portfolio online. Build your online resume and portfolio so when people and companies search for you, they find what you can do and what you could be capable of.

I wish everyone the best of luck with your job hunt as we go into the spring semester! Please feel free to contact me if you have any job hunt questions or general PRSSA questions.

Bio:

Lauren K. Gray currently serves as the PRSSA 2011-2012 Vice President of Public Relations and is an active Chapter member after serving as Chapter President for almost two years. Tweet her @laurenkgray and visit her website laurenkgray.com for more information and blog posts.