Today we welcome Caroline Hodges, who has joined us for a three month placement. We asked Caroline to write a short blog to introduce herself…
Like a lot of young people I spent most of my time at university with no definitive idea of what I was going to do as a career after I finished. My initial dreams of a career in law were abandoned after spending my first year at university struggling to remember case lists, make sense of judicial decisions and generally not fall asleep from boredom and substituted for aspirations of working as a journalist. I transferred to a degree in Journalism Media and Cultural Studies and began to work on my writing and on building up my journalistic portfolio. It was during a work experience placement with a local newspaper that I first became properly aware of PR and its importance; whenever I was asked to write a piece I would be sent a press release and simply asked to reorganise it. I realised increasingly that the people who were writing the press releases were the ones creating the news, not the journalists.
This was confirmed for me when I took advertising and PR modules as part of my degree and began to look at the industry from an academic perspective – the changing face of media means that PR professionals and the work that they do is becoming increasingly important and exciting as it adapts to the digital and social media age. My strengths have always been in writing and communication and my favourite aspect of every part-time job I’ve had has been building relationships with customers. I decided that a career where I could build on those existing skills while helping to create content and to be a part of an exciting and developing industry would be the perfect fit for me so I began to pursue a career in PR. I feel extremely lucky to have been offered this placement with Petersens as the opportunity to gain experience and learn about the industry from an award-winning firm is something a lot of recent graduates would kill for and I know that it will be invaluable to me moving forward.
Everybody at Petersens is extremely friendly and welcoming and any nerves that I had disappeared within minutes of arriving. After attending a team meeting I was talked through the main clients and the kinds of work Petersens does for them, and given the chance to look through portfolios containing press releases. Learning about the clients that I will be working with and the kinds of work I will have the chance to get involved with was both interesting and very exciting. I can’t wait to get started and I’m very confident that I’m going to enjoy my time with Petersens.
Petersens' Blog 