Breaking Bonds: Friendship Troubles in PR

It isn’t a secret that PR majors make great friends.

We are outgoing, driven, and full of energy that often spills into various parts of our life.

However, our passion for PR and success can lead to trouble, especially when we are friends with other PR majors.

Suppose your best friend lands an internship that you wanted, or gets to shadow at your dream company before you do?

Situations like these happen often, and it can muddy friendships faster than fights over significant others or shared articles of clothing.

So what can you do to prevent or solve these sticky situations before they arise?

First, it is helpful to have a chat with your PR bestie. Take time to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee and agree upon not letting your friendship be affected by work.

Sure, it may be upsetting for your friends to get opportunities that you wanted, but at the same time, you should be glad that they are able to succeed.

Another step you could take is agree to not apply for the same positions, unless absolutely necessary. In cities, there are thousands of potential internships that can be applied for, and chances are, you and your friend aren’t interested in the same field of PR. By applying for different positions, there will be no hard feelings regardless of the turnout.

However, if you both are interested in the same field or the same company, then it may be best to revert to the first tip, which is agreeing to be happy for each other regardless of the turnout.

Regardless of the situation, remember that you are friends for a reason, and even though the job search may get tough, you have each other for support.

Do you have any stories regarding your love-hate relationship with a friend over a job or internship? If so, we want to hear from you below in the comments!

How to Handle Rejection

I'm not talking about getting turned down for a date--you'll have to go to another blog for advice on that one. I'm talking about job rejection. Whether you're about to graduate and applying for your first full-time position, you're an eager student applying for summer internships, or you're just looking to make a career change, there's a chance you could be facing some rejection sometime soon.

Getting a rejection letter or email for a job that you carefully crafted a cover letter and tailored your resume to can be pretty discouraging, but I prefer to think on the bright side of things and I've come up with some ways to handle rejection and turn it into something positive.

1. Learn from it
Maybe you can pin-point what you said (or didn't say) that caused your job-quest to end in rejection, or maybe you're not quite sure. Go back through the job description and look at the skills and think of ones you might not have highlighted enough or ones you could improve on. Think back to the interview process and consider what you might have done better or changed. Use this opportunity to reflect and improve.

2. Understand it
In a perfect world, every employer would call the people they reject and tell them exactly why they aren't getting hired. Unfortunately, that's usually not the case and it's up to you to figure it out. Try and think about the office atmosphere, the type of work they do, and the way they do it. You might have had all the qualifications, but not have been the right fit for that company. If they didn't think you were a right fit for them, they probably weren't a right fit for you anyway.

3. Use it to your advantage
In interviews you might get asked "what's your biggest failure?" or "talk about a time you didn't succeed and how you handled it". Job rejection is a perfect scenario to use in an answer to this question. You will learn from it and it will help you along the way, whether you realize it now or not, and employers will be impressed with how you handled it and all the ways you used it to become a better PR pro.

4. Chin up, soldier
Remember, there are hundreds of opportunities out there for you. Don't let one rejection get you down or stand in your way of doing the best you can. Keep looking for jobs and internships and you'll find the right one, even if it's somewhere you might not expect.

How have you handled job rejection? We want to hear from you.

Spend Spring Break Thinking About Post-Grad

Spring break is the perfect time to start thinking about post-grad opportunities. You finally have some free time to start planning your course of action.

Grad school?
Full-time internship?
Full-time job?
Travel?
Move back home?

The possibilities are endless to the point where soon-to-be graduates are practically drowning in them. If you're anything like me you have about a thousand questions and a lot of different ideas (some irrational, some totally plausible) about what's going to happen after May.

If you're considering grad school, here's a great resource from Pearson that offers the why's and why not's, FAQ's and other helpful resources to answer all your questions.

If you're not quite ready to enter the real-world workforce, a full-time internship this summer is a great alternative. You can gain more experience without the pressure of committing to a real job.

If you have a yen for travel now is the time. Ask for a trip for your graduation present! If you don't go now, you might never go at all. The only people who have more free time than recent grads are retired seniors.

Are you looking to save some money? Moving back home is something many post-grads do. As long as you're sure you're doing it to save money and not just hide from your real-world responsibilities, it can be a sensible option.

If you're totally ready to start your full-time job then spring break is the ideal time to start looking around and applying. Make a list of the places you might like to be and then search for companies, organizations or agencies in those places. Be aware of what type of environment you want to work in; is it formal where you have to wear business professional or are you looking for an informal place where you can wear jeans? A company's website can tell you a lot about the atmosphere.

Some great job resources are LinkedIn groups, Indeed.com, CareerBuilder.com or your college or university's career center!

What are some ways you're preparing for post-graduation? Not planning on looking for jobs for a while? Tell us why!

Intern vs. Employee: Whose Job is Harder?

You might think there is an obvious answer to this question and wonder why I'm bringing it to debate at all.  It seems like a no brainer, why would a part-time (or even full-time) intern have a harder job than someone actually employed by the company?

Let's break it down:

Employee

• 40 hour work week (but let's be real, in PR we all know it's more)
• Multiple clients, projects, meetings, etc.
• Work-life balance challenges
• Inter-company relationship maintenance

Intern

• Busy work 
• Smaller tasks
• Part-time (generally)
• School-work-life balance

The biggest difference between the intern and the employee is that the job isn't the intern's end-all. They aren't bound to this company for an extended amount of time like an employee is. However, the employee is there every day. They're familiar with the in's and out's of the people they work with and the clients they have.

I think it's harder being the intern because you're NOT there every day. Even if you are, you're not included in every email chain and every meeting. It's hard to get completely familiarized with every client to the proper extent when the job isn't your main focus because of school, extra curricular activities, etc.

Which do you think is more difficult? Have you had an experience where you struggled as an intern but felt that if you were employed you would succeed?

Social Media Sweep: Clean Up Your Profile

Generation Y is all about online sharing, but when it comes to getting hired, how much sharing is too much? 

A recent study by Harris Interactive and CareerBuilder found that 43 percent of hiring managers who research candidates via social media say they've found information that caused them not to hire someone. This number is up 9 percentage points from last year.

Pictures from your wild spring break. Delete. Drunken tweet made at the bar. Delete. Post complaining about your new boss on your friend's wall. Delete. Suggestive Instagram selfie. Delete. Basically, if you have to think about - delete it. 

The amount of employers who research candidates via social media is also up this year. Thirty-nine percent of hiring managers say they use social media to vet applicants, compared with 37 percent last year.

There has never been a better indication that now is the time to clean up your social media profiles. 

Employers who took the candidate out of the running for a job after looking at his social media profiles did so for the following reasons:

• Candidate posted provocative/inappropriate photos (50%)
• Candidate shared information about drinking or using drugs (48%)
• Candidate bad mouthed a previous employer (33%)
• Candidate had poor communication skills (30%)

Do you think twice before you post? We want to know!