Powerhouse Networking!

This past Wednesday, November 13, almost 90 UW-Whitewater students and 45 working professionals met at the Hudson Business Lounge in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward for a speed interview and networking session.

The fantastic career development night began with a presentation from founder and CEO Jeff Carrigan of Big Shoes Network, a job site for professionals in communications, advertising, marketing, design, public relations, and social media based in the midwest. Jeff's informative presentation involved him giving his expert advice to us UWW students and future communications professionals. Jeff took 15 minutes of our time to clue us in on current facts about job postings as well as advice on how to stand out when being interviewed for jobs.  According to Jeff and Big Shoes Network's website,

• Job postings this year are up 9%
• 33% of jobs on the website are entry level
• 45% of job postings on the website are agency jobs

Jeff also included advice for current students regarding internships and how important they are as well as let us know that April and May are the biggest/best months for internship postings. Next, Jeff discussed his theory on how to stand out in interviews based on 5 C's. The C's on how to stand out include

• Competence
• Connections
• Character
• Chemistry
• C-suite (thinking like a CEO)

All in all, Jeff's advice was both helpful and informative and definitely helped clue in all of the students on internship/job information. After Jeff's presentation, the students and gracious professionals did mock interviews as well as informational interviews. I was lucky enough to meet three great working professionals during this event. The first was Angela Mork of LePoidevin Marketing. Angela gave me great advice as well as clued me into some of her work at LePoidevin. The next professional that I had the pleasure of meeting with was Sarah Kikkert who works for the Wisconsin State Fair. Sarah asked me a lot of great questions as well as gave me advice on how to better wrap up my answers to questions. Lastly, I met with Cassandra Sura, a PR specialist for Rush University Medical Center. I was able to ask the informative questions during this round of interviews and got to learn more about PR and the medical field which was a very interesting and new perspective on public relations that I have not learned much about before. 

The night wrapped up shortly after the interviews and left me fortunate enough to gain new knowledge and advice about interviewing. I was so grateful to meet each and everyone of these professionals, and am grateful to Ann Knabe, PRSA, Big Shoes Network, and the Hudson Business Lounge for putting on such a wonderful and successful event. 

B2B Expert, Steve Staedler

This past week in my PR tactics 2 class we had the pleasure of being introduced to yet another PR and B2B (business to business) pro, Steve Staedler. Senior account executive and PR pro, Steve, came to us from Milwaukee to teach us a little bit about what he does and what B2B PR is all about. I had learned a little bit about business to business public relations in some of my previous classes before, but I never really knew what it was all about. This left me feeling anxious and excited to learn more from Steve and his presentation.

Steve works at a B2B company called LePoidevin Marketing. His duties as senior account executive include writing fact sheets, news releases, speeches, guest columns, social media, and more. Steve discussed how much he writes during his days at LePoidevin and how important it is in today's world to be a good writer and to have good writing skills. To many, a job filled with writing all day may sound exhausting and uneventful, but for those with a love for writing like Steve and I, it sounds nothing short of exciting! Some of Steve's clients that he writes for include those from the animal health industry and industrial industry such as Snap On Tools.

Despite telling us a lot about his background and how he got to where he is today, Steve also shared with us some very valuable information about a website called Cision Point. Cision Point is a useful tool, one that Steve uses frequently, that allows you to do quick searches fast saving you and your client time and money. Cision, as Steve explained, is essentially an "online newsroom" for clients where companies can put out press releases, photos, and more. According to Steve, LePoidevin has 120 media outlets on Cision that can view press releases and more right from the website. Learning about Cision was both interesting and helpful as I am about to go into the working world and will take all the information about what PR pros are using that I can get! Another tool Steve uses is google alerts. Google alerts allows Steve to keep tabs on his clients and alerts him anytime his client comes up in the news or on google.

Steve closed out his presentation with a case study in which we all got to participate and learn more about real life situations that PR pros, like Steve, deal with everyday. I found the exercise to be a great learning experience along with Steve's entire presentation. I learned a lot from Steve and his presentation and am now more knowledgeable about the PR world and how a B2B company works.

All About Amy

Being a senior in college and seeing graduation right on the horizon line is an exciting time for most. For me, although it is quite exciting, it is also quite frightening. Now is the time that I'm supposed to be figuring out exactly what I want to be doing with my life and how exactly I am going to get there. In the midst of all my overwhelmed-ness, I was excited to hear that a recent UW Whitewater PR graduate, Amy Paul, would be coming to speak to our class about where she is today in the PR world and how she got there. As Amy prepared her presentation, I noticed her opening slide was titled "preparing for your future" and gave her my full attention immediately.

Amy began her presentation by discussing her background and where she's currently employed.  Amy is currently an interactive account coordinator for a company called Ascedia. Here she works with digital marketing, website design, social media and more. It took a lot of hard work and dedication for Amy to get to where she is today though. Long before Ascedia, Amy was highly involved on the UW Whitewater campus especially in PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America). Amy always jumped at opportunities and definitely had a lot on her plate with being the insight editor, secretary, professional development chair, and regional activity coordinator for the organization. Along with her experiences involving PRSSA, Amy also had multiple internships that helped her gain even more experience. She has worked at the Children's Hospital as a fundraising/special events intern, Qdoba as a brand ambassador, the UWW development office as an intern as well as with the Milwaukee Admirals whom she still works with today. Following those internships, Amy has also worked at the Milwaukee County executive office as a PR assistant as well as Bottom Line Marketing & PR.

Amy gave us a lot of great advice and recommendations that I am going to remember when I am on the search for jobs/internships. Some of Amy's tips include starting your search for early, dressing appropriately, and not being afraid to ask for more responsibility. Amy encouraged us to network as well and how important it is to stay connected with professionals! She left us with a hopeful speech about putting ourselves out there, not giving up, and remembering to have fun. All in All, Amy's presentation put me at ease and made me remember that everyone else is going through the same thing and has the same nerves as I do. She reminded me that jobs/internships do not come easy, but with hard work and dedication anything is possible.

New At This

From Myspace to Facebook to Twitter to Blog, I am slowly taking over the web one social media site at a time! My name is Lauren Messenger and I am a student at University of Wisconsin Whitewater. I am currently in part one of my senior year (still have 3 more semesters to go), and will graduate with a major in public relations and a minor in marketing. Although I am still learning, I am currently loving the PR path I have taken and hopefully where it will take me in the future. I started out my college career at UW Milwaukee how every other student does; scared and completely clueless. I had no idea what I wanted to do or what career path I wanted to take, however I always had an interest in reading and writing so I decided to go with journalism. In the duration of the two years I spent at UWM I spent time in journalism classes and learning all about the communications field. In one of, if not my most difficult class I had taken there, I started to learn a little bit about PR. When I was given an assignment to create and write a press release, it immediately sparked my interest and from there I knew I wanted to do PR. I already wasn't too fond of the UW Milwaukee school system and when I found out they did not consider PR as a major, I decided that I wanted to transfer to UW Whitewater. So now here I am in my second year here studying and enjoying learning about the world of public relations. I am interested in event planning, social media, sports, and government so currently my future PR career could take me anywhere. I can't to see where it will lead me in the future.