Welcome to the first instalment of Thursday’s From the Front Desk.

Please note! Due to the unpredictable nature of the PR world From the Front desk may occasionally be posted on a Friday, after-hours, from my father’s computer. Like today, for instance.

From the Front Desk is Samantha Lovelace’s spin on the PR world from a entry-level perspective.

As an entry-level PR-erson and, indeed, office worker, Samantha sits at the front desk of TFC.

During an average day she doesn’t just answer phones and fix printers; Samantha’s front desk experiences are just short of a full degree’s worth of education in PR, computers and people. This, along with general office antics keep her, and she hopes will keep you, entertained all workday long (and sometimes longer).

Now that being said, and with out further ado, Here’s Sammy!

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls - Welcome to the first ever post From the Front Desk!

I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce myself:
My name is Samantha Lovelace and I work at the front desk at Thornley Fallis Communications.

I was lucky to have been introduced to the job, Alex Milroy, Sandra Cruickshanks and Michael O’Connor Clarke by my most fabulous friend, Ms. Lauren Saliba.

Lauren was “the front desk” at TFC in Ottawa and knew they were looking for “Lauren” in Toronto. After great consideration, she declined the offer to transfer herself and passed on the opportunity to me; a quickly tiring, server/bartender/manager of 8 odd years.

Lauren and I have been faithful friends for close to 14 years. We met, one fine evening, in the yard behind Muchmore public school in Ottawa’s “the Glebe”. I believe it was a Friday.

With a fresh squeezed BBA and a desire for something new I was eager to take on the new challenge and marched in to the Ottawa office for my first “career” interview.

I got the job!

With in the month I left the famed Royal Oak in the Glebe of Ottawa, trained a couple of days in Ottawa and packed up my things, my loving partner-in-crime and our cat. Off to Toronto we went.

It was three days before I experienced my first printer malfunction, learned how to do a mail merge, met my first client and worked past five in a 9-5 job. Lets just say I didn’t find my admin skills they were violently thrust upon me with the fury of one incredibly angry volcano.

I like to think, though I’ve hit many a nasty pot hole along the way, I’ve fared relatively well. Not only have I learned how to take care of normally adminy duties, but I took on some new roles too. Media monitoring, event support, ideation, podcast production and some fundamental accounting tasks are just a few of my weekly activities.

And now I can ad one more notch to my PR agency belt:
Almost a year later, well versed in computer malfunction, telephone manner, morning scans, excel spreadsheets, and with a couple of events under my belt, I am writing my first official post on PR Girlz. I can say, as I sit faithfully at the front desk of Thornley Fallis Communications, I finally feel like I am an official PR Grrril.

Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to sharing some front desk antics with you next week.

Until then, take care.

Samantha Lovelace

I need a change of scenery.

After much thought and consideration, I have decided to change jobs and move over to the non-agency side of things. I have taken a position in the communications department of the Canadian Cancer Society.

During my four-year tenure with Thornley Fallis, I have learned a great deal, worked with some wonderful people who have enriched both my professional and personal life.

I have cleaned out my office, packed up my plants and 10 pairs of black heels.

Poor Jos won’t have to harass me to post anymore…

So off I go, into the world of non-agency PR, maybe in the future the girlz will let me report back as to how the other half lives…

Many thanks,
Camille

Well, dear readers (all four of you, at TFC domains), I admit I’ve become a bit bored with this blogging malarkey. I haven’t been reading the digital tomes of public relations and I have become woefully immersed in nonsense, such as my own life. It’s guilt which chides me to check out the ’sphere in order to read beyond my usual online destinations - Go Fug Yourself and The Superficial - and actually look at something work-related.

Sooooo, here’s one… While I’m late to the party (as per usual), seems there’s been a ripple of disagreement between some bloggies about whether or not some sort of PR accreditation is worthwhile. It kicked off, I think, between Todd Defren, who says nope, and Kami Huyse, who’s in the pro-accreditation camp (and has an APR to prove it, obviously). Kami thinks that the accreditation process creates better PR pros and this might help improve our lousy image.

While I’m in no position to dump on people chasing some letters to add to their name - I’ve got a bloody M.A. in PR, for crying out loud - I don’t see how it would make you a better, more ethical, or even a more employable PR type. If accreditation was able to weed out the baddies and the dim, there would be no sleazy or incompetent lawyers, doctors or engineers. Granted, PR is naturally going to attract more people who are a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Call it the Sex in the City effect. (The glamour! The clothes! The cosmopolitans at Nobu! The opportunity to stand on the door with a clipboard and a headset!)

In my own humble opinion, if someone in PR wants to go far, to do serious work and be taken seriously by serious business people, they’d be better off spending some time outside PR to see how business really works. Practitioners who have never been outside the PR department or the agency sometimes seem to think that the business world does, and should, revolve on a PR axis. They can get annoyed, testy or confused when their client - be it someone higher up at their company or a client in the true sense of the word - rejects their idea because it doesn’t fit the business realities. For all our bellyaching about the “C suite” and their lack of understanding about PR, I’ve been in meetings where PR people have demonstrated a shocking lack of knowledge about business fundamentals.

Maybe we’re getting the credibility we deserve? We can’t be credible if we aren’t credible, know what I mean?

I had a disturbing coffee with friends (in PR and other related industries ) this past week and one of the women mentioned how her friend does not like her job and is afraid of being fired and therefore has decided that she is going to get pregnant! This way her boss cannot fire her and she can walk away with a years worth of maternity leave with no plans of going back to the company she currently works for! This my friends is how women get a bad reputation in the working world!! I was completely aghast…maybe I am naive and this happens all the time. I was told by the people around the table that she has a right to get pregnant whenever she likes - true…but she is using it as a reason to trap her company and take advantage…wasn’t there an old stereotype about women not being given sr. positions in the workforce because they would just leave and have babies. Then become completely incapable of using their brain after they deliver that they are kept in jr. positions? I may be completely off my baby room rocker but…does this not sound devious? What do you think? What rights does a company have? Would you do the same thing in her position - dont worry I won’t tell. 

I believe that women have the right and are more then capable of having children and working; a difficult balance as I have written about before but absolutely possible…to me this just seems the wrong direction to take your career (bad karma?). Having a baby is a wonderful, exciting and crazy time in your life…not an excuse to get out of a job you don’t like. Is this our right as women to take advantage of the system because we have the “pleseaure” of hours of labour and delivery then sleepless nights, etc.?  Now that I have put it that way….maybe!

Talk to you soon.

I just spotted this and it made me chortle. At least it’s honest, no? End of the day, isn’t business development the real reason consultants (marketing, PR, the whole shebang) are in the ’sphere in the first place?

So, I’m back in the T dot after a couple weeks in the homeland. Been busy - ate some toutons, spied some puffins, drank on George, rode the waves, sang with my sisters, got kissed by a sailor and, oh yeah, got married. I will put my hand up and readily admit I’ve been partying with family and friends, blithely ignoring all online nonsense and shenanigans, and now feel mild, maybe semi-mild, pressure to write something profound to mark my return. Thus, I’ll do what most bloggers do, i.e. cast about to find something someone else has said, glom on to it and add my worthless two cents.

So, my current boss and my former boss, on their ever-popular podcast, have been discussing networking. More specifically, they’ve been discussing their top hints and tips on how to network. Basically (to crib shameless from their show notes) Terry said that his most powerful networking tip is to be yourself and worry about building the relationship, not selling services. David said you should always stay in touch and provide some value so people see you as someone who can help them out.

In principle, I don’t disagree with either of these tips. My problem (and I always seem to have a problem, don’t I?) is that by calling it “networking”, we give the impression that it’s an actual skill or tool that must be (and can be) acquired and applied. Like desktop publishing or speaking French. Or, in this instance, like writing a press release. I blame college profs and biz/self-help authors for starting this.

You can try to make it sound fancier and apply all the business babble jargon to it, but “networking” is no more than being interesting and engaging people. All people, any people. That’s it. Networking = being personable. (Students, save the $20 you were going to spend buying this and go chat someone up at the pub. It will be more useful.)

We all have, at one point or another, been approached by someone who has read one too many checklists on “How to Network.” The greasy grin and crunching handshake, the studied manner of nodding and smiling, the practiced questions about “So, what do you do?”, the ability to get a business card into your hand from 30 feet away. It’s gross, it turns people off.

The ability to engage people is innate, I think - some people have a natural rapport with others, some people don’t. Those who don’t, armed to the teeth with networking advice, just annoy people at cocktail parties and do themselves more harm than good in their career. If being engaging and personable doesn’t come naturally, all the books on Amazon won’t help. If that’s the case, your best bet is to do damn good work and align yourself with someone who can sing your praises. After all, you can network your pants off, but if your work isn’t good you’ll be well-known for all the wrong reasons. (Overheard at an IABC event: “Quick, let’s go. That boring/awkward/weird guy is on his way over. Hey, by the way, did you hear he just lost the XX account?”)

I recently got an email from the director at my PR alma mater, Humber College. He was asking graduates if they would be willing to mentor current students in the program. I didn’t know what to make of the request, to be honest. At the time, I had only been in the PR workforce for about 10 months. Some of my peers had only recently gotten a job, others had stayed at their internship and taken on full-time positions. The point is, the absolute longest period of time one of us could have worked was a year exactly. I don’t think I’m quite at “mentor status.” Sure I could offer advice based on my own experience. I might even have a couple pearls of wisdom. But I see a mentor as someone who takes you under their wing, literally or figuratively and guide you as you progress in your career. Surely you need more than a few months to qualify for such a position. Merriam-Webster defines mentor as a trusted counselor or guide. It takes time to build trust and experience in order to properly guide someone. Just because I have some experience, versus none, does that qualify me to be a mentor?

The email also made me think about my own mentor. And I’m not sure that I have one yet. I certainly have people who mentor me and who I go to for help, advice and council, but I don’t know if one person has become my mentor. I suppose you can have more than one mentor, but I would think that you would have one for different facets of your life; not three or four in your career alone. Maybe I would have been a great mentor to a new graduate. But I’m not ready to guide someone without knowing more about the material. It seems too much like the blind leading the blind to be a good move for anyone! I think there is a big difference between “mentoring” a person and being someone’s “mentor.” But maybe I’m over-thinking this. Wouldn’t be the first time!

Who is your mentor? What qualities make this person a trusted counselor or guide? I look forward to reading your replies.

Whatever enlightened thoughts I was going to share with you today have all escaped me. My attention is completely focused on an upcoming major new business pitch. It is all that I can think about right now.

I am a behind the scenes person. I enjoy doing research, developing the strategy behind the pitch, figuring out the tactics and putting the presentation together. Unfortunately, I dread the presentation part. You see, I really dislike speaking in public. Funny, I know, a PR professional who doesn’t like speaking to a group in public. Perhaps this stems from some traumatic childhood event, but I cannot seem to remember any such incident.

I can make cold calls to media and pitch a story, as well as speak intelligently at team meetings, but when it gets down to making a formal presentation to complete strangers, I completely freeze up.

Regarding the new business pitch that I mentioned above, I am REALLY prepared and know my stuff. The subject matter is something that I worked on for several years at another agency. You’d think that knowing this would provide some sort of comfort and help me to relax and remain calm. But there is no chance of that happening until the presentation is done and over with.

In the past, I’ve tried practicing what I need to say ahead of time, but that hasn’t helped. I’ve tried writing down my speech word for word, but then I ended up reading each and every word, hardly looking up at my audience.

Any tips for not freaking out when making presentations to strangers? I need some serious help…

Most times she wears a cheap knockoff – but tells everyone it’s the real thing. Micromanagement, snarkiness and overall rudeness. These were just some of the things I dealt with throughout the duration of one of my early jobs in the world of PR.

When I took my first “real PR job”, my boss was anything but a mentor. She put on a good show for clients, the media and just about anyone she thought to be “important”, but when it came to working conditions and the way she treated her employees, it became downright scary.

The constant revolving door of employees who quit or were fired was just the beginning. Even though I worked extremely hard, long hours and received many compliments from clients, it seemed as though nothing was ever good enough. I was given a hard time about everything.
That’s the problem with some first jobs. They may seem like dream career moves, only to have the shine wear off within the first few weeks or months.
After all, no one is going to tell you during your interview that they are going to give you a hard time and micromanage your every move. No boss is going to say “we expect you to make medical appointments before (8:30 a.m.) or after (6:00 p.m.) office hours” and if you have a severely sore back and really need to go home, say “why don’t you lie down on the conference room floor, I really need you to stay in the office.”
Looking back, I did gain a ton of experience and a work ethic like no other. I also developed a tough skin, which is something that has served me well in the working world. I also learned a lot about myself and can say that I am a better practitioner today for having gone through that living hell.
If you’re starting out at your first job and thinking that what you got yourself into isn’t what you thought it would be, here are two things you can keep in mind: 1) It can always get better. Good things are waiting for you down the road. 2) It could always be worse. I’ve been there and done that.

Any first PR job horror stories out there? I would love to hear about them!

I was interviewing a prospective hire last week, and we got to talking about hacks-turned-flacks and whether their skills outstrip those of your garden variety PR-type. Conventional (industry) wisdom seems to say yes - agencies are always trumpeting about hiring journalists to their team (and now bloggers, but don’t even get me started on that), so even if agency management doesn’t really believe former journos are the cat’s PJs, then they obviously believe clients are impressed by it.

I’ve got mixed feelings about it. I used to be a writer and worked in publishing for a long time, and sometimes I feel this gives me a useful perspective on media relations. Simple things, like knowing about the dynamics between a staffer and an editor, or knowing what to highlight in a pitch, or even a simple reality check on what will fly and what won’t. Plus, one would hope that someone who has written for a living would be a fairly good communicator. (Not always the case, I know.)

That said, I don’t think these are necessarily the reasons agencies like former journalists. I think agencies like to believe that journalists must know other journalists, and will therefore be able to milk their connections for some ink. That particular concept is bogus, in my humble opinion. Obviously, a good pitch can make a so-so story more palatable for a journalist, but a non-story is just a non-story, even if you shared a desk and a phone with the pitchee for years and he was the best man at your wedding. A writer can’t file a story about your non-news just because he’s your buddy - he’s got a job to keep.

Either way, as media outlets increasingly cut back on staff there’ll be more and more writers “crossing over to the dark side.” After all, the money’s better in PR than journalism, generally.

Would you hire a newsroom refugee? Are you one? What made you hand in your press credentials and enter flack-dom?