UWW PR Alumni Have Great Insight for College Students

This week I had the opportunity to watch youtube interviews with former UW-Whitewater graduates who majored in some aspect of Public Relations. While they were all very interesting and insightful, there were a few that really stood out to me.

The first was with Ginny Bocek. Bocek works with the Waukesha County Park System as a Parks Program Specialist. What really caught my attention was that no day is ever the same. This is something that I am looking for in a job. I also found it interesting that she uses social media so much in her work, specifically Facebook. She explains that she uses Facebook for the golf courses and also puts together e-news letters and ad campaigns. Additionally, she spoke to the skills she learned at Whitewater. She acknowledged that the tactics she learned in school she still uses today just in different ways. It reassures me that I really am getting a great education here at Whitewater and the skills that I am learning right now are, in fact, preparing me for the real world. To watch Bocek’s interview, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meKGSJFkuAQ.

The second interview that really stood out to me was with Katie Monfre. Monfre graduated from UW-Whitewater in 2006 and is the corporate relations director at MGIC. What I loved about her interview was that she spoke so much about how her professors went above an beyond both in and out of the classroom to help her. I know for a fact that this is still the case at Whitewater, in fact, she stated that the professors are actually more important than the actual classes she took. The other thing that Monfre spoke to was internships and how important they are to finding jobs. She reminded me to get not just one internships, but two or three or four or five. Monfre had amazing insight and to watch her interview, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOhAaSEHwCM.

The final interview that really spoke to me was with Lynnette Hulgan, owner of Essential Details, LLC. Hulgan is a 1999 UW-Whitewater Alumni. Like Lynnette, I knew going into college that I loved speaking and writing it just took me a little while to figure out that Public Relations was where I needed to be. She speaks about how important it is to send your resume to every different aspect of PR that you can. You are so young when you graduate and you need the experience of working in different aspects of PR to really figure out what it is that you want to do. After listening to Hulgan talk about her duties, event planning is something that I am really considering. To learn more about what Lynnette does and to see her interview, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax1agT4OOHc. 

New Trends in Social Media

The newest, coolest, and probably my favorite trend in social media is the Bump app for the iphone and android. Bump is by Bump Technologies LLC and you can check out their website at http://bu.mp/jobs. Bump Technologies was founded by David, Jake, and Andy Huibers; together they launched the Bump app in March 2009. This article by Om Malik explains how the company got started, what their goal is with the Bump app, and why the Bump app has been downloaded by more than 15 million people since its inception. Click here to read more http://gigaom.com/2010/08/06/bump/. A lot of business professionals, especially those in PR, are using the Bump app as a new and better way to exchange information. Everyone at Bump Technologies uses the Bump app as well as those companies and organizations that they work with.The Bump app allows users to literally bump phones together and exchange contact information. So look out business cards- you are about to become obsolete. All you have to do is pick what you want to send, hold your phones together, and then bump. You can even message immediately, kind of like a long-distance “virtual bump.” What I find really cool is that you can use bump to text for free. You can also share photos, apps, locations, contacts, calendar events, messages, music; become friends on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Bump also works with the Android phones, Ipod and Ipad. It’s newest version has a landscape keyboard and sends you an alert just in case your message doesn’t go through. To learn more about the Bump app and to download this app go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bump/id305479724?mt=8.  

BMA Event in Milwaukee

The BMA event in Milwaukee was an amazing event and I am very glad that I had the opportunity to experience it. I spent the night being interviewed in a lighting round by Jim Bernthal, Laura Russart, Terry Hoffman, and Sarah Strauss, who are professionals in the field of Communications. I also ate pizza with fellow classmates, had my resume looked over by Tiffany Weigland and learned about how I can use social media to find internships and even a job from Tom Sanders, Anthony Piwarun, and Haley Landsman. My favorite part of the evening was definitely the interviews. I felt that the interview part is definitely my strongest area because I am so personable and easy to talk to. My interviews said that I have a great personality, great hand gestures, that I am a very quick thinker which allows me to have an answer to every question and that I should keep up the energy. They threw questions at me such as, “What do you do to give back to the community?” “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” “You are so young, how do plan to make up for your lack experience?” and “Why should we hire you?” Questions like these forced me to think quicker and be better prepared for an interview in the real world. Tiffany Weigland was also very constructive of my resume, she suggested I make it have more personality and bullet everything. She also said that having an objective right there on top was a good idea. 

• Jim Bernthal is the president of TopFloorTechnologies, check out there site by clicking http://www.topfloortech.com/
• Laura Russart is the marketing director for Present Music, to learn more about the company you can go to http://www.presentmusic.org/
• Terry Hoffman is the Director of Building Automation Systems Marketing for Johnson Controls and you can learn more about them by going to http://www.johnsoncontrols.com/publish/us/en.html
• Tiffany Weigland works for Rite Hite Corporation and to learn more about them visit http://www.ritehite.com/index.php
• Tom Sanders, Anthony Piwarun, and Haley Landsman work for Fullhouse and do a lot of work for Johnson Controls. You can follow all three of them on Twitter @stratocasting @apiwarun @haleylandsman

To find out more information on the BMA event in Milwaukee, check out this link.  http://www.bma-milwaukee.org/

Check out photos from the event http://www.flickr.com/photos/bmamilwaukee

You can follow BMA on facebook by clicking here... http://www.facebook.com/pages/BMA-Milwaukee/143605512066

The "PR" Student

My name is Carolyn and I am a sophomore majoring in Public Relations at UW-Whitewater. I went from being a Psychology major to a Broadcast Journalism major to a PR major. Right now my goal is to find something I love and something that I am good at. Psychology was not the field for me. I found it boring and I think the only reason I picked that in the first place was because I know there is a high demand and they get paid pretty well. I loved Broadcast and I think that being in front of the camera is where is belong. I had the position of one of the panelists on “The Blender” which is kind of like the show “Chelsea Lately” on E. That show is my personality- celebrity gossip is what I love- especially when it is making fun of what celebrities do. I guess I’m such a loud mouth and so opinionated that it worked. So you may ask why did I switch to PR? Well, I kind of realized that broadcast is a really hard field to get into and I would have to leave Wisconsin and move somewhere like Chicago, New York, L.A. and I don’t think I’d be able to leave my family, especially my mom. I feel like I might be better off in something that is more stable like PR. So I guess this is kind of a trial run to see if I’m good at it and more importantly, if I like it. So right now I am learning about what it is that we do: managing and maintaing relationships between organizations and its publics. As of right now I’ve made a Fact Sheet for Tomorrow’s Hope and I am working on my resume. So far, I enjoy the work and it is something different and I guess I will just have to see where this goes. Ideally, what I have in my mind, is I want to do is PR for celebrities or PR work in the fashion industry.