Category Archives: Other
Elevator Pitches: Keys to the Perfect 30 Second Resume
Whether you’re meeting a possible employer at a career fair, at a conference, or in simple passing, you always want to have a quick go-to “elevator speech” to help explain, essentially, yourself to any professional or professor. The perfect elevator speech, however, consists of the following essential elements and characteristics:
- Informative: Whether you’re already in the field, or trying to sell yourself as a Public/Media relations major, you have to hit main points that will resonate with your listener, among them:
- Name, Major, University
- Any sort of expertise you may have acquired along the way.
- Top job experience (internship/part-time job) in the field, if any
- Your interest in their company/industry
- Short: An elevator speech is named as such because it’s about the length of the average elevator ride, which is roughly 30 seconds to 1 minute and half. This may seem extremely short, but anything longer than a minute and half might leave your listener bored. You don’t want to give them a chance to tune out, so the shorter, the better.
- Concise: It might be tempting to jam whatever you can say into 30 seconds-1.5 minutes, but the important thing to do is put what you should say. You might have had more than one internship or experiences that characterize why you’re perfect for the job, but unless you feel it’s absolutely important, minimize the details , maximize the importance.
- Personal: The above themes are an outline of details you can include to best promote yourself. Something optional that might make you stand out as an applicant or intern is a specific experience or academic quality (second language, minor, studied abroad, etc.) that you can include to make your elevator speech and, by default, yourself unique among the thousands of other graduates. If you have a life experience that characterizes you as a person, feel free to include that.
- Practiced, but natural: You don’t want to sound rehearsed, but you might want to have something prepared that might work for the general employer. You might also have various versions to pitch to different industries and companies.
An elevator pitch might just be the key into any company or job opportunity, even internships while you’re still studying, so the faster you get this down, the more likely you are to charm and employer with your 30 second resume.
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Employer of the Week: Allied Integrated Marketing
This post is part of our Employer of the Week series, where we will be highlighting a different company in PR/Communications every Monday.
Allied Integrated Marketing is a full-service agency specializing in local, regional, and national entertainment and consumer brands. The team at Allied consists of specialists, who are knowledgeable in the film, TV, gaming, and consumer brand industries. With areas in promotions, publicity, digital, events, advertising, experiential, creative, and market research, Allied prides themselves on being strategic, creative, integrated, local, and national. They customize campaigns to achieve client goals, generate great ideas that get attention and interest, provide seamless execution of cross-platform campaigns, and maintain deep relationships to make things happen quickly.
With more than 20 offices across the United States, 300+ employees, and 600 markets, Allied prides themselves on creating strategies that help you reach your audience.
Allied also keeps great company with some very reputable and well-known clients. Past and present clients include:
- 20th Century Fox
- Walt Disney Pictures
- Paramount
- Comcast
- GM & Chrysler
- AMC Entertainment
- Fox
- HBO
- Discovery Channel
- Broadway shows, such as Wicked
- and many others…
Allied hires unpaid college interns for every semester to work in different departments in all of their offices nationwide. The first step in applying for an internship with Allied is to visit their website, and click on Contact. From there you e-mail the office in the city of your choosing, and you’re off and running!
Allied can be found not just on their website (http://www.alliedim.com), but also Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/alliedim), Twitter (@alliedim) and on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/company/allied-integrated-marketing).
Blogger vs. WordPress
It seems that everyone is blogging nowadays, from travel enthusiasts to sports nuts to professional chefs. With so many free platforms it 
is very easy to start your own and tap into the benefits of the blogosphere, but which to choose? The vast array of platform options can be overwhelming. However here is a brief rundown of two of today’s most popular free options and the Pros and Cons of both.
If you are looking to dip your toe into the whole blogging scene and to check it all out, Blogger is a great place to start. A fairly simple and intuitive platform, it is a great choice for blogging newbies.
WordPress is definitely a bit more advanced; it takes a little longer than with Blogger to grow accustomed to it. WordPress is a favorite among businesses and companies for their offering of clean, professional themes. It is also a great platform to use if you plan on using your blog in your professional portfolio when interviewing for internships or jobs.
PROS of Blogger:
-It’s free
-Option to decide if you want ads displayed on your blog or not
-Option to customize your domain name for free
-Has a collection of templates that are easy to customize
CONS of Blogger:
-Limited storage capability of 1GB
-Does not offer password protection for individual posts
-Does not offer contact forms, however you can add third-party contact forms.
-Can only upload one photo at a time
PROS of WordPress:
-Free
-3GB of storage space
-Spam protection for comments can be added with the Aksimet plugin
-Password protection for individual posts
-Easy-to-add contact form
-Great for search engine optimizations (SEO)
-Additional exposure from the WordPress.com homepage directory
-Detailed traffic stats
-Easy to upload and edit images
CONS of WordPress:
-No control of whether or not ads are displayed on your blog
-Cannot customize domain name without a fee
-No template-editing, can only change the theme.
An Entrepreneur in a PR World
In today’s academic realm there is little emphasis on non-mainstream PR practices in the classroom such as startups and the
development of new companies. The main stream academic realm focus’ on how to succeed in traditional PR settings- ie agency , corporate non- profit and government public relations. However there is a major flaw in the academic system that seems to be pertinent in today’s society more than ever. There is a major lack in the amount of education that students get about the booming field of startups and entrepreneurship.
The realm of startups has quickly taken the college world by storm. The fact that the traditional study of old PR has quickly become so outdated allows the allure of startups stronger.
Now how can students who look to pursue startups find success while being in college? It’s all about learning outside of the classroom. Learning about the latest and greatest companies, technology and gadgets will give you the one up when it comes to finding out what type of startup you want to work in. The fact of the matter is it is difficult to teach about startups because there is no formulaic method of how many companies that began as startups work, and how they label positions of the employees that work at their companies.
Working for a startup is all about thinking outside of the box and coming up with ideas that are different from the rest. Therefore you need to come up with ideas and ways that you can be different than the majority of mainstream PR students looking to work at an agency of some sort. Events such as http://boston.startupweekend.org/ focus on the bright ideas that have come from the minds of today. Being an entrepreneur in the world of PR will make you stand out amongst the crowd because you are the one with the different, new and innovative ideas.
