PR Wars Podcast: PR intern success

The life of an intern. It's tough to get that spot in the agency. When you do, what does success look like for both you and the agency? On today's PR Wars podcast, we talk with Kaci Pollack, Talent and Culture Manager for See.Spark.Go.

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Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hello, everyone, and welcome to PR wars. I'm Chris Shigas. Hey, the life of an intern. It's tough to get that spot in the agency. And when you do you expect to learn. And it's got to be more than getting someone coffee. And on the agency side, what should you expect intern to do for a client? Today on PR wars, fellow communications stalwart Brad Grantham and I talk with the talent and culture manager for See.Spark.Go. It's a public relations agency with offices in Atlanta, Athens, Georgia and Nashville, Tennessee. Kaci Pollack, thank you so much for joining PR wars today.

Kaci Pollack
Yeah, so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Chris Shigas
internships, we're talking about interns. And it is tough for someone to break into the public relations agency. So what are some of your few basic tips to help someone say, hey, you gotta get your start somewhere. This is how you do it.

Kaci Pollack
Oh, really? Well, I'm super excited to be talking about internships today. Because that's sort of my bread and butter. It's the thing I'm most passionate about. And I love helping students how they can find a great experience and an internship, I would say my biggest tip to any student or recent college graduate, that's looking to kind of break in to the PR agency world with internships is to figure out what is unique about that agency, or that company, see where it aligns with your own passions and unique skills, and then merge them together. So an example I like to use is kind of, we have a student this semester, who she's a recent college graduate, and she's really passionate about the food industry, right? Well, we have food industry clients, and so she was able to in her interview, and in her application materials, show off her passion and her experience with the food industry. And that that for us was okay, that's a need we have, and she's able to fill it. So I like to tell students to find the need and fill it figure out how you can bring your passion, your skills, your unique experiences to the table and show those off and kind of do your own personal PR to tell that agency or company why they need to hire you,

Chris Shigas
right. So even if that person doesn't have professional experience within that industry, they're just perhaps a student, right, just for having that interest alone, that could help make them a good fit within the vertical industries of your clients.

Kaci Pollack
Totally. Absolutely. I totally agree. And I think that that's actually really important because an internship, we're looking for students who are super motivated to come to work and to show up and you know, they're doing an atwill, right, this is not their full time employment job. So it's gonna make it a lot easier for them to be excited and motivated if they're actually interested in in what we're talking about.

Brad Grantham
So you're in an agency, you're in management, an agency, you put out an ad for internships, open internships, please send your resumes here. I can imagine and Chris and I have both been in that space that you're going to be overloaded with resumes from all over all different interests. So you've got this entire stack, can you walk us through? When you print out that stack? What happens next? A lot, sometimes these things just get lost in the ether, right? You never hear back? Or this, that and the other? What is your process and your agency's process? And how do you whittle it down?

Kaci Pollack
Yeah, that's a great question. And I actually love that question. Because we do, we're really processed at See Spark Go. So basically, we have an automated process where you apply and we, we actually and this is a tip I would give to maybe an intern manager or someone who's in this role at a different company that may be listening and looking to kind of, you know, revamp their intern program, we actually make our internship application sort of difficult. So they not only have to submit their resume, but they're also submitting writing samples as well as a creative pitch. They have to pitch themselves to us in a creative way. We we don't give a lot of boundaries, we want to see what they come up with. So students end up submitting videos or social media accounts or written essays, that kind of thing to kind of pitch themselves to us. So we want our application process to have multiple layers. So that Students who are applying are not just easily shooting over a resume, because it was one of 50 jobs they're applying to, we want them to, you know, actually be really interested and excited about applying for our job. So once we get those resumes, and you're right, we do get quite a number of them. Once we get those resumes, our first step is to, we have some initial criteria, right? So we have a, you know, some GPA parameters that we look for, we look for certain criteria around major, you know, you got to be in a major that's related to PR that, that sort of thing. So we have some initial criteria that kind of skims off the top right? Well, then once we're down to our core that we're like, okay, they've got the GPA, they've got the major, they've got all the prerequisites that we have a list of like a rubric that we go through, then we say, Okay, what we're looking for is a either prior experience, and it doesn't have to be professional experience in necessarily PR, but are they outside of themselves at all? So are they doing things outside of things that only benefit them? Are they are they working in any way? So we look for, you know, the classic example is a chick fil a employee, right? We know that someone who's worked at chick fil a is going to have a pretty strong work ethic and background, or student athletes, you know, we're looking for what are some things that kind of signaled to us that they would make a really hard worker, dedicated, motivated? Yeah, exactly, that they're engaged, that they're looking to do things that you know, take some work and take some motivation that you have to show up to every day.

Chris Shigas
So I guess the fortnight leaderboard that doesn't, doesn't do it for you.

Kaci Pollack
And not quite, not quite,

Brad Grantham
when I was growing up, when you were trying to get that internship, you will literally would do whatever it took to get that internship, you didn't care about the hours, you wanted that experience to move your career forward. And, you know, oh, as the years have progressed, you know, would you say those students are still just as hungry? As you know, we were 20 years ago, or do you think that's tapered off? What is the current crop of interns? What are they like attitude wise?

Kaci Pollack
Yeah, that's a great question. So I've had the privilege of working with several intern classes at this point. And I would say that they're just getting hungrier. What we've seen is that students realize, especially given the COVID pandemic, the students realize that getting experience in finding a company that's going to actually like, give you really beneficial, actual real life experience in this industry is hard to come by, especially during COVID. Because they, you know, company shut down, they stopped having interns, you know, interns can't come into the office. So I find that the ones who are wanting to do them now are super hungry. And that's also a quality we look for, right? We're looking for my boss, Andy. He's the CEO and co founder of our company, he's really invested in our intern program, too. And so he and I will sit down and we're looking at candidates, we want to see who's the horse ready to run right? When you open the gate, which are the which are the horses that are going to blast out of their running and which are the ones that are going to, you know, get a slow start.

Brad Grantham
So you've hired me, Casey, I'm here. I'm your intern, I'm ready to go ready, get out the barn and get to it. If you were to give me three tips that I need to remember, during my internship with your agency or anywhere else, what are those three things and why I

Kaci Pollack
love it, I would say my three tips are lead up, be enthusiastic. And remember that enthusiasm wins. And remember excellence over perfection. So I'll explain the first one lead up, we really truly believe and I truly just as a person personally believe that people can leave from whatever seat they're in, whether they're an intern, or the president of the company. So I'm looking for the students who want to come in and I really encourage our interns to come in and say what can I do that's going to make the person above me that's going to make their life a little bit