Grad life sure ain’t easy

It must be tough being a grad looking for work. On a day when the UK officially entered back into recession, I was invited to attend a session to speak on how to get into PR.

The panel included a broad spectrum of people from different backgrounds and was organised by Ignite – a firm dedicated to promoting cultural diversity within PR.

A few things stood out for me:

1) Getting a job through the grad process isn’t easy. When you’re competing against 1000 applicants you have to be amazing to stand out

2) Although employers love to see confidence in a potential recruit, it ain’t easy being confident as a grad when you have no experience about anything

3) Networking should be taught as part of a PR degree. I spoke to a few attendees but not one asked for my business card nor had one when I asked

4) Although the event was about getting people from diverse backgrounds into PR, I genuinely think that in this day and age getting a job is more about your attitude than where you come from.

5) With the 24 hour access to information about anything and everything, there really is no excuse for grads not to have a basic understanding of an industry sector or news agenda.

All in all it was an enjoyable event. Just a shame we got turfed out of the bar early. Then again on a school night that was probably for the best.

The law catches up with Twitterers

Not a day goes by  now when some footballer doesn’t get into trouble for posting something they shouldn’t have on Twitter (or some other form of blogging platform). Sometimes it’s relatively harmeless such as Ryan Babel, other times it takes on a more sinister tone. Sheffield United’s Connor Brown and his alleged comments on Twitter over the Ched Evans conviction is the perfect case of footballers not really understanding the power of the publishing tools they possess. In fairness, to footballer it appears that many don’t understand the laws of the land when it comes to publishing. After the whole Giggs incident, it seems the law is finally getting a hand on policing the internet by arresting Twitter uses who named the victim as well as investigating Sky who accidentally amplified matters.

Maybe sites such as Twitter need users to download and read a code of ethics or idiots guide to publishing law before being allowed to sign up.

Getting back in the game

It’s been far too long. Babies, work and being lazy have gotten in the way but spurred on by @Whatleydude I’m getting back in the blogging game properly.

Rather than getting bogged down about what area I should write, it’s going to be on anything and everything that captures my imagination (and frustration).

So to kick things off, I’ll start with a nod to my best piece of writing to date (and probably in my life). I had the pleasure of writing a chapter in a book called ‘The Social Media MBA“. My chapter is on creativity within the social space but there are a lot of other very smart people who have pulled together their ideas and experience on what businesses need to navigate the social media world.

Well worth a read, even if I do say so myself.

(Oh yeah. Here’s a podcast with me banging on about it)