Goal setting: founding and following my PR path

Looking back on four years of college, I now understand the power of setting goals. Yes, goal setting is empowering. When I was young, I kept things pretty simple in the goal-setting category. After being accepted to the University Honors program at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, I immediately set my sights up graduating with a GPA of 3.5 or above. This number is the cutoff criteria for graduation from the program, so it seemed like a great baseline.

I wrote this goal down and began my mission. Each and every academic step I took and decision I made reflected this goal. Some classes I knew my highest potential was a B, others I knew I was slacking if I didn’t get an A; but each end-of-semester grade report exposed my measuring stick and told me how I was doing.

My next big goal became clearer as I progressed on the path of becoming a young PR professional and demanded more out of myself. After being cemented at three different PR internships, I set my sights on the best. My goal was to land a PR internship at a world-leading, prestigious and global public relations agency. Heck, look back at one of my first posts at on the PR path.

Landing an internship at Burson-Marsteller, a top ten PR agency worldwide, was my ultimate goal. I got to the final stages of the long interview process in 2009, only to be rejected due budget shortfalls. I could have pouted or been mad, but I used the rejection as a motivator to continue working toward my goal.

Landing an internship with Burson became my mission, my goal and my passion. I set up Google alerts to follow the company every day, and constantly brainstormed ideas for how my application might stand out from the 800 other young PR professionals who applied.

A year later in 2010, I applied and was accepted into the program. I start June 7 in Chicago’s public affairs practice. What an amazing feeling to follow a goal, dedicate yourself to making it happen and realizing that goal. Fulfilling goals is a feeling unlike any other and just when you think a goal might be out of your reach, it may just be closer than ever. Set goals, work hard and never doubt your determination. By the way, I did graduate with above a 3.5 GPA, checking off another goal on my professional pursuits.

What goal-setting success stories have you had on your path to becoming a young PR professional? Please share!

Exciting way to highlight your talent

Sorry about the long hiatus of posting, I got caught up in the end of summer/beginning of school whirlwind and left this blog empty for a while. My goal for this blog during my senior year at UW Oshkosh is to keep you updated on everything I do related to public relations.

I will try to offer short, but very useful tidbits of information to help you separate yourself from other PR students. I will detail every step along the way of my job search, student involvement, my current internship, etc.

Professional advice:

At the end of the summer I agreed to help with social media for a real PR plan for Weidert Group (a full-service marketing agency in Appleton, WI). After chatting with the PR manager (Thanks Abby Gutowski!) from Weidert at a meeting, she suggested www.weebly.com, a FREE Web site creator that works well to showcase your talent, portfolio, résumé, etc.

I would also highly recommend this site to create an online presence for yourself. The interface is very user friendly with drag and drop customizable features (no html programming needed). So, if you are looking for a way to impress employers and organize your accomplishments, weebly is an excellent and FREE way to do so.

For an example, feel free to check out my weebly site (still a work in progress!) and e-mail me at armans84@uwosh.edu with any questions OR suggestions you have. Thanks for reading.