“To all the C-students, I say, you too can be president of the United States.” – George W. Bush

It’s Friday night in Rochester. Blizzard winds whip past my window. I sit with my laptop laboring away on my senior seminar paper(s) – yes, we have to write two each week. As I contemplate the relevance of the two-step flow and the diffusion of innovations theories in the measurement of social media PR, my thoughts wander:

1. Why am I home on a Friday? Wow, I’m cool.
2. I’d rather just research this to learn about my industry – not to write this stupid paper according to stupid rules so I can get a stupid good grade so I can have a stupid good GPA.
3. I want a job.
4. Do employers care about my stupid good GPA?
5. Do college grades matter?

Obviously, if you want to go to grad school, your college grades matter. So knock yourself out and study. What if you don’t see yourself in grad school? My immediate goal is to get hired.

Typical resume advice about GPA’s suggests that if it’s above a 3.0, write it down because it’s a selling point. (So to be on the safe side, I keep mine on my resume because it’s decent. And yes, good grades helped me transfer with ease and kept the parents happy. In some ways the grades were worth it.)

However, let’s assume for a second that everyone applying at least mediocore effort in his/her communications degree can pull off a 3.0. That’s even allowing some wiggle room for a C or two, depending on how many credits you take. What I’m wondering about is that gap between the 3.0 and 4.0 student. As any dean’s lister will tell you, it takes a hell of a lot more effort to crank out a bunch of A’s than to settle for C’s. (And yes, sometimes you bust your butt and still end up with a C. I digress.) If you’re interning, if you’re building the portfolio, if you’re networking, if you’re involved with extracurriculars, if you’re already over-achieving– is it really worth the lack of sleep to put in the extra effort for that GPA? Or should I just be partying?

Say Student A and Student B both apply for the same, allusive, entry-level PR job. Both have multiple internships, both are PRSSA Chapter Presidents, both have killer portfolios. Both can barely fit four years of experience on a one-page resume. Student A has a 3.0 and Student B has a 4.0. Who gets the job?

Well let’s say this job is at a super edgy, unconventional type of agency that is “too cool for neckties.” The Students are being interviewed by an HR director with a trampstamp and a senior account executive who listens to A Perfect Circle. Student A is kind of up-tight. You know those kids who try to look and act older than they are? Yeah. He’s wearing this hideous tweed sportcoat that doesn’t match the navy blue oxford shirt underneath. He’s distant, doesn’t really smile, and has one of those “dead-fish” handshakes.

In contrast, Student B learns the name of the receptionist and says hi to the lady watering the plants on her way into the interview. Student B is respectful, but chill. She genuinely laughs when the SAE makes a joke about Facebook poking, wheras Student A does this awkward courtesy chuckle and then goes into some random, arrogant schpeal about how he single-handedly organized a 50-student Facebook protest on the day the news feeds were released.

Student B gets hired – not because of the GPA, but because she is quite simply a better fit for the company culture. My point: I’ve heard it argued that in a close-call situation like this, the kid with the better GPA would “win.” It’s the supposed tie-breaker. I’m starting to think otherwise. Looking back on internships I’ve gotten and the ones I haven’t, I think my GPA had nothing to do with it. When it came down to the interview, the successful interviews seemed like a conversation between friends or a really great first date. (And as for the unsuccessful…those seemed like interrogations from the CIA.) People have asked me about extracurriculars, experience, why I chose PR, why I’m interested in their company. Perhaps it will be the same when I interview for jobs. No one has asked about my GPA. I’m starting to wonder if maybe, they never will.

So I’m writing this paper for me, and the grades will fall where they may. And next Friday, I’m going out. Because as Tom Petty once said: “The work never ends, but college does.”

Feel free to disagree (or agree) with me. The comments are yours.

Until next time,

Think of spring. Dream of summer. Stay classy, Twitterverse.

-JNA

By the time you’re a senior in college, you may find it hard to cram four years of work, extracurricular, and internship experience onto one page. Editing my resume late last, I returned to a blog post from Penelope Trunk that I read a while back. Basically, the message is this: A resume is a story about your accomplishments – not a laundry list of every single thing you’ve ever done. Furthermore, she suggests that you quantify your achievements whenever possible.

It’s hard because oftentimes as an intern, you’re observing, assisting, helping out with, or writing drafts for the overall plan. At least for me, it was hard to look back on my experiences and point out accomplishments that could be measured with numbers.

In my interny-intern way, I asked a former boss to help me. She gave me some general stats about a calendar sale I did a marketing plan for, and therefore helped me complete that line in my resume.

So now I have this new resume in front of me, some great experiences behind me, and a network of awesome mentors by my side helping me along the way. Perhaps they can’t be measured with numbers, but those are achievements that just keep on winning.

Until next time,

Buy me this

Watch this

Listen to this

-JNA

This last week at my fabulous internship, I got to listen in on my very first webinar. The webinar was mostly about PR software (coughCISIONcough) and the different services it provides. In the spirit of objectivity, I must admit that haven’t tried any of its competitors (yet) so I don’t have anything to compare this software to. Nevertheless, it seems pretty cool. The media list management capabilities kick my Excel sheet’s sorry butt, ROI junkies can get their quantitative metric fix with the Chart Wizard, and the media monitoring tracks your client’s coverage with most likely with more accuracy and organization than your little intern (although this will cost drastically more than him, her, or me.)

As a student, I have this expectation: If I can take away one or two great new pieces of knowledge (something that provokes further thought) from each class, I did my job paying attention (and let’s face it: I got my money’s worth.)

So the two great things I took away:

• Build relationships with journalists.

According to the host, this one journalist spoke of a “3 Strikes” rule when it came to media pitches and press releases. Say a PR person shows that he or she hasn’t done any research (by pitching an irrelevant story, sending a press release about something that has already been covered.) The person gets three strikes, three chances to do that, and then the rest of their emails, pitches, releases, and advisories would be ignored.

This got me thinking about the importance of building relationships with reporters. It’s an investment of time, and it’s hard to do when you have a million different clients and projects to tend to. But I hope I never lose enthusiasm for the idea that less pitching is more, that building tight relationships with a network of journalists is better than sending out some mass-email to every single reporter in North America.

At my news internship, I worked primarily with the health reporter. I rode around in the news Jeep (this one time, I sat in the front!) and observed while she did stories. I couldn’t help but notice the relationships she had with the PR professionals of the local medical centers where she did most of her reporting. She could always count on them to give her timely, unique, relevant story ideas – and they could count on her to consider, and usually pursue, them. It was a professional bond, but there was an element of trust that I admired on both ends.

• We should teach students more about SEO when teaching them to write press releases.

The host included some comments about the importance of using keywords in press releases in order to increase SEO. She described how press releases are no longer a one day event because they can be formatted as web pages and posted up on the internet – left there for anyone who Googles your client to discover.

I wish I knew more about SEO sooner in my PR education.

Overall, my press releases have gotten some much-appreciated positive feedback. People have told me before that “you’re a great writer,” or “that’s a catchy headline.” Or, I’ve gotten B’s and C’s from teachers who didn’t like my “awkward phrasing.” I’m starting to get the feeling that it’s not about captivating a reporter’s attention with a clever lead – but about using great keywords to summon the almighty search engine forces and provoking them to catapult your press release to the top results of a Google inquiry.

Maybe there’s a connection in the two great things I learned from my first webinar. Perhaps journalists aren’t going to take our stories because we had an amazingly clever headline in the press release. They are going to do our stories because there is a relationship behind the pitch, and they know we aren’t wasting their time. Search engines won’t pick up the press release because the headline is particularly entertaining, either. They’re machines. They don’t have opinions about that type of stuff. They will, however, spit out the intended results with the use of great keywords.

From now on, it’s my goal to concentrate more on relationships and keywords when writing and sending press releases. The relationships are for the people, the keywords are for the search engines. The separate focuses intersect at the crossroads between the traditional and the future – the newspapers and the internet. The road forks and in both directions there is results for my client.

Until next time,

(stealing some great phrases from my friends)

Be as you are. Just breathe. Make hope.

JNA