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Ekaterina Aleksandrova is one of the brightest stars of graduates in PR. Ekaterina was the mind behind the Wanted: Super Intern competition, hosted by London Metropolitan University. The premise of the competition was PR students would compete for an internships at PR agencies. It was a brilliant success. In this feature, Ekaterina,who in her spare time loves salsa, explains what inspired her to create the competition and the intricacies of organising a PR event.

From Lysva to London:

I am originally from the little town of Lysva in Russia. Having graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod state Linguistic University with an MA in PR and an MA in translation and interpreting, I went to north Wales, to work in customer service for a year under the international student exchange programme. I then settled in the UK and moved to London in 2007.

At the moment, I am working as a personal assistant for 2 directors and a team of architects in an architectural firm studying on an MA in Communications Management at the London Metropolitan University and doing a PR internship in the press office of my employer. Yesterday I submitted my last work in this semester and will now focus on my dissertation on how cross-cultural differences affect communications between businesses in Russia and the UK. This is a very exciting project as my primary research involves one-to-one interviews with 16 of our London and Moscow clients and I expect this to be extremely beneficial to the business.

The inspiration for the internship competition:

Being a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) student representative means maintaining communications between CIPR and the students, keeping students informed about conferences, breakfast talks, seminars, meetings with PR practitioners, parties and other events arranged or promoted by CIPR and keep CIPR abreast of any feedback from the students. Every year, the CIPR run awards for the best CIPR student representative. The criteria for becoming one (there are about 20-30 student reps annually) are media coverage, involvement in any industry activities that would promote your profile, participation in CIPR panel meetings etc. One of the key requirements was to organise an event.

With a limited budget of £50, it was quite difficult to find something which would be of interest to both the students and the PROs. Usually students invite PR practitioners to talk about their field of work – financial PR, digital PR, social media and PR etc.

My main personal objective was to make it interesting to the students. the first idea I had was a job fair but I realised that with some of the students lacking any work experience it would be difficult to attract potential employers, so went for an internship idea in the end. The project developed as I went along. Initially it was meant to be just an internship contest but it turned out to be a competition event for all the parties (from photographers and graphic designer to the venue and even a music band although the last part has not materialised as the idea only occurred to me a week before the event which was too late (more details in my updated blog) although I must admit that I had found a band who was willing to perform for free but their reply came on the day after the event.

The challenges of the event:

Challenges are everywhere. The event itself has been a great challenge especially when one of the PR agencies did not turn up on the day and I had to activate my contingency plan. Being new to the PR industry is a massive challenge as you have to build and maintain contacts from zero and it does take time and effort. The sales part of PR is what I like the least. I hate being targeted myself and therefore do not like doing it to others but it is a key component in PR, so I had to change my perspective. In my revised opinion sales are not trying to sell what people don’t need but trying to find all potential benefits it brings to them and being able to know when to stop.

The effect of the competition’s success:

I must admit the PROs were all overwhelmed. All of them offered help in finding work for me personally, but since at this time I am busy writing my dissertation, I will not be able to look into this in more detail until I graduate in September. Another indicator of their satisfaction with the event is the fact that they have all made more internship offers than just one. The same with Communicate magazine who offered a free admission to the next five of their conferences to all the three winners instead of the planed one.

The university themselves have been more than pleased: they have asked me to start conducting this event annually. The project has won the Sliver Award at the London Met Student Achievement Awards. The ceremony is held today at the Islington Town Hall at 17.30 and I am really excited about attending it! I have also made use of my Russian language and translated the press release into Russian and had it published in two PR-related publications in Russia.

Ekaterina’s PR future:

I am mainly interested in corporate, consumer, public affairs. To be honest, I haven’t yet had a chance to promote myself until the event as studying and working full time prevent me from active search and selfmarketing but being a CIPR student rep has done a great job for me. I have attended a great number of key events and met so many interesting people. The CIPR student representative event has been my biggest marketing point so far. it has given me the opportunity to find, be beneficial to and make use of excellent PR practitioners and other people on all levels. Being able to deal with every single stage of event planning and execution has been an extraordinary and challenging experience. I won’t lie if I say that this has been my first time I have been exposed to PR in such a high context.

Photograph courtesy of Ekaterina Aleksandrova.