Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Planning Ahead

In Fall 2012, I heard about PRSA's Mentoring program and thought, "Why not?!" I was starting to think about applying for jobs (or sticking around for grad school) and knew that no one could help me more than someone in the field I wanted to end up in. After signing up and selecting that I would love to go in the direction of non-profits and/or event planning, I was given my peer mentor, Kevin Kane. After doing a little research on LinkedIn, I saw that Kevin was a Corporate Communications Special Projects Manager at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield. After looking even further and seeing all the experience Kevin had has in the PR field, I was excited to meet him.

During our first meeting, Kevin and I discussed his experience as well as mine. After telling him where I wanted to end up (back in Dallas, yee'haw), he told me that he could help me be as prepared as possible for when I start applying. We scheduled our next meeting and chatted frequently via email, since Kevin now knew what I was interested in.

The next time we met, Kevin didn't have much career search mentoring to do, as I had landed an awesome job at SapientNitro into Boston for when I graduate. As if Kevin couldn't be more thrilled to hear the great news, I also told him that I had recently been awarded Rochester PRSA's Charles S. Smith scholarship, allowing me to go to a PRSA/PRSSA conference. Now that my direction had changed a bit, Kevin would help me get my feet on the (PR) ground in Boston and find a great conference to go to.

Kevin and I are set to meet in January and I'm more than excited to catch up with him. I'm thrilled to know that I have someone in the real world looking out for me and helping me make the best out of my last months in school and first months in the real world!

written by Jenna Deutsch