FRESHWATER TECHNOLOGY NEWS
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Issue date: 16th November 04
Job and person profile - Sarah Clarke, Account Executive, Freshwater Technology
How
old are you, and how long have you been doing this?
I’m 23 and have been working in the PR industry
for 15 months. This is my first full time job since
leaving university.
Where did you study and what
degree level did you get?
I studied Mechanical Engineering at The University of
Birmingham and achieved a second class honours degree.
When I started working at Freshwater Technology I was encouraged
to complement my experience with professional PR qualifications
– I have now completed the advanced certificate
run by the Institute of Public Relations (IPR) and am
currently studying for the IPR diploma.
How did you get your job?
Having completed my degree I went travelling round the
world for a year. To fund this I worked for two months
in the office of a PR consultancy. Having thoroughly
enjoyed the experience I decided on my return to look
for a job in PR so I attended a seminar in London about
working in the industry and began looking for jobs on
the Internet. I realised that with my training in Engineering
it would make sense to build on that within a specialist
agency. I came across Freshwater Technology who had several
high profile engineering clients such as BOC Edwards
and Penny & Giles and I decided to apply there.
The rest is history!
What does the role entail?
As account executive I work as part of a client handling
team to deliver public relations and marketing support
programmes to technical companies in the industrial,
engineering, telecom and computing sectors.
In my role I provide support to the account manager
and account director by liaising with clients, the press
and suppliers. I am involved in researching and writing
technical news releases, case studies and articles and
placing these in the trade press. This involves staying
up-to-date with current issues in the industries that
my clients work in and building relationships with journalists:
I keep in regular contact with editors in the UK and
Europe.
My job also involves the coordination of client meetings,
press conferences and journalist visits. I arrange the
distribution of press releases and suggest which magazines
should be targeted for each news release. When needed,
I also commission and manage product or site photography.
For each PR programme, I monitor and log the press coverage
that is received by the client so that we can evaluate
the success of our work.
What’s an average day at
the job like?
Generally I start the day reading trade magazines over
a cup of tea. If I have a client meeting then I prepare
the status reports, photocopy all the press coverage
to present at the meeting, attend and then do minutes
of the meeting. If there isn’t a client meeting
then I might spend the day writing a case study or news
release or sending out an announcement to the press.
Recently I was involved in organising the PR surrounding
a client’s attendance at a trade show. In the
lead up to the event I was responsible for writing a
press release for relevant magazines covering the show,
putting press packs together for journalists and setting
up interviews between my client and journalists.
For more information, please visit the Institute of
Electronical Engineers website for Sarah's:
job profile - http://www.iee.org/OnComms/Circuit/jobs/GetaJobToolkit/day_in_life/pr_account_exec.cfm
or
person profile - http://www.iee.org/OnComms/Circuit/jobs/Profiles/sarah_clarke.cfm