Friday afternoon a group from our chapter went to visit Exelon Corporation. Besides the amazing view of the city at the Exelon conference room, this visit was different from the others our chapter has been on because we were able to get a lot of information about corporate public relations.
Exelon’s Howard Karesh and Laura Micheli managed to pull off a very engaging presentation to us that proved to be extremely helpful in many ways. They explained right off the bat that corporate PR deals more with the reputation of a company and that the stakeholders and tactics involved are different compared to the agency side. At the beginning, Howard said, “It’s about storytelling,” which was something that stuck out to me personally from the entire presentation. It brings about the idea that this job is about presenting a good reputation while stressing the fact that the reputation of the company matter, and it deals with seeing the company through many perspectives. With corporate public relations, you are putting all your energy into one brand or company, whereas with an agency you deal with many clients.
Howard and Laura also explained about what the work is like that they do. Some of the work at Exelon includes employee communications, media relations, etc. They do a lot of different types of writing in each area. This showed us that there are lots of different types of work done through this corporation and every day this work varies. There are regular tasks each day along with irregular jobs, which is something to expect working at Exelon. Also, each day’s work schedule is ultimately determined around the plenty of meetings held which is another part of this job to expect.
There was a lot of sound advice given to us through Howard and Laura’s presentation. A good portion of this advice deals with how to treat employees. They are adults and it is important to treat them with respect, while being honest and telling complete stories.
Some other skills that are important to have before entering the job scene are strong writing skills and general common sense. Most skills are learned on the job, and this includes common strategy, how to present things clearly, and how to deal with different parts of the job. Overall, it was emphasized that writing is the single most important skill to have in this field. Other tactics that are helpful as a college student would be to network, pay attention to your own reputation (like how you appear through social media), have a good attitude, and take advantage of internships.
Overall the visit to Exelon was extremely beneficial and provided our chapter with plenty of useful information.
-Sonal M.
