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Regret to inform that you are not shortlisted (After 18 rounds!)
Unreal or ridiculous? Am I exaggerating? Oh sorry, let me first set the context. If you happen to be on a job hunt, then the unending number of interview rounds, could actually overwhelm you. And now you think I’m trying to look for a shortcut from hardwork! Really, may I turn around the tables and say how incompetent are the hiring teams in decision-making? How can one humanly need beyond 5-7 rounds to make up their minds and evaluate the talent they intend to hire or not. Absolutely understand the need to evaluate talent across various functions, avoid any unconscious bias and ensure expectations are met, from various teams. Sometimes,…
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PR Lessons on How Not to Handle a Pandemic
This is not a political blogpost, but a one written out of purely professional interest! As a PR Professional I have currently seen a slew of negative press, social media memes and general frustration with the way India’s monster second wave is being handled. It’s been a lesson for any well honed PR Person on ‘How Not to Handle Public Perception’. So here are my two bits on how this reputation management disaster can be addressed. Communicate: People want to know that the people in charge are doing something! In a time of panic, people want to know that there is someone at the helm of affairs, taking change and…
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What does an internal audit at #PRPOI look like?
As we got all enthused and ecstatic on the first anniversary for the curated #SaturdayLive sessions, we just got thinking that this has been one helluva journey for all the founders, as well. No one knows it all, yes, we say that proudly even after being in the industry for a combined 6 six decades (all three of us put together). Probably that hunger to keep learning is what turned out to be our biggest challenge and motivator. So, this is when we looked inwards, in literal sense auditing, to check if we have enough brownie points on our scorecard for upskilling. And we were glad to come out in…
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IWD: The Day After
Is Corporate Inc not reading the room? Now that the buzz across the communication industry on International Women’s Day has died down and I am sure all of you are already prepping for offers on Holi, let’s suss out what the day meant for women in the industry. As people who are often tasked with finding innovative ways to communicate and push brand campaigns on IWD let’s dive into what and how women in the industry really view this day. To prep for this article, I ran a Linkedin poll before the D-Day and conducted a fiery Twitter chat with 13 strong voices from the community along with having a…
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Looking to get back to a corporate job, are we?
Someone asked ‘did you match the keywords on your resume to the job description?’. I said, ‘hell no, I’m no Google (no offence). And how am I to showcase my creativity as a communicator? They all unanimously said ‘keep quiet and just match the keywords’. So, I did that. Did I get the job? Oh no hold on, there was more. Then someone said, ‘girl this is too much content, please rework’! I said, ‘but this matches exactly to the job description that I just got’! They said, ‘come on get smarter, make it shorter, no one has the attention span’. I was like, ‘seriously it’s a senior role, shouldn’t…
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Gender Diversity in PR
Gender diversity is rapidly gaining momentum across the globe where the corporate world is striving for equal representation of both genders as well as marginalised groups. But we cannot say the same for the Public Relations industry, where it is common knowledge that it is a woman-dominated profession, as a whole. The same goes for India too. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, although women hold 72.8 percent of public relations management jobs overall, only 10.7 percent of roles are held by those who are black, 3.1 percent by Asians, and 3.1 percent by Hispanics or Latinos. However, modern PR as we know it today started off on a…
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PR Insight: How To Crack Budget Stories?
Budget stories: We all agree this is the first stress point of the year for the PR & media community. After a turbulent year, this budget will see high strung responses from all sectors. This is also the time you are warned about DND (do not disturb) posts from journalists and most PR approaches are met with (love or hate) strong reactions. However, this year we want to aim at changing the narrative. So, we reached out to the strong voices in the communications industry and sourced insights that you can use to help make your quotes more relevant for the media and plan the best approach for the coveted…
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Globalize, Localize, Glocalize!
Political liberalism and technological advancements have been providing a constant push to international trade, with businesses exploring and entering newer markets and servicing the aspirational needs of the new age consumers. It therefore is not surprising that more than one-fourth of the global production is exported, that too at a healthy incremental rate. The contribution of services in total exports is also heading north, indicating a behavioral shift in the international trade practices, and evolution of consumers. The world is witnessing an exponential growth in the consumption of international brands and services. A Euromonitor research states that consumers in developing countries are reevaluating their consumption habits, abandoning exaggerated materialism and…
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Importance of Internal Communications in these challenging times
In a world separated by a mere six degrees of separation, one would think that communicating effectively would not be a challenge. However, despite having multiple channels of communication, we find that people seldom talk to each other or communicate effectively. This often opens gates for ambiguities and leaves room for ‘guessing games.’ For organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic has only further underscored the importance of communicating proactively and effectively. With most of the workforce working from home, the constraints on physical connectivity have only increased, putting a strain on effective internal communication and hence necessitating the need to focus on how companies communicate with their internal stakeholders. What we do…
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Influencer Marketing: The Way Forward
As the world changes and moves to even more digital formats, one of the greatest pivots we have witnessed in these times has been the rise and rise of Influencer Marketing. As traditional media options shrink, Influencer Marketing and Outreach is gathering strength. In this new fragmented universe, where we all notice media and individuals vie for eyeballs, what is the future of Influencer marketing? Will it be the new way brands communicate with consumers? How will the Public Relations Industry navigate it? These were some of the questions raised in the PRPOI Live discussion on the subject of Influencer Marketing. Witnessing participation from Pankhuri Harikrishnan, Founder Fetch Consulting, Jia…
