I spent the day at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, participating in their annual PRSSA Pro day. It was an interesting, inspiring day and I wanted to share a few thoughts with you.

I started the day at a mass communications class, where I shared From Cowboy To Astronaut for what might be the last time. I think that idea has run its course, and the remainder of the class lectures I have slated for the fall have asked for custom topics. For this particular class, I cut the deck down drastically to allow for more discussion afterward, and as a result I think we had one of the better class discussions that I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of. There were lots of thoughtful questions and discussion points thrown out by the students, and of course the professor did a great job keeping the discussion flowing when there were lulls in the questioning.

Lesson learned here: Don’t make any of my presentations longer than 30 minutes.

After the mass comm class, I was whisked across campus to participate on a panel with a number of other professionals from the Kansas City/Warrensburg area. The panel was comprised of PR professionals from healthcare, non-profit and tech fields and, well… me.

When I was initially asked to be part of this panel, I expressed concern over the disparity of my expertise against not only the makeup of the panel but also that of the audience (PR students). I was assured it would be OK and that my presence lent a welcome variety of discipline. But, as the panel got underway, my concerns solidified quickly. I really didn’t have anything useful to add to the discussion since most of the questions were specific to the panel members’ experience in the PR field, and the few general questions that I felt qualified to answer were wrapped up by the moderator before I had a chance to chime in. I think I said one thing during the 1.5 hour discussion.

Lesson learned here: Being on the panel was like frenching someone that you like only as a friend: it’s awkward yet not unpleasant, but really it’s best if you don’t do it again.

Something that caught my attention during the panel was a number of the panelists mentioning the students’ disadvantage of being hired because they don’t enjoy the same alumni connections that MU or KU students have. While there may be some truth to that, I’d be a bit offended if I were a student. Especially since, as a whole, UCMO students seemed pretty scrappy and self-sufficient to me.

After the discussion was over, the PRSSA moderators sat the panelists at individual tables so that students could approach us and ask questions and/or have us look over their resumes. That redeemed my weird panel experience because I got to spend some quality time talking with design students that decided to skip class and check out what the awkward black-sheep creative guy had to say.

I also took a look at a few PR students’ resumes, and even though I didn’t feel comfortable giving PR-specific advice about their resumes and job hunts, I did realize a universal nugget that I think is important in today’s job hunt.

In positions that don’t rely on portfolios to convey your point of difference, the best thing you can do to put yourself above the rest is to really deliver a knock-out cover letter. I don’t mean your run-of-the-mill letter that contains such nuggets as, “As you can see from my resume, I have extensive experience in blarblefetzer.” Don’t write crap like that. Don’t refer to your resume. Tell me a story about an experience that helped deliver a result or teach you a lesson that will be valuable to me as an employer. The person who can tell the most engaging story to support their experience is the person who will stand out and possibly get hired. Of course, this can also work for creative jobs. Good storytelling can complement a portfolio rather well.

I ended the day collaborating with a post-grad think tank. Their assignment for the semester is to launch an online publication that has no legacy support from an existing print institution. They brought me in to consult about what the best ways to implement such a site would be and to determine what would be the best type of business model they could employ to make the site financially self-sufficient.

After getting a quick rundown of their thoughts and the types of advice they’d gotten from other professionals so far, we got onto the subject of online advertising and how they should implement it. I got onto a train of thought that started with implementing free subscriptions on the site and then using user’s article browsing histories to model personal preference and serve up contextually relevant advertising in an attempt to maximize click through while increasing perceived value to the visitor. From there I started getting philosophical about social media, the value of social currency and the common threads of creativity that software and technology can enhance.

This was undeniably the most fun I’ve had in regards to student lectures. The hour flew by, and funnily enough, when I would periodically detach from my current consciousness and listen in to what I was saying, I became incredibly surprised at a lot of the stuff that was coming out of my mouth. That rambling part of my mind has some good shit to say when I let it run unfettered.

Lesson learned here: I am apparently everything that I rail against. I live and love social media but apparently I’m bitter about the dearth of meaningful social relationships that it causes. As such, I have a passion for designing things/content that aims to elicit deeper, more meaningful conversations from us once again. That’s my new mission statement.

So, to sum up: UCMO - small campus but incredibly charming, nice walking around on a cold, misty day, class lecture one of the better ones I’ve had, FCTA is going on mothballs, PR panels are like frenching your best friend, post-grad think tanks really trip my intellectual trigger.

Thanks again to everyone for such a wonderful day. My next student day is November 5th at Kansas State University.

Tags: frenching, professional, prssa, ucmo, warrensburg