Public Relations NYC Winter Benchmark Trip 2013
By Danchen Zhou
What is Benchmark Trip?
The benchmark trip is an annual trip to New York City that professors at Newhouse take current students to visit companies that have alumni’s networking. Mostly graduate students go on this trip right before the spring semester starts. Undergraduate students have the opportunity to apply for this trip as well. Like our professors always told us – start to network with professionals as early as possible! This year we visited NFL headquarter, Time Warner, W20 Group, Edelman, Fleishman Hillard, RFBinder, Joele Frank, had conversations with people there and even had a talk with Camille Massey, the Vice President of Global Strategy and Programs Council on Foreign Relations.
Why is alumni’s networking important?
This year we visited Edelman NYC office. Edelman is the world’s largest PR firm, which has been appealing to those of us who want to work in agencies. Most of the people at Edelman we talked with are SU Alumni. They told us how their career paths were like from interns to employees after they graduated from SU. Different from normal information session, the meeting with alumni made us feel more sincere since it could be the very similar path that all us PR students are taking in the future. And alumni tend to talk more specifically to us, giving us useful career tips. We know more about what they look for in an application and how they develop their interns.
What can you benefit from the trip?
Newhouse keeps good professional connections in the communications industry. But before you take a job, it’s hard to truly experience how you really fit the job. During this trip, we realized that we are interested in different areas of PR. For instance, sports fans got excited when we went to NFL, and people who like PR agencies asked a lot talking with people from Edelman. Also, after seeing the working environment, we got to truly experience and understand what a typical day would be like in that company. Thus, it gave us a direction when we apply for jobs.
Don’t miss the amazing opportunity to start your professional networking through the benchmark trip. Practice your elevator pitch from now! And don’t be shy!
