What tasks does a communication consultant do during his typical day? All of them! To paint the picture more vividly, it often includes writing texts, playing with excel spreadsheets, determining budgets, imagining creative ideas for campaigns, conducting in-depth interviews, coordinating clients and designers… One day you are in full tuxedo mode and leading a meeting, other day you are spending the whole afternoon brainstorming, fueled only by caffeine and tobacco smoke. Then again, there are days when you look like a goblin, working from home in a dirty tracksuit and typing some kind of ultra-turbo-cool communication strategy. On some other day you have to demonstrate your cute voice to flatter the newsroom so they would publish your press release, just this once! With all that in mind, how can the education system prepare someone for such job?
*DISCLAIMER – the education system definitely hasn’t prepared the author of this text for a job in a communication sector. Admittedly, the author was studying history, so that should not really surprise anyone.
Why is internship so important? (Good intern provokes attention)
A great number of interns have roared through the CTA communications office over the past two and a half years, and all have left a very good or excellent impression. It is mainly based on the proactivity and responsibility showed by the interns, as well as on the willingness to learn. These are very good students of political or communication sciences who have already made it to graduate studies, have a good head on their shoulders and are burning with the desire to prove it. You can imagine my shock when I see that these young people are full of theoretical knowledge, but they never had to write an invitation or a press release before coming to us!
The following is the first key message of this blog – all students who plan to work in communications, in any form – urgently look for an internship!
Theoretical knowledge is a great foundation, but practical knowledge is an entirely different beast! Better, I dare say! To feel your own responsibility for some part of the project, the deadline by which something needs to be delivered to the client or that famed EUREKA! moment when some kind of communications puzzle that has been bothering you comes together perfectly… Those moments are very hard to transfer to the teaching process, and they form an integral part of the work students decided to do for the rest of their lives! In addition to internship, participation in student sections of HUOJ or volunteering in NGOs that need communication services also provide very good experiences. Any contact with the real world of communications is an experience that students should not miss!
In defense of the humanities and social sciences
If practice, from our point of view, is so much more important than theory – then why study theory at all? If we compare a student intern/employee to an adventurer trying to get from point A to point B, theory is the equivalent of having a map in hand and planning which route to take. Practice is getting into a car and doing a road trip that is perhaps different from what has been drawn on the map.
In the absence of extensive research, my opinions are based primarily on personal experiences and the experiences of people close to me. I graduated from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, majoring in history. Although they didn’t teach me what a press release or media mailing list was at college, they taught me some other things: critical thinking, the importance of dana analysis, how to create your opinions, discuss them and defend them, how to write something that is comprehensive. One professor who I remember very dearly, had me present the entire Hungarian revolution of 1956 within five minutes – is there a better exercise for quick briefings than that? Countless pages of position papers we had to write (often under self-imposed very stressful deadlines) prepared me for the same situations in a communications agency. Our Nina completed sociology at the same university – it prepared her brilliantly for understanding the target groups she addresses via social networks. Evidence? A series of awards in the trophy cases of CTA communications for projects in which her role was very important.
Ultimately, both she and I transferred our foundations to a communications agency. Let’s go back to that aforementioned map – in the case of social sciences that are not communications, roadmap may be reminiscent of those at the time of great geographical discoveries. Sometimes there are gaps in the map and occasionally there are some giant squids, white whales, black swans or other mythological creatures on the edges, but maybe that makes for an even better adventure?
Why am I writing this? Out of the whole bunch of applications for internships that we receive, 99 percent of them are exclusively students from political or communication sciences. This saddens me a little, because I think that more flexible learning frameworks should be set up at faculties of different social sciences. Why couldn’t some student of sociology/history/psychology get a couple of ECTS points for a month of practice in the real sector where he will see how his acquired knowledge can be applied in business? Ignore what trolls say in comments on portals or on dubious subreddits, a quality education in social sciences provides students with a wide range of soft skills that are very useful, and I would say necessary, for a large number of business entities. From the point of view of the communication agency, I would be very happy if we had a psychologist, pedagogue, lawyer or a librarian here… Who knows what the future holds!
Instead of a conclusion, a call to action!
And now we come to the idea that tumbled across my mind when our dear Tena suggested that I write a blog on this topic! We live in a world that is increasingly pulling towards STEM sciences, and social sciences are increasingly being pushed to the margins. In this context, the social sciences cannot allow themselves to follow the specialization trends of the natural sciences – interdisciplinarity is a necessary condition, there are too few of us to close ourselves in the small boxes of the comfort zone. According to its basic postulates, the communication profession must know how to talk to different target groups, through a series of tools and channels. Therefore, it cannot be satisfied with the unified education of the communication profession. It needs the fresh blood of all those who go through different study programs. And that’s why – students of all majors – contact us the next time we announce an internship, maybe communications are the place for you!