Coming into Rumpus PR, I had no real previous knowledge of the working world, especially what PR is from a wider viewpoint. I, like many people, thought PR was solely crisis control for celebrities getting into scandal or receiving packages from businesses because or your connections with the celeb who owns the company. Wikipedia (questionable I know) states “Public relations is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organisation to the public in order to influence their perception.” From my week at Rumpus I realised the importance of public relations, as every business needs an agency to communicate its ideas and purpose.
Let’s go back to the start of the week and confront my aims and expectations.
One stereotype of work experiences I believed before starting was that it’s all about getting coffee for those in positions above you, or following people around mindlessly to pick up their rubbish; which I now realise is a conceited view and quite insulting to Rumpus as a whole. My aim for this week was to firstly, experience the working world and tackle my blissful ignorance towards actually having to face employment one day. I aimed to actually learn what PR really means and to see if this is a career that I may consider in the future. Without spoilers, I believe it may be!
Prepped with my expectations, what did I actually do?
On my first day, I was whisked into an induction meeting where I learned that PR is a lot more than I thought. My induction taught me the importance of a company being a B Corp and Rumpus’ focus on sustainability, wellbeing, EDI, and stakeholder engagement. Learning about the significance of being a B Corp company was especially important that week as Rumpus was celebrating its first anniversary of becoming B Corp certified. To communicate this through social media, I helped create a stop motion video of a fruit platter coming together in the shape of the number one for TikTok.
Throughout the week, I spent a lot of time being involved within the business by creating and writing blogs about everything from politics to interior design. I also researched businesses and venues for a future Rumpus charity event which I made the poster for. However, one thing I fully didn’t expect was the eventful Tuesday where we went to the Face Gym in Selfridges to film content for a social media competition. This was followed by a visit to a studio to film social media content, which was a fun experience to explore more of the content side of PR. To be in a working environment with people who truly care about the work that they do and also treat me as an equal, even if i was only doing work experience, made the work all the more enjoyable. But the highlight of the week was the Greggs every lunch which tied the whole week together in a bow.
Partaking work experience at Rumpus is truly an opportunity I will never forget. It has taught me to be passionate about my future career, whatever I end up doing, and allowed me to experience a new world of PR. If I do end up deciding to go into PR in the future, which after this week is an option firmly on the table, it would be an honor to have a career at Rumpus.