When Rose Humphries graduated from Bournemouth University’s Public Relations (PR) course she felt fully prepared for the career ahead.
Now working as a Marketing Assistant for Health-On-Line, managing digital projects and social media, she gets to use and develop her skills every day. Speaking about her current role, she said: “It’s very varied so I get to use the range of the skills I developed throughout my PR degree.
“I also really like working for such a large organisation, which can be quite hard to find outside of London. There are so many opportunities available at Health-On-Line and they thrive on culture here.”
After completing her PR degree at BU Rose felt she was ready for whatever the industry could throw at her. She said: “We were given some really realistic messages, not just sold a pipedream, so I felt prepared mentally from a very early stage of the course”.
Completing a one year industry placement at Bournemouth-based agency Marketing Matters also helped her to feel ready for the workplace. She explained: “I learnt so many things that I still use on a daily basis in my job. It was a really interesting time to be studying PR because the digital and social aspect of things was still relatively new.”
The variety of skills that Rose developed through the PR course at BU have equipped her to be a more flexible employee and colleague, and mean that she can make the most of her role at Health-On-Line.
“The design side of the course was great, which was quite unexpected on a PR course but it’s been so useful. I work closely with the digital team at Health-On-Line because I have those skills in digital content writing, which go hand-in-hand with SEO so it’s a really important thing to cultivate.”
When asked what advice she would give to current BU students looking to follow a similar path Rose replied: “Get as much experience as you can and make sure you’re diverse in what you do, having a diverse skill set really helps within the world of Marketing and PR.
“I’d particularly recommend developing digital skills, it’s an area that’s only going to grow and a lot of companies will expect digital knowledge from new graduates.”
Rose constantly meets other BU graduates at networking events, and is even managed by a fellow BU alumnus. She commented: “It feels like you’re a member of a club when you’ve studied at BU, especially those who did the PR course. I feel proud when I introduce myself to people at networking events and tell them that I’m a BU graduate, it’s instantly a point of conversation because the course has such a good reputation.”
Rose also went on to say that she’d recommend BU to other aspiring Public Relations professionals, stating: “I would definitely recommend the PR degree and BU to others, a lot of people who I studied with have found work locally and a lot are working for large organisations in London. The course content is so varied, which means your opportunities as a graduate are too.”