>> Hi, my name's Kristen McMullen and I'm the director of communications and alumni relations
at a private school in Somerville, South Carolina,
right outside of Charleston and it's Pinewood Preparatory School.
Q: Can you describe to us what your job consists of?
What exactly do you do?
>> Sure. The nice part is I work at a place that's not that large.
We have 90 faculty and staff, so I get to do a lot of things.
I handle all the marketing for the school, which includes print media, radio, television, even billboards.
I do all the media relations for the school and that consists of doing all the press releases
as well as building relationships with the media and working my best to get us into the news.
I do all of the web management for the school as well as event marketing.
We did our first teddy bear picnic and that was to recruit younger kids.
We get very creative in the marketing that we do.
And I do all of the alumni work, so I work with a board
and I also do events and different things for them.
Q: Can you take us through a typical day?
Are you mostly in meetings, on the phone, on the computer?
>> The nice part about communications, at least where I do it, is every day is different.
I could be running off to an academic signing to take pictures.
I could be writing a press release. I could be on the web.
I could be going to a meeting.
Every day is different.
I do spend a lot of time on the computer writing and doing creative things,
but also probably 50% of my time is having interaction with people as well as attending different events.
Q: What are your hours like in a given week?
>> The hours, it depends, I mean normally we work about an 8-5 day.
I'm usually there until about 6 and then I usually also can remote in
and so I do work from home when I need to finish up projects.
We also have weekend work and evening work as well, but there are up times and down times
when things get a little slower and we kind of make up for it along the way.
Q: Do you work through the entire year or do you also have summers off like teachers do?
>> I am a 12 month employee, but the nice part is we go to summer hours in the summer,
so that always makes up for the long time that we spend around graduation and around the holidays,
so we work 9-2 during the summer and we mostly take our vacation time in the summer.
Q: Do you get to travel at all with your job?
>> Not so much. Traveling would be local or to conferences.
We usually take the opportunity to do at least one conference
to network and learn new skills during the year.
Q: What do you love about your job?
>> I love the fact that it let's me be creative.
For me I don't think I could work in a very corporate job, where it was very regimented and stale.
I work in a place that lets me create panther ambassadors, which I did with the students.
I coached cheerleading. I get to kind of create my own things.
When I'm creating a brochure or a magazine, I get to put my mark on it and be very creative with it.
I also love the fact that when you're the director of communications somewhere,
everyone thinks you know everything about everything,
so it's kind of fun, because I'm the go to person
and luckily most of the time I do know what's going on and if I don't, I know where to find it.
Q: What are some of the challenges that you face?
>> I think some of the challenges are some of the things that aren't in my control.
You know, I have a lot of people who give me information or posted an event or we've had a speaker
and they don't see it in the newspaper and the fact is,
once it goes out of your hands, there's just not that control over if it's going to get printed or when.
I always joke with our headmaster that we just need to print our own newspaper
so everything gets in there.
So that gets a little frustrating at times.
And I think one of the challenges too is balancing,
it's the kind of job where you're never done with your to do list,
because you're always thinking of new things, so you kind of have to learn to manage those expectations.
Q: How could someone prepare to get into this career field?
>> I would say to prepare to get into it, 1) you just need to get some experience.
It's a matter of building a portfolio of your work so take the opportunities when you can to write,
to create, to build online things that you can show people.
It's the kind of job where you need to present what you've done and prove that you have some experience.
So taking classes is fine, but you need to come up with that tangible work.
Q: Is there any type of college major that you'd recommend?
>> A lot of colleges do have a communications major
and you can specialize in marketing or public relations or film, things like that.
I think that's great, but if you really have a passion for an area,
say healthcare is just a real passion of yours,
but you'd love to go into the marketing or communications side,
or if it's education or it' something corporate in business,
it's fine to go out and get the business degree or the healthcare degree or some other one
and then just concentrate some of your classes in writing and the communications side of things.
That way you have the best of both worlds.
Q: Great advice. What do you think it takes to be successful?
>> I think to be successful there's a few things.
One is you really do need to build a network and it's an internal network.
As a communications person, you need to have the trust of everyone that you work with.
They need to be able to come to you and you're only as good as the information they give you.
So if you want to promote something, you have to have people that have gotten to know you personally
and are willing to come and spend time with you and talk to you
and do stories and pictures and things like that.
I also think building an external network is really important
because that's how you're going to spread the word about whatever it is you're doing,
whether it's a business or a school or a hospital,
those people are going to help you, so you have to be able to network outside as well.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about your story?
How did you end up in this career path?
>> Sure. I think it's actually interesting when I think back and trace it.
I graduated from Penn State with a degree in health policy and administration.
My whole family has worked in healthcare.
From there I did go and work in healthcare.
I worked at a place, called the New England Center for Headaches.
While I was doing that, on the side, in my spare time,
I was doing a lot of work actually with my alumni chapter from Penn State,
doing a lot of event planning, getting the license plate done for the state I was in,
working on our scholarship, doing a lot of alumni work,
so when it was time to move on to a new job, I had decided to apply for alumni relations positions
and I actually took that experience and put it on my resume with bullets just like it had been a job
and it got my foot in the door and then I came back to Penn State
where I got a job working as the director of alumni relations in the college of communications,
which was great because I also got that experience
and I learned a lot about journalism and filmmaking and networked with a lot of those folks.
After those 7 years, I actually got recruited by one of our alums in the college
who had his own executive recruiting firm and was convinced that I would be a great recruiter,
so I went off, became an executive recruiter, loved that
and in that job I built my skill set helping people with interviews and resumes
and figuring out the whole network of how you get a job and how you get people into the proper jobs.
So when it was time to relocate it was a natural transition
and I went and worked at Duke University in career services for executive MBA students
and that was really helping them learn all the skills they needed to get a job.
When I relocated to South Carolina, I put all those skills together,
stayed in education, and tried out the K-12 school, where I am now,
and I'm using my alumni background, my communications background
and we're probably one of the only private schools that has career services
because I've decided that I'm going to use all the skills I have
and now while I'm there I'm still thinking about next steps
and I would love to be able to teach someday, so I put myself out there and said,
you know, let me teach something and next fall I'll be teaching public speaking to high school students.
So I think it's always thinking about that next step and building your skills so that you're ready for it.
Q: Any final advice for someone interested in getting into this career field?
>> I do. I think basically I had mentioned a portfolio.
Get a portfolio of your work and take chances.
In this day in age, and any time you really need to take control of your career,
even when you're in college or post college, and take action.
I have a high school senior at the school where I work and I turned on our local morning show one morning
and there she was sitting at the counter with the anchors and she had gone and pursued and said,
I just want to shadow you for a day, one of the anchors, because she wants to be a broadcast journalist.
She did that by herself, a high school senior, and she has taken those opportunities,
so for me she's a great example that people are open to helping you,
whether you want to go and talk about their career or you want to go shadow them and see what it's like.
One of my other favorite stories, when I worked at Penn State,
was the editor of Red Book was taking a tour of the ####
and she was one of my alums and she met up with this girl
and they hugged and they were talking and I said, oh, who was that?
She said, oh she came and interned with me and found out she hated working at a magazine.
So it's good to take those chances before you're stuck in a job that you don't like.
So go out, take control of your career, use the network that's available to you
and even people just in your town and talk to them,
ask them if you can come and see them and shadow them for a day.
Q: Great advice. Thank you so much for your time.
>> Yup.