Everyone has probably at one point in life fantasized about working for a corporate company. The fancy multinationals whose offices stand tall in the uptown locales of Kololo or Nakasero.
And what’s there not to love about it? If not for the rest of the perks that come with it, mostly it’s the prestige. But you never get the hang of it until you’re really in there.
For about 6 years, I had been in the newsroom, until I decided to give a shot at the corporate culture. Since I had been in journalism, the natural option was going to be communications so I took on a PR job at one of the leading PR & Marketing agencies in Kampala.
And boy, was I never ready for the culture shock!
When you’ve worked for two different online news publications, you enjoy a certain level of flexibility. You won’t be attending early morning sessions of Editorial meetings as is the standard in mainstream news organizations. Matter of fact, neither do you have to go to office everyday. There’s a lot of remote working as long as you check in with your Editor here and there, and as long as you are filing the stories on time.
Enters corporate lifestyle.
The 8 to 5 cycle
You’ve heard about the 9 to 5 talk, in relation to office jobs. You are expected to be at your desk by 8am and you can only leave after 5pm. Every day without fail unless it’s exceptional circumstances.
Adjusting to this schedule can be such a shock. Not just for your physical self but psychologically too. You’ve watched those scenes in movies where either someone snoozes their alarms because they want an extra minute in bed, or they are painfully waking up with a miserable face. That’s you now.
I recall telling work colleagues at a casual outing where the PR team was welcoming us, that there were so many times I woke up tired yet I had slept 7 hours. It is morning, ideally you are supposed to be fresh and ready for a new day. But instead, you’re so exhausted and weak. You begin to dread your job.
The office dress code
As obvious as it might seem that an office job requires you to dress formally considering the caliber of clients you interact with, it’s a struggle.
Journalism is the worst place to prepare you for corporate dress code. The nature of the job (journalism) is such that you are in the background. You’re invisible. Switching from that level of freedom to a clearly defined dress code – which by the way is stipulated in the staff manual – is tough.
I’m not big on neckties neither do I like blazzers. Mere tucking in gets me uncomfortable. Imagine what that felt like.
Emails & Jargon
In the first week after my work email was set up, I must have received about 100 mails. These will be from clients, supervisors, Department members, monitoring agencies etc. All mails that often times require you to respond to them.
Enters corporate email etiquette. My supervisor insisted I had to change the font and color of my mail signature to match the agency style. But what will shock you most, if you are from the informal kind of culture is the language.
Now you have to add words like revert, align, please find attached, let’s review internally, close of business, status, contact report, brainstorm, please consider, touch base, hit the ground running, run the numbers, let’s park this for now, targets….
You catch the drift.
Reports
I don’t know about elsewhere but if you end up in a PR/Marketing/Advertising agency, reporting is standard. These reports will range from weekly, monthly, half-year and annual. And they can be internal but most especially to the clients who are your ultimate bosses. Ideally it’s these reports that tell whether you’re hitting your targets or whether client needs to find another agency. Your life depends on the reports.
So, dust off your Excel and Power Point, and get ready to work those numbers. If you’re an Excel or PPT newbie, that’s the first hurdle.
Muti-tasking
Agency is the haven of multi-tasking. If you’re pressure-averse, you’re going to find trouble adjusting. Burn out is on the table too. Sometimes, the person hiring you will give you a heads-up during your interview, but you never get the hang of it until you’re in there.
There is a lot of work, especially if you’re handling multiple accounts and the human resources are limited. For PR, the daily routine will have everything from content generation (drafting press releases or researching for an Op-Ed), meetings with clients, reports, doing budgets, developing a PR campaign strategy, calling journalists for an upcoming event or following up for content you sent them, engaging third parties for a project, internal brainstorms or attending a press conference.
Trust me, there will be no day when one or more of these items are not on your radar. Including weekends.
You could be out chilling with your buddies on a Sunday, and client will call you asking for an urgent holding statement for a PR crisis that’s emerging. For the next two or so hours, you’ll be in back and forth with your Senior and client for approval. Sunday just turned into a Monday.
Presentation
The agency space is a really good place to test your confidence and expression. You interact with different clients – the patient, the rude, the loud and the mean ones. Virtual meetings, physical meetings, boardroom presentations and brainstorms, pitches are part of the job.
Some days will be nasty. The client will be unforgiving about a certain report or the speed at which things are moving. These are the days when you have to leverage your confidence and manage the client. Coming off as clueless only makes things worse.
Also, every supervisor wants to be comfortable that where he/she is absent, you (the Junior) can represent them.
Boot licking
The unwritten rule of agency world is “When client says jump, you say ‘How high?’”. This cannot be emphasized enough. Agency is ground zero of boot licking. There’s so much to tolerate – mannerisms, meagre budgets and bureaucracy, be it releasing funds or approving a design/article/strategy.
It doesn’t matter how frustrated you are towards a mess of their making, you must write that email in the most polite tone.
