The semester is coming to a close!

This has been a hard semester to say the least. Working full time and taking 3 classes for the first time proved to almost be more than I could handle. However I am happy to report that I got through it. It is now time for one last final and then soon after I will be taking my first ever vacation from work. I will be enjoying 17 lovely, stress free days away from the office and grad school and will be returning fully refreshed. Just in time for the spring semester to start! It was a pleasure writing this blog this semester and I hope everyone enjoyed reading about my experiences at the Town of Fountain Hills.

When your boss announces her resignation...

When I originally signed up for this internship, it was for a one year comittment. This intrigued me and i was anxious to get some experience working for local government. Towards the end of the internship I had noticed my boss becoming more distant and she was out of the office more. Then the truth had come out. She was resigning from her position and I no longer had an internship. I was extremely disheartened to say the least. Even though I had noticed a change in my boss, I didn't expect this news. So I finished up the last week and that was it. So I got approximately four months of experience under my belt when I was expecting 12. However, with that being said, I am grateful for the time I had and the experience I did receive during my time with the Town of Fountain Hills. It has given me more communication skills and a taste of working for small, local government.

Weeks 13 and 14

My boss was out these weeks, so I was left to my own devices once again! My primary focus was to continue working on our social media management and to research ideas to increase our fan base. I put alot of effort into our social media, but i have to say we didn't have many followers initially. So we really wanted to focus on making that a priority. I posted some of our photo libraries to the town Facebook page and linked the news events from our website to our Facebook page as well. I also scheduled out tweets using our new content management system, co-tweet, for the next week.

The holiday's are among us!

I just wanted to take a break from internship related posts to comment on my excitement about the holidays. I am from the east coast where the holiday's are a big deal. The whole community gets involved in decorating their homes and even their cars! There are neighborhood contests for the best decorations and even the shopping centers are decorated. I miss that. I have found Arizona is not the same in this respect. But i have to say my favorite tradition during the Christmas season is driving around with coffee, the week before Christmas and looking at all of the decorated homes and the wonderful display of lights and decorations that reflect that homeowner's character. I am really looking forward to that this year!

Week 11

This week was pretty busy. I spent it  uploading more events to the town website and Facebook page and created additional photo libraries for our archive system. I also completed further research of Google Fiber and completed assigned town government press releases. I also learned to use Publisher, which I had never used before. The town publishes a monthly newsletter, that later throughout the internship I was asked to help with. It was created in Publisher, which was something I had to learn. It was challenging at first, but I started to get the hang of it! I also transfered our town twitter information to co-tweet for content management. This proved to be really helpful. I also researched information about the town to link to social media pages and coordinated advertising ideas to start formulating polls and surveys for town. It was a busy week!

Research, Research, Research

This week really focused on research. I primarily conducted research on the Google Fiber since the town was in the running to be part of the pilot program. The Google Fiber was a plan to build experimental, ultra high-speed broadband networks. Hundreds of communities and hundreds of thousands of individuals across the country have expressed their interest in the project, including the town. So i did research for the town to make a case for why we should be chosen as one of the communities. The town, as you have all seen from my posts is really into using social media. I also spent the week researching more ways the town could be promoted through social media vehicles for the economic development department. I also managed the events section of our Facebook page.

Career advising: A wonderful experience

Yesterday I stopped by the downtown career center to seek career advising. I currently work for a job that utilizes my undergraduate degrees, but was curious as to how to make that transition to a job that would utlize my master's work. They advisor I met with had some great advice and tips. She mentioned possibly completing an internship or volunteer work, to shadow someone in the field i am interested in getting in to. With my work schedule, i mentioned that this would be difficult. The advisor had great advice on how to deal with that as well. She said that it would be really important to sell my education and highlight my course work and projects in lieu of work experience. This made me feel so much better. She also said i should start looking at job postings now to get a sense of what employers in my field are looking for, as well as start preparing my resumes so that they are ready when i need them. I thought she gave some really great tips and would highly recommend to anyone to visit the career center.

Evaluating Job Offers & Salary Negotiation workshop

I had signed up to take this workshop and was really excited to attend it. I have always been curious about how to go about evaluating a job package when it is presented to you. Unfortunately the workshop was cancelled. The facilitator did, however, leave a lot of materials with career services for me to pick up and use as resources. It included the power point presentation and a couple resource sheets and guidelines. I have to say the information is very useful. I am approaching the one-year mark at my current job and have been thinking its time for a salary increase. My responsibilities have increased significantly and i feel i perform well. The materials from this workshop provided tips on how to negotiate salaries and what you are worth as an individual to a company . This is useful when presenting your case for a salary increase or negotiationg an initial salary. Eventhough the workshop was cancelled, i think i still gained some valuable information.