Today I spent the day in the communications department, the last leg of my eight day journey through SAS. I spent the morning with internal communications and the afternoon with external communications, which I came to realize had alot of overlap. I spent the afternoon with Kim in the executive support branch of external communications department. Kim and her team’s job was to support the C level executives within SAS, this includes Dr. Goodnight. The support they provide consists of everything from writing their speeches and blogs to instructing the chief officers on how they should speak in order to stay in line with the SAS image. It was funny to me to learn that most of the social media account that are said to belong to these executives are maintained by others without much consideration from the person the account belongs to. Kim also told me that she works on newsletters and awards within the sales department. When I asked Kim why this wasn’t considered internal communications, she told me that it was but that sometimes external will work on some internal stuff too. Kim was busy with lots of interesting work at the moment as their had just been a very substantial change in leadership within sales, the department Kim works very closely with. She was busy working on a presentation and other materials to be given to the new officer in order for him to conduct his work in a manner that would fit SAS’s image.
All in all SAS was a great experience. I was able to meet many different people and get a true feel of the corporate world. I had a great experience and would highly recommend it to all future juniors.
