I’m no stranger to interviews. I work for a publication where I traveled around the United States and interviewed Japanese artists in places like D.C. and Atlanta. I have done them in person and one on one. One would think if you talk with artists from a different country while working with the issue of a translator go-between and language barrier, this would be like a walk in the park. I’ll be honest though, I never was this nervous for this interview. I didn’t know what to expect and had every bad scenario pop in my head. While each interview I have done with these artists has been unique in their own way, PR is such a new concept to me. I’m learning new things about every day, yet I was a little nervous about what information I would receive and if PR really was for me.

I contacted Beth Evans on a Sunday evening, but I have been following her for a few weeks before then through PROpenMic. She graduated from the University of Oregon in June 2008 with her B.A. in Journalism with a concentration in Public Relations. During her college career, she was a part of International Student Association, PRSSA, and Inaugural Oregon LeaderShape. She has obtained extensive experience through internships combining PR in the arts field for the Hult Center for Performing Arts and Seattle Theatre Group. She is also no stranger to travelling as she went to Beijing and then to Ghana for classes and interning there as well. Beth Evans currently works in China mainly teaching ESL and volunteering as PR for the NGO-Hua Dan in Beijing.

I decided to interview her because I wanted to find more people who were not only in PR, but for them to be involved in overseas activity. I wanted to talk with a professional whom I could relate to and also make sure pursuing a career in International Public Relations in the future is right for me. She answered my emails very quickly and I automatically felt relief that she agreed to do this interview for me. The biggest problem was because I wanted to talk with a PR abroad, there was no way I could conduct a phone interview without a horrible phone bill so everything was done via Skype. We took a morning to conduct the interview, a time where we both were available in our schedule and once the interview started, I felt like I was back in an environment I was used to interviewing Japanese artists again.

I hope that other students of PR reading this interview and learn about the practices of PR not only in the U.S., but overseas and understand another aspect in International PR. I hope that these individuals and all readers enjoy this interview as much as I did!

-When did you decide to go into PR? Why PR?
 
Around my final year in high school and first year in college was when I made the decision to get into PR. In high school, I had to complete a senior project. Me and my friends collaborated together and decided to write and produce a play. I joined as their business manager which I think began me taking an interest in PR.

Since I was 15, I always wanted to get into something in the marketing field and thought my dream was to be a graphic artist so I took a class on graphic art, but noticed it wasn’t for me. I found out that I was interested in art, but not in being an artist.
 
When I was deciding on universities and majors I was most interested in advertising and public relations in the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication and marketing in the College of Business. The University of Oregon had a great PR program and was unique from the others where I lived. I decided on journalism instead of business so I wouldn’t have to take any higher level math classes.

What really set my decision to study PR in stone was during my first year in college. I went to my major advisor and told her about my experience as the business manager for the play with my friends. She said that those duties were PR duties. PR was something where I could be creative but still have a desk job.
-What is a typical week like?
 
I go into the main office in Beijing from 10:00am to 6:00pm for a couple days a week because it takes two hours on public transportation. I mostly bring my work home which is more efficient. In the office I would update the website and try to work on the quarterly newsletter. I include staff bios, events where I can invite press, and other important information. A lot of the NGOs in China are still a work in process. Though this NGO Hua Dan, where I volunteer has been around for eight years, compared to NGOs in the United States, it is fairly new.
I also try to attend workshops that the NGO provides for the locals for emotional healing. In China, there is a growing problem of people going to the outskirts of cities in China to do menial jobs for less pay. Also, following the big earthquake in 2008, the NGO holds workshops which had individuals express their emotions through theatre and are proven to be quite effective.
 
-Tell me about a project you worked on that you are especially proud of?

If I could choose anything, it would be the business manager volunteering I completed for the play during my senior project. PR wise, I was heavily involved in PRSSA. I was on my university chapter’s executive board for two years. In the first year, I was the special events chair so I would help handle and plan various events. I also represented my chapter in the National Assembly in the spring and became Regional Activity Director the next year. I created a one day event held in Portland, Oregon with the help of only 17 volunteers. There were around 100 attendees, both PR professionals and students. We had a networking theme because we had a great network in our PRSSA chapter. For instance, Portland PR students were able to network with PR professionals through personal interviews during the event. I also added three agency tours during the program. One tour took them to two small agencies, one took them to Edelman and a small agency, and the other was a tour at Nike. 

-Wow, Nike! How were you able to get a huge connection like Nike?
 
I didn’t necessarily have the personal connection with Nike. However, I had connections to people who did. One of the essentials to being successful in PR is great networking. Every year at least three or four students or recent graduates from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication intern at Nike, so we had this kind of intern lead the tour.
-What do you do to keep current in the PR industry?

I do a ton of reading. I like to read about journalism and PR blogs and online publications. I also connect by chatting with PR professionals. I use my Google Reader which is carefully categorized. One of the tabs I often visit is Job Search in China-PR people in China. These are a few PR geniuses in China who blog in English. There is also a good media industry here so I check out ”Media.asia”. 
 
-Besides social networks, are there events or workshops you attend?
 
I don’t go to as many conferences here then I did in the United States because it’s more expensive and more exclusive.  There are not many PR organizations here, so I have to make the best out of things and go to events like a Girls in Tech event I went to that had a panel on micro-blogging.

I also use Twitter to see what to read. I think that it is important as a PR to keep up on news locally and globally because it is our job to make news.
 
-What did you wish you would have known before starting your career in PR?

I wish I had known networking was geographic. I didn’t realize if I wanted to work in NY that I shouldn’t have just networked in Oregon. But I’m glad of where I ended up. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be enjoying my life in China which I think is more fun then if I lived in New York.

Also, I wish I would’ve known the lack of variety of clients you get to have as an entry-level PR. Teachers tell you that the possibilities are endless and they are, but I wish they were more frank about how much competition there is to do anything other than corporate agency PR. For me, I wish they told me that before I’ll be able to work in PR for non-profit organizations, I would probably have to work in corporate PR to get experience first.
 
-How important is writing in your career?

Writing is everything. Especially for entry-level PR, it is very important. Once you get to a director level, you counsel others instead and don’t write as much.
As an intern, I wrote press releases, proposals, and the like. Writing is a bigger part now that I’m overseas because agencies will work in a regional level and when they have a message and want to translate it in English, we, the native speakers of English, come in to edit.

So when you start out, you do jobs like editing. Once you prove that you are responsible, you begin to have other PR duties.

I tell people my favourite parts of PR are networking, planning, and writing and this is what I like to do.
 
-Do you think since you are working in a different country and juggling two languages, writing is even more important?

In China, I believe writing is more important compared to the States because people are counting on you to not make mistakes. In the U.S. if I write something, a supervisor will copy edit it, but in China people count on the few native English speakers in the agency to be the final proofreaders on anything written in English.
 
-Were there any surprises with your job in PR?

I’m starting out PR fairly early, so there hasn’t been many surprises yet, but it would probably be NGO’S disorganization and how much I needed to fix their PR problems. I was surprised that they didn’t even have any lists of stakeholders or media when I started. I really had to start from the bottom and I’m still working my way up.
 
-Did your education prepare you for working in PR?

Though not job search wise, PRSSA helped me with experience and my confidence. My education helped me find a job regardless if it was PR related or not. When it comes to proofreading, I can edit better then other native speakers because of my honed grammar skills and I have PR to thank for that. I also learned good communication skills which is important for the job market.
 
-Did you ever think you would incorporate PR in an international level?

When I was a student, I “accidently” became international. I was someone who loved diversity and a lot of my classmates and friends in elementary and middle school were immigrants. I say I accidently became international because I thought I was going to be in art PR for my love of art. However, when I first studied abroad in China, I fell in love with the culture. After that, I found out that I was able to earn credit towards my degree while studying in Ghana and had an internship there. I was also part of the International Student Association during college. These activities made me become to be known as “international”. 
I wasn’t intentionally doing this though, after graduation, I was mostly applying for jobs in the United States, but because I didn’t network correctly, I wasn’t successful.

Even though this labelling accidently happened, it is much more important to me now to be considered as a China PR person than an art PR person so I embrace this label.
 
-What would you call this labelling?                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Personal branding. Something you create yourself and something people label you as. I embrace this because this is what people considered me through my work.
I don’t think people consider me international anymore instead considering me “China PR” because people who aren’t from here are all international.
 
-With your internships in the US with PR and now working overseas, do you find the practices to be different?

Yes and no. The fundamental PR in China is so much different then the US. It’s all about personal connections in China and PR is still a fairly new concept.
The work I do in China, however, is the same things that I did in the States.

The first job I had in China was, I was working as art gallery assistant. We had this big gallery exhibition opening where we invited all the media. We invited them by sending the same press release and PDF flyer over and over via email. Just like in the US without a personal pitch. 
My job was to give them this catalog with an amount of money. Depending on how important you are was how much money you were given.
It’s not rare here to pay for the press’s meal or give them things for good reviews.
 
-So this is a common practice in China?
 
It’s a common practice among smaller businesses and companies such as the one I used to work for.
I’d like to mention that these practices don’t happen much in the major companies, just smaller ones. But even in the United States, I’ve had ethic issues with most of my internship supervisors at some point.
One time, my supervisor would told me to embellish a little when writing press releases, which I thought was a little more than embellishing to the press and was borderline lying.
 
-Are there other media ethic problems in China that you’ve experienced?

Advertising and PR is blurred in China. The practice of copy and paste of the press releases from the journalists is common.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term, ‘Astroturfing’, but there are companies that do this. It means a company creates false grassroots PR.
An example would be on BBS*s, companies will pay people to say good things about their companies or pay agencies to delete bad comments about them posted on a BBS.

There’s also the problem with censorship in China. This means the national government has banned public access to international social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, PROpenMic, and YouTube. They also banned major corporations like Google and things associated to them because of the controversies between Google and China and blog sites.
 
How are you able to update your blog and continue to update on social networking sites?
 
You have the option on purchasing something called VPN, a software you download that tricks your computer and makes it think that it is in a different country.
 
-That’s some nifty software!
I know! I actually have it on right now without thinking about it. If I had it off while we were talking, the government could monitor our whole conversation actually.
 
-It sounds like if you are a PR in China, because of the censorship laws, it makes your job twice as hard with not only the language barrier, but the lack of resources.
 
Keep in mind that though most Chinese are not able to go to Facebook or Twitter, they have Chinese equivalents to these that they have access to publically. It’s just knowing these resources and how to use them.
 
*BBS are online community boards where you can post different topics and people reply to them anonymous or under a different surname.

-Are there any tips you would offer someone just starting out?

I actually made a post on tips for post grads finding jobs abroad. I hope you and everyone else reading this, checks it out because I find that it is very informative for those who are interested in working overseas. I can’t give advice to those who want to work in the U.S. because I didn’t get a job there. I can suggest to you if you want to work overseas, to get here first because it is very competitive, especially at PR agencies. You might be able to line up an internship in China at a PR agency while you are still in the U.S.; I’m not sure. You can also get here by signing up for an intensive language program to get you a student visa. Also try to use your gut feeling when interviewing to see if you like your co-workers or your job because you’ll be dedicating at least 40 hours a week. I know there is a lot of pressure of finding a job because of the economy, but you want to find a job you enjoy.

Another piece of advice is keep your blog even after you finish classes, most people stop afterwards, but it really sets you apart if you maintain it even after graduation.

Want to learn more about Beth Evans?
LinkedIn: http://cn.linkedin.com/in/bethevans

Blog: http://www.elizabethlloydevans.com/