Abstract:

Public relations try to establish communication between the firm and the target audience, to create trust and to develop positive attitudes towards the firm. The firms have regular and continuous relations mainly with universities, technical / vocational schools and other educational institutions, which is important for public relations efforts. Organizing lectures with educational institutions, attending to employment fairs, giving scholarships to students, organizing technical visits for students, sharing experiences with the students in scope of various courses, providing materials needed by the educational institutions, providing training opportunities to students can be listed among these efforts. Thanks to these activities, the firm can have opportunities to introduce itself to society, to remind its presence and to demonstrate that it appreciates social responsibilities. If public relations activities that the firms have done are successful and if they create a positive image on the educational institutions and the students, they will get the chance of employing the well-educated staff. The aim of the study is to determine whether educational activities about public relations that students studying at Tourism Faculty at Nevşehir HBV University and being exposed to these activities during their educational process affect their choices of training and working places. Semi-structured interview method among qualitative research methods was used as the method of data collection. Students who did their internship or had experiences were chosen randomly from each department equally. Students were asked semi-structured open and closed-ended questions about whether they were exposed to educational activities about public relations, whether they were affected by educational activities when preferred their working places and which other factors affected them when they preferred their working places. Data were analyzed descriptively.

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