Training for the Future

Prior to coming back to school to work on my Master’s degree, I was in the workforce for eight years. I worked for a Fortune 500 company that gave me experience on the corporate level of how to gather and present information to a large range of people. In 2013 I was presented with the opportunity to come back to school. Obtaining a master’s in technical and professional writing I have taken classes that have challenged me as well as helped me grow as a reader, researcher and writer. I finally got to re-enter the workforce with my internship putting the information that I have gathered and collected from my classes to work on a more professional level. The information that the Technical professors have shared in my college courses has been extremely beneficial when it comes to the work place. I have learned how to use a variety of programs to create information that will benefit a large variety of people through visual, written and verbal communication. Articles such as Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s “Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age," Sherry Southard’s “Interacting Successfully in Corporate Culture,” and Emily Soplinsky’s “Survival Skills for Communicators within Organizations,” expressed the understanding that I need to have as I enter the workforce to be able to collaborate with a large group of fellow employees with different background educational levels. Through my past history in a fortune 500 company with roughly 25,000 employees to my internship company with 15 employees but a large customer base I have learned how to express ideas to promote ideas to a large range of people.

For this final blog post about my internship assignment, I have found three job listings that I could turn into potential career opportunities. The first job listing is for a Technical Writer for Jack Henry and Associates located in Monett, MO. The second listing is for a Technical Writer at Genesis 10 in Addison, TX. Finally, the last job listing is for an Environmental Analyst/Technical Writer at an undisclosed company located in Buffalo, NY.

Jack Henry and Associates located in Monett, MO is looking for a Technical Writer. This company is a software-based company who provides support for the Banking industry. This position will write and edit paper, multimedia and web-based publications. They must be able to conduct interviews with various users, technical staff and quality assurance staff to gather data for documentation. They also need to be able to communicate with customers to resolve minor issues relating to said documentation. My previous skills obtained through the fortune 500 company, school, and my internship I feel that I am well equipped to handle this job. I have learned how to conduct research and provide information to large groups. Where I lack knowledge for this position is in the banking industry and federal regulations that regulate the industry. As a way of learning about banking regulations, contact the local chapter of AIB (American Institute of Banking) to find out when their next round of courses are offered on the banking industry. It would also be beneficial to do research on the FDIC laws and regulations through the FDIC Website.

Genesis 10  is a US Business and technology-consulting firm where recruiters and delivery professionals are highly accomplished career advocates. They are looking for a technical writer for their Addison, Texas location. This position creates a shared knowledge base for customers through different outlets including Wiki, coordinate and standardize the documentation for PKI, Federation, SSO, Extended Services, etc and help streamline management and regulatory reports. Most of the job is on the job training. However one piece of document support required knowledge is Adobe Portable Document Format. To prepare to learn about this particular Adobe product a YouTube series has been found that gives basic background information on how to use Adobe Portable Document Format.

Finally an undisclosed company located in Buffalo, New York is looking for an Environmental Analyst/Technical Writer. This makes the job position a little more difficult to fully discuss because the company chose to remain anonymous however they are looking for an Environmental Analyst to analyze and convey technical information. This is an expanding team of professional and qualified environmental, construction monitoring and real estate staff members who focus on providing solutions in challenging real estate transactions to national and community lending institutions as well as other real estate professionals. My previous background knowledge is in Risk Management and Environmental policies at a fortune 500 company. With the knowledge gained in technical writing I feel well equipped to present information about environmental affairs. As a way to brush up on my knowledge on environmental standards, visiting the EPA website is extremely beneficial to this position as well as OSHA  knowledge since there is some co-mingling between the two organizations. Another avenue to gain some information in would be Human Resources, taking a basic HR class at a local college or university.

Sources:

Emily Soplinsky, “Survival Skills for Communicators within Organizations”

Johndan Johnson-Eilola, “Relocating the Value of Work:  Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age”

Sherry G. Southard, “Interacting Successfully in Corporate Culture”

Internship Criteria for Extreme Sports Scuba

My internship is with Extreme Sports Scuba in Joplin, MO. Owners Deb and Grady Weston had never had an intern before but they were excited to let me join their crew. Once they accepted my internship I became their Marketing Writer Intern. My responsibilities include writing for their Scuba Blog with educational material applicable for potential and current scuba divers, writing newsletters, working on their website, doing research for other educational blog posts, and working on creating videos for promotional and educational purposes.

To take on this internship prior knowledge of scuba diving and having your open water scuba certification is absolutely beneficial. People skills both verbal and written definitely help because not only are you promoting the sport of diving, but also you are promoting the family owned and run dive shop to potential customers.

If you had asked me prior to my internship if there was much to learn, my answer would have been yes. You can always learn something no matter how much you have with prior knowledge. During my internship I have learned much more html when it comes to my scuba blog as well as working on the website. I have done research coming up with blog posts so I have learned more about the sport of diving but more so I have learned new ways to communicate through writing, how to share this information with beginners as well as those who have been diving for years. You always have to learn new ways to present information to people so they don’t feel stupid and beginners don’t feel like you are talking above their head. In addition to learning new communication skills and html, I have learned how to make videos to help with the teaching and training of the scuba classes that are offered at Extreme Sports Scuba. I have also gained more experience with Photoshop, Word, Excel, InDesign, PowerPoint, iMovie and the web by creating documents, videos, promotional material, applications and more.

Experience that I thought I would gain would be document design. Taking the experience I have and putting it to good use, however when I am there, they usually haven’t needed fliers made. When I’m not there is when the fliers are needed so other employees make the fliers. With what I learned in class, there are certain rules to follow, but rules are made to be broken and they definitely break the rules. Sometimes those broken rules work and other times they do not. I really expected to make more of the fliers for them but so far that just hasn’t happened.

The old saying that a company you work for will change your way of thinking/writing couldn’t be truer. In school, the professors require you write about the ideas they present in any given class. Now that is also true out in the work world about them choosing what you write about, but you don’t get a grade and typically the documents you write, anyway with my experience, aren’t more than about a couple pages long. In school you typically read about something and then write a specific way, out in the real world, the experience I’ve gained through this internship has been more knowledge based around the sport of diving or else it has been more letter writing among other businesses.

The writing done through Extreme Sports Scuba tends to be either on the spot or done after there is some research done. For the most part the work is done before it is needed and then proofread before it goes live. Anything that is of importance goes through Deb, Grady and/or her assistant instructors as there shouldn’t be information going out on the internet that isn’t current, accurate or both. The owners have the ultimate say although anything dealing with instruction or telling someone about scuba diving that could help or hinder a person gets signed off before it goes live on the blog. For the most part this is an internet based job with duties that rely on communication from Extreme Sports Scuba to businesses both inside and outside the field.

Genre in Internships and the Real World

“Brown studied 22 managers, directors, and employees, drawing on interview data, review of documents, and recorded observations. She found that organizational values—such as teamwork, commitment to quality services, and salesmanship—shape writer’s expectations and rhetorical strategies but that these values often run counter to the values cultivated during the employees’ university education” (Bawarshi, 134). This internship has created multiple writing opportunities in addition to those  at the university level. One main responsibility that I have is to help educate the public on the sport of Scuba diving through the blog posts created and written on their website. Not only do we try to make a social aspect between the current divers and all of their friends by posting weekly posts on the people who dive with Extreme Sports Scuba but there are also educational posts once a week to try and help someone who might be interested in learning the sport of scuba diving. There is a sense of community that is being built by the blog posts on the website so that everyone whether they are currently involved with Extreme Sports Scuba or potential divers.

When entering into this internship,  people questioned how I could have an internship at a scuba diving shop. During this internship, some of the areas that we’ve learned in school between being able to use the written word to communicate ideas as well as research have been put to use. This internship isn’t solely focused around the blog; that is just one portion of the internship.  There are editing documents used within the company as well as working on videos that will be used in educational classroom settings.

By taking the abilities that we’ve learned in school and applying them to real life it is extremely easy to sell not only yourself but also these abilities to potential employers. It would be extremely easy to show off your research and writing abilities not only to other smaller businesses but to put that information gathered at the collegiate level to use for larger fortune 500 companies. The ability to research as well as communicate via the written word is what many future forward thinking employers are looking for when it comes to a professional technical writer. The main difference between this particular internship and a position is the context the writing is about; otherwise the principles are exactly the same between the different fields of employment.

Bawarshi, Anis and Mary Jo Reiff. “Genre Research in Workplace and Professional Contexts.” Genre. Date unknown. Print.

Technical/Professional Writing: A Tricky Concept Defined.

Technical and professional writing can be a difficult concept to identify and describe. The definition begins with the recent expansion of technical writing emphasizing an individual’s writing style as “a focus on all the other technical-support personnel involved in the communication process and in non-writing tasks, such as illustrations, communications management, public relations, editing, computer analysts and programing, researching and so on” (Allen, 69). While humanities focus on the critical side of the issues, a technical writing candidate will have experience with writing and editing documents, clear concise ability to communicate both with the business and the people that the business is focusing on as their target audience as well as general background knowledge with editing videos, editing html code for webpages and an overall ability to communicate the products within the company effectively to the end customer. “Technical writing is writing that accommodates technology to the user” (Dobrin, 118).

Hiring an individual with a background degree in technical/professional writing means that that candidate has spent a lot of time in the English department learning the language skills that are required to communicate and conduct sentences through writing as well as verbally to a customer clearing up any possible confusion there might be on a given product. Professionals in the work place tend to criticize the technical writing aspect from a non-technical writer, ““foggy language,” failures to emphasis and coherence, illogical reasoning, poor organization” (Miller, 62). Technical writers learn the background information about how to construct a properly written sentence so that they can get the message out to the customer whether that is an employee who they are working closely with or it happens to be the end customer who is receiving whatever the company is selling.

Technical writing tends to be is a very practical field. People who learn technical writing tend to focus on what needs to be said. Dorbin brings up the point, is technical writing writing about technology or is technical writing considered writing that follows a very standard and concise set of rules (Dorbin, 107).(should this period be a ? mark) Depending on how you define that question, the answer could be both. Another way to look at the question is, “The definers of “technical writing” look at texts; the definers of “writing technically” look at the encounter which produces the texts” (Dorbin, 109). Technical writers focus on producing the information necessary to the reader of whatever document or form of media they are producing. Technical writers could focus their time on learning whatever they are writing about whether they question and work with the manufacturing portion of the product or the development side of the product, they are going to deliver the best possible information about a product possible.

Jo Allen suggests that a definition not be placed on technical writing as it tends to cause someone to question, well do I do that or not since it isn’t in the definition. It restricts the overall term and definition of what a technical writer does, “The primary goal of the basic technical writing course [is] to teach students to document information clearly, correctly, and economically” (Harris, 822). So the main focus of technical writers is to learn how to clearly write and convey a message to the end user, while there may not be a specific course taught, technical writers spend a lot of time in an English department learning the background of words, sentence structure and how to use the two together correctly.

Allen, Jo. “The Case Against Defining Technical Writing.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 4.2, 68-77.

Dorbin, David. “What is Technical about Technical Writing.” New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication. Baywood Publishing Co, Inc, 1983. 107-123. Print.

Harris, Elizabeth. “Let’s Not Ruin Technical Writing, Too.” College English, 41.7. National Council of Teachers of English, 2012. 822-825. Print.

Miller, Carolyn. “Chapter 2-What is the Relationship Between Professional Writing and Rhetoric?” What’s Practical About Technical Writing. Modern Language Association of America, 1989. 61-70. Print.

Training for the Future

I feel privileged to have undergone my education at Pitt State. Our English department is small enough that we students always feel we have a voice, yet it is diverse enough that we can benefit from collaborating with students of different emphases (Literature, Rhetoric and Composition, Creative Writing, and, of course, Technical Writing). Our professors seem to have taken both of these factors into account as they have prepared us to enter the workforce. My own Technical Writing professors, for example, have encouraged my fellow Tech Writers and me to embrace rather than reject the perspectives of our non-Tech Writing classmates. By sharing their own values and experiences with us, as well as the perspectives they have gained from progressive pedagogical articles such as Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s “Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age," Sherry Southard’s “Interacting Successfully in Corporate Culture,” and Emily Soplinsky’s “Survival Skills for Communicators within Organizations,” our professors have helped us to understand the importance of collaboration, as well as the benefits of interdisciplinary cooperation. These skills will help us to not only find a place in the workforce, but also to promote those same values within that workplace.

For this final internship assignment, I have found three job listings that interest me as potential career possibilities. The listings I have found range from that of a Public Affairs Specialist to a Writing Consultant to a Linguistic Cryptologist. Each of these positions strikes me as a career path I may wish to pursue after graduation, and each requires a slightly different skill set.

To be a Public Affairs Specialist for the U. S. Department of Justice, candidates must be able to research, collect, and write over various office-specific programs and procedures. For the specific listing I have found, candidates must also be able to write and edit press releases, manuals, pamphlets, handouts, and other informative public documents. At this point in time, I feel well-equipped to handle such tasks, though I recognize that I would need to learn more about the specific department for which I would be applying (in this case, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys). A good portion of this information would have to be learned on-site. However, I could prepare to an extent by studying the Department of Justice and Executive Office’s websites. I could also collaborate with my law student acquaintances in order to better understand what to expect of the interview process and the job itself. Fortunately, my experience as a Writer’s Slate intern has helped me become a more competitive candidate in that the final product of our publication—the three editions I helped to create—are available online. These published editions demonstrate that I have at least two semesters’ worth of experience in the online publication process.

The Writing Consultancy position to which I referred is not a job listing that I discovered online. In fact, it is an opportunity that has been brought to my attention by a close acquaintance. Should I pursue this position (the specifics of which I am not at liberty to divulge), I will be able to offer a competitive resume in that my experience as a Graduate Teaching Assistant has prepared me for handling a similar set of responsibilities. My time as both a GTA and a Slate intern has helped me to develop skills that writing consultancy calls for: proofreading, editing, offering constructive criticism, and delivering said criticism in a supportive and encouraging manner. In order to fully prepare for this position, however, I would need to expand my knowledge base to incorporate common topics and writing styles that are expected of those I would be consulting. Specifically, I would need to revisit the writing styles of APA and Chicago. In order to do this, I would likely start with the Purdue OWL website for APA, and the Chicago Manual of Style for Chicago. Each of these styles is familiar to me but not comfortably stored in my knowledge base, like MLA style is. In order to work toward a higher level of comfort with APA and Chicago, I would start with the two resources I have listed. 

Finally, the position of a Linguistic Cryptologist for the U.S. Navy has caught my interest. In order to meet the needs of this position, candidates must be excellent communicators through both oral and written mediums. They must also be detail-oriented and interested in intercultural communication. Once hired, candidates are expected to undergo intensive language training in one or more of the core languages listed. Despite my bachelor’s degree in Spanish Language and Communication, I would definitely want to use my available educational resources in order to better prepare for this intensive language training. Fortunately, I am a member of our university’s online language program, Mango Languages. I would start training in one of the specialty languages using this Rosetta Stone-like program. Of course, this position is not solely based on knowledge of foreign languages, and my time as a Slate intern would help to make me a more competitive applicant. My Slate experience (along with my overall education in Technical Writing and Editing) would help to show that I am able to communicate with people of many different cultures, backgrounds, and demographics; to write in a variety of different styles; and to cater my manner of communication in order to meet the needs of my audience.

Sources

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. "Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age."

Soplinsky, Emily. "Survival Skills for Communicators within Organizations."

Southard, Sherry. "Interacting Successfully in Corporate Culture."

From Schoolroom to Workroom

The Writers’ Slate is a small online publication that was created to promote an interest in reading and writing in children and young adults. For my position as a Slate intern, I have contributed to this mission by working alongside the Slate’s new editor, Dr. Franklin. Since our team is extremely small, the title of “intern” encompasses a wide variety of responsibilities. Dr. Franklin appoints one intern each year, and so that intern must be able and willing to act as assistant editor, designer, and communications coordinator all in one.

 

In order to be a successful intern for this publication, candidates must be interested in fostering a love of reading and writing in younger generations. They also must be innovative, have strong interpersonal communications skills, and be punctual in meeting deadlines. They should be self-reliant problem-solvers, but able to recognize when to ask for help. Since this publication is small and education-oriented, a desire to learn is the most valuable skill a Slate intern can demonstrate. 

Candidates must also be able to communicate clearly and professionally with a wide variety of recipients, especially former Slate interns (as needed), Slate editors and publishers, and young writing contestants and their guardians. They may have to communicate through several mediums, such as face-to-face, telephone, and email. No matter the medium or conversational recipient, candidates should keep in mind the lesson Linda Driskill teaches in her article “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations”: namely, that today’s ever-advancing technology and ever-expanding intercultural population call for empathy, understanding, and adaptation when communicating. Here at the Slate we receive submissions from students of all ages from all across the nation. Communicating with such a variety of people (whether you are delivering a simple “congratulations” email or inquiring for further information to include in the publication), calls for patience, persistence, and understanding. For students and guardians who speak English as a second language, experience writing in Global English is a plus.

On a similar note, candidates should understand and respect the Slate’s hierarchy. In this regard, the Slate’s small team is beneficial; interns work closely with their editor and generally require little direct communication with other supervisors or publishers. However, no matter the intimacy of the team, it is always important to find the balance between informality and professional tone and respect, as Chris Anson and Lee Forsberg remind us in their article “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing.” In many ways, the tasks that interns perform for the Slate are similar to assignments they may complete in Technical Writing and Document Design courses in school. Unlike the academic community, however, the Slate should be treated as a professional workplace. If nothing else, developing these professional habits will benefit interns if and when they are integrated as part of a larger team in the future. As Susan Katz reminds us in her article “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise,” new hires cannot predict how they will be treated in their new work environments. However, practicing professional communication in a safe and intimate work environment such as The Writers’ Slate will help interns to feel welcome and “gain power” in less familiar work settings more quickly.

Finally, it is preferred that candidates have experience or at least interest in document design, especially using Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. Fortunately, this publication is extremely encouraging of experimenting with new skills and ideas, so for those who, like me, have little design experience going in, they will be encouraged and supported by their supervisors if they are willing to put in the extra time to learn.

Sources

Anson, Chris, and Lee Forsberg. “Moving Beyond the Academic Community:  Transitional Stages in Professional Writing.”

Driskill, Linda. “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations.”

Katz, Susan. “A Newcomer Gains Power:  An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise.”