July 3rd: Technical Communication for the 21st-Century Citizen

A Brief Story

Long ago in the last century I was working in litigation support as a document analyst. I got upgraded to a CD burner for the first month of the second summer I worked at this job because I knew how to burn CDs. While my buddies were getting carpel tunnel entering data (a rather tedious job), I was surfing the net while creating CDs that would go to the client, the prosecution, and us. A friend of mine at the job remarked, "a monkey could do your job."

Well, anyway, I got promoted again, so they needed someone to take over. We hired a monkey, and I wrote up a manual and then trained him...this was the beginning of my career as a teacher.

I put together a webpage that lists jobs and job descriptions in technical writing. Most are in IT companies, but some are in other areas. This selection was just a google search (done a while ago), so I have no statistical basis for claiming that it is representative of the total population of technical writing jobs. However, based on my observations over the last decade, I think two jobs stand out as exemplary Tech Writing jobs:

Consider opening these in different tabs, so you can more easily compare them.

• The tech writer in an IT firm (a "model" future job description)
• The tech writer in a consulting firm

The entire list is here, and I have another shorter page here. I keep meaning to add to these, but I don't get many job lists coming my way...I hope that's not a sign of the times. I'll try to add to these in the future.

Notice the contractual/temporary vs salaried/permanent positions. Also, notice the skills required for the positions. The list is for reference and class discussion, so don't worry about job details showing up on an exam or quiz.

Cover Letter and Résumé Requirements (DUE July 9th)

Create cover letters and résumés that reflect a job you want or aspire towards. The most useful cover letters and résumés are not directed just towards the ideal audience, but with the ideal purpose--showing you're the ideal candidate.

Convince the audience that you're the ideal candidate for the position by making an argument for your being hired that's backed up with your experience.

With a partner, please look at the following résumé examples and critique them based on your readings for today:

Résumé Examples

Bad, Better, Alternative (remember, the alternative is to be used if you need more space).

Here’s a link to Peter Profit’s cover letter.

Some Questions

• What's the purpose of a cover letter?
• What's the purpose of a résumé?
• How does one show he or she is the ideal candidate?

In case I haven't said it enough, you should aim to show, not tell in your cover letters and, where possible, in your résumés.

Let's focus on résumé duties for a little while and Block/Modified Block format briefly.

Webpage Stuff for the Semester

Remember, I want you to maintain your webpages for the rest of the semester. This, at minimum, means updating your webpage every week. Each week you ought to add something or change something on your webpage. The goal for this exercise is to keep you engaged with a (possibly) new, unfamiliar technology we can refer to as a class.

In order to "encourage" updating, I'm asking that you create a separate webpage that will list your weekly changes. I'm not asking for major changes--don't think you need to have a search engine or active server page to fulfill this requirement. Simply adding links, changing colors, creating a journal pages, etc. is enough to fulfill updating.

First, you should create a new page for your updates. I know, let's call in 'update.html.' Of course, you'll have to have it linked to your homepage (index.html)...any questions?

After today, I'm not going to spend much time on webpage creation. I'll always be available to help you during office hours, but we won't focus on webpage creation as a class after today.

Lessons on Plain Language Coming Up

Next week we'll be talking about more sentence-level, prose concerns. The goal of the lessons will be on understanding what is meant by "efficient prose" and "plain language." In order to get us going, please have the Revising Prose document read. Originally, I was going to put this on Moodle, but it's just as easy to do it here.

Technology Journal

Don't forget about the "Technology Journal." I have five prompts for you to write about this term. This week's prompt is up (as are all the others), so please take a look.

Keeping Up

Study your syllabus for Monday's (7/8) quiz. We'll continue with cover letters and résumé discussion after the quiz.

Your Cover Letters and Résumés, which are portfolio assignments, are due on Tuesday (7/9).