Today’s Plan:
- Questions
- Quick Exercise: Professional Vs. Technical Writing
- Introduction to mediabistro.com, job corpus
- Setting up Google Docs
- Homework
Questions
Class
- Will there be a final in this class? Is the final determined through the several projects we do?
- In relation to the articles we annotate and return to class, will we be tested on them in any way throughout the semester and will they be returned to us?
- As for a question, I was wondering if we are going to cover any parts of the publishing process?
Academic Advising
- What made you want to start your graduate studies in English? Do you have any tips for entering a graduate level program?
- Is there any way you can get an associates degree for writing at UNC?
- How does one go about gaining experience in the field of technical writing?
- Before I graduate, I would love to intern with Make-A-Wish Foundation. All of the positions they offer require some background in technical writing […] The two positions that I am most interested in at Make-A-Wish is the Development Intern, which assists in grant-writing and research, and the Communications Intern, which specializes in social media outreach. In your professional opinion, what would be the pros and cons of both positions? I look forward to your response!
- When it comes to questions wondering if I would be able to ask for your advice if there comes a time I may need it, whether it is for an assignment or something else.
Personal
- Where are you from?
- My question for you would be, when you were a freshman in college, what major did you originally want to pursue and what made you want to be an english professor?
- If you didn’t teach in the English field, what would you teach?
- What jobs have you had that have involved writing, literature, English of any sort?
- As for my question it is more related to your Eng 225 class. What is your favorite game?
- What is your zodiac sign?
Quick Exercise
I want you to spend 10 minutes and write me up a quick paragraph or two that defines and distinguishes Professional Writing vs. Technical Writing.
There’s a discussion forum in Canvas.
Sharing mediabistro.com Job Corpus
Your first project this semester dovetails with a current research project I have been working on. As we revise UNC’s writing minor, I have been curious as to what skills and technologies to focus on. This curiosity led me to research job advertisements for English majors, and Brumberger and Lauer stands as the most recent and comprehensive study I found. However, their article focuses on “technical communication.” This designation can have many meanings–sometimes it is merely a synonym for professional writing. But not in their case–they use (as do I) in the more precise sense of developing documentation and working with scientific experts to communicate scientific/technical knowledge. Our department doesn’t have someone with those specializations–so as much as I appreciate their research, I wanted something a bit more targeted. Their research speaks more to folks at large research institutions with Professional and Technical Writing major, more specialized faculty, and software licenses such as MadCap Flare or Adobe RoboHelp. We are a much smaller department with 4 tenure-track faculty (and none of us, I think, would claim Professional or Technical writing as a core specialization).
So I’ve turned my attention to Professional Writing jobs outside of technical writing (in either of the forms I’ve traced out above). During my research, I came across a specialized job listing site–mediabistro.com. From their “About Us” page:
Mediabistro is the premier media job listings site and career destination for savvy media professionals. Whether you’re searching for new job opportunities, striving to advance your career, or looking to learn new skills and develop valuable expertise, we are here to strengthen and support your professional journey. We have the tools and resources to help you navigate your own path and find career happiness.
In addition to job postings, mediabistro.com offers resume services and courses on professionalization and personal brand building. Rather than turning to a more popular site like monster.com like Brumberger and Lauer, I used mediabistro.com because it focuses specifically on jobs involving writing and communication.
I spent the month of June scanning every job ad posted to mediabistro.com. I filtered out jobs that:
- Called for experience in television production (especially those that required years of on-air experience)
- Called for extensive experience as a field journalist (although I retained jobs open to those without journalistic experience; a few jobs were looking for bloggers or content contributers)
- Required degrees in finance or accounting
- Required extensive experience with Google Ads and/or other Customer Relationship Management (CRM) softwares (Salesforce was particularly popular)
- Required applicants bring a client log with them
- Required management or hiring experience (the term management is quite slippery in adverts; sometimes it means “manage a team” and clearly indicates the need for leadership experience. Sometimes it means “manage our twitter account” and isn’t, per se, a leadership position)
- Required backend coding skills
- Required extensive graphic design portfolios (I did retain entry level graphic design jobs)
- Required 5 or more years of experience
- Telemarketing jobs, part-time jobs, or unpaid internships
After filtering out these jobs, I was left with a corpus of 375 jobs.
Over the next two weeks, you will code a total of 20 jobs from this corpus. I have selected 10 advertisements for us to code together; you will each select 10 other advertisements to create your own 20 ad corpus. We will use a modified version of Brumberger and Lauer’s coding scheme, which I will share with you on Friday.
Setting Up Google Docs
You will need a gmail account. Create a new gmail account using a pseudonym. I’m insignificantwrangler@gmail.com
Let’s look at Google Drive.
Homework
I would like you to go through the job corpus above and find 10 to which you would want to apply. Make sure they have at least 4 different first letters (weird, I know, but I want folks to scroll through the list). Download copies and then upload them to a Google Drive folder.
If you do not already have a gmail account suitable for job searching, then create a gmail account suitable for job searching.
