Today’s Plan:
- Review Codes
- Job Research Report Overview
- Homework: Reading for Next Wednesday
Job Research Report Overview
Our first major project acts as a follow-up to Eva Brumberger and Claire Lauer’s article “The Evolution of Technical Communication: An Analysis of Industry Job Postings.” I will ask you to replicate their research methodology in small scale. I myself did this work when I was hired by UNC back in the summer of 2017. I was charged with developing 3 courses that would help both Writing minors and English majors be better prepared for the job market. This charge led me to research job advertisements for English majors, and, at the time, Brumberger and Lauer (2015) was 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 it (as do I) in the more precise sense of developing documentation (instruction manuals), product testing (usability reports), and working with scientific experts to communicate scientific/technical knowledge. 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.Our department didn’t have anyone matching those specializations–so as much as I appreciate their research, I wanted something a bit more relevant to our department. We are a much smaller department. While we currently have 7 full-time faculty (myself, Dr. Wood, Dr. Austin, Dr. Ezzaher, Dr. Goodwin, Dr. Brownlee, and Dr. Golson) none of us, I think, would claim Professional or Technical writing as a core specialization–we have experts in Rhetorical Theory, Public Rhetorics, Cultural Rhetorics, Composition and Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Technology. So the question that drove my own research, which you will learn to recreate, is: what skills, technologies, characteristics can UNC focus on to maximize your preparation for today’s job market? How can we best tap into the specializations of our faculty to design both an intellectually rigorous and vocationally strategic program?
In answering that question, I’ve turned my attention to Professional Writing jobs outside of technical writing. 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, I used mediabistro.com because it focuses specifically on jobs involving writing and communication. I particularly valued it over, say, Indeed.com or Linkedin because of its specific emphasis on creativity. Many of the students taking this course would be English Literature majors; I wanted to do what I could to make sure the course surveyed jobs that a) they might want and b) for which they would feel more qualified.
I spent the month of June 2017 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. After closer inspection of every add in the corpus, I coded 232 jobs.
I ran this project again in the spring of 2022. My research assistant, Jacob Rigsby, collected another 250 jobs from mediabistro.com. After closer inspection, we culled the corpus to 240 jobs. Jacob first coded 25 jobs from the 2017 corpus for norming purposes. After that, Jacob and I coded every job in the 2022 corpus, meeting on Thursdays to compare results and discuss non-congruent codes.
In the past, I have had the class collectively code 200 jobs. This semester I am going to try something different. Rather than asking you to code 20 more jobs, I am going to provide you with the data from my research project. I will also give you a description of how that data was coded.
Your job will be to develop that data into an accessible and engaging research report. Like most pieces of professional writing, that report will have to juggle a few different audiences:
- I want a report that might speak to high school seniors and/or college freshmen, demonstrating to them that Writing students can find a wide range of employment. It should also give them both 1) a sense of why they might want to major in Writing, Editing, and Publishing and 2) what courses they should expect to take if they do so
- I want a report that very subtly speaks to administration, suggesting that–based on job data–that the new WEP major might need additional resources/courses that are currently unavailable
- I want a report that documents the kinds of intellectual work writers do. This has to be grounded in job advertisements themselves–you will have to comb through a few and find passages that speak to how writing jobs are not just soulless mechanical hellscapes
- Your report will have to oscillate between the job market as a whole and one of the specific specializations I delineate in the data: Writer, Editor, Marketing, Social, Sales, Design, or Hybrid (and we will talk about that last designation soon).
Resources:
Today I’d like you to spend some time looking through the job corpus. Try to find a couple of job ads that seem exciting, and be on the look out for jobs that show the range and intellectual promise that writers can experience. Lets’ divide up by letters of the alphabet (A-D, E-H, I-L, M-P, Q-T, U-Z).
Homework
In preparation for next Wednesday’s class, read the Lauer and Brumberger article on “Redefining Writing” and complete the Canvas assignment.
