Key Content: Developing a Personal Tagline

It is a helpful exercise to develop a tagline for yourself, in the same way that professionals in a previous generation were encouraged to develop a mission statement. With shortening attention spans, today's professional needs only a few-word tagline to fit in the sound bite of management's smaller time slots.

Albing, Bill. Carolina Communique (2007). Careers>Portfolios>Workplace>Collaboration

Know Before You Go  

The author discusses considerations in deciding whether to work abroad or not. Outlines possible goals and objectives as well as contract and visa issues.

Sala, David P. Intercom (2006). Careers>TC>International

Know Thy Recruiter

Techies often work with recruiters, but do they understand the recruiting business? Not usually, and that's too bad. To work effectively with recruiters, it helps to have more than passing knowledge of the recruiting business. Stan Dlugozima, managing partner of InPlace Technical Resources in New York, says technology professionals should know from the start how the business functions. To put it bluntly, companies pay Dlugozima to find individuals they want to hire. 'The company is my boss,' says Dlugozima. 'My job is to find a person who my client wants to hire.' Like techies, recruiting and staffing firms come in different flavors, typically divided into firms seeking workers for contract jobs or those trying to fill permanent positions.

Hoffman, Allan. Monster.com (2002). Careers>TC

Knowing When to Bail Out  

Lathrop identifies the red flags that might indicate an uncooperative client.

Lathrop, Lori M. Intercom (2000). Careers>Freelance

The Last Ditch Sales Pitch

I recently encountered a young web entrepreneur who understands that in business, 'no' doesn't necessarily mean 'never,' and that a last ditch sales pitch can pay off - maybe not today or tomorrow, but some day. It's a wise investment because one sales letter can be adapted and personalized for many different uses over time. And it can help you retrieve prospects you thought you had lost!

Reimer, Heather. Write Thinking (2002). Careers>Consulting>Marketing>Business Communication

Leadership - Communication

Many of the problems that occur in a organization are the direct result of people failing to communicate. Faulty communication causes the most problems. It leads to confusion and can cause a good plan to fail. Communication is the exchange and flow of information and ideas from one person to another. It involves a sender transmitting an idea to a receiver. Effective communication occurs only if the receiver understands the exact information or idea that the sender intended to transmit. Studying the communication process is important because you coach, coordinate, counsel, evaluate, and supervise through this process. It is the chain of understanding that integrates the members of an organization from top to bottom, bottom to top, and side to side.

Clark, Donald. NWlink.com (1997). Careers>Management>Communication

Leadership in Collaboration: Filmmaking and Interaction Design

For projects of importance, you need divergent skills to succeed. It is not possible to find an individual with all of the skill sets needed, nor would you want to. To create a first rate website or software product, you need many tasks to be done in parallel, which means that more than one person has to be working at them. As soon as two or more people are involved, the dynamic for how decisions are made, and how work gets done, becomes important. Any group of people can do work together, but it takes the right approach and team philosophy for that group to produce good work. Collaboration is critical in any creative pursuit involving groups of people, from filmmaking, to urban architecture or even web and software development.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2002). Careers>Management>Collaboration>Interaction Design

Leadership Styles Between Technical and Non-Technical Superiors: Guess Who Will Give Subordinates More Freedom on the Job?    

Is there a difference in the dominant leadership style between technical and non-technical superiors? Which leadership style of superiors will give their subordinates more freedom on the job? By using House's Path-Goal Model [1] in a study involving a survey of subordinates of 100 technical and 100 non-technical companies in Singapore, I found that technical superiors tend to adopt a supportive leadership style, while non-technical superiors adopt a more achievement-oriented one. This manifests in significant differences between the two kinds of superiors in the extent of the leader's position power (formal authority), the degree of autonomy subordinates want, and the extent subordinates control their goal achievements.

Poon Teng Fatt, James. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2004). Careers>Management>Technology

Learn to Write a Resume that Will Get You Noticed  

Your resume could be hurting your chances of landing a new job. Columnist Jeff Davis shares some advice for making sure your resume is one that hiring managers will read.

Davis, Jeff. TechRepublic (2003). Careers>Resumes

Learning by Teaching  

Bist argues that the best way for technical communicators to deepen their knowledge of their companyís product information is to teach it. Using examples from his own experience, he suggests how to prepare and teach a course on any professional subject.

Bist, Gary. Intercom (2000). Careers>Education

Learning from Our Students: Insights from Internships  

Wise teachers know how to learn from their students. This paper draws on the work-experience journals of graduate students in Northeastern University’s Masters in Technical and Professional Writing (MTPW) program. Written from 1993 through 1996, the journals provide insights from these internships so that we, the teachers, can better prepare future students for the world of technical communication.

Krupp, Marguerite. STC Proceedings (1997). Careers>Internships>Education

Learning From Your Past  

To better predict your staffing and schedule needs on future projects, you should keep a record of what you've done in the past. This paper presents a template for one way to formalize such records to ensure consistent reporting and to provide statistics in a way that is meaningful for future estimates. The workshop will present case studies to help you understand how to use the data in this report to estimate and schedule your next project.

Stevens, Dawn M. STC Proceedings (1997). Careers>Management>Case Studies

Learning How to Read an Interviewer's Mind

Have you ever wondered what was going on in the mind of someone interviewing you for a job? Did you wish you could have had a 'cheat sheet' to prepare for the kinds of questions she might ask? Thanks to Lori Lathrop, a freelance indexer of technical manuals, we have a 'Cliffs’ Notes' for job interviews. Lori Lathrop is the principal of Lathrop Media Services. Her experience includes more than sixteen years as a technical writer, editor, and professional indexer.

Davis, Julie. Carolina Communique (1997). Careers>Interviewing

Leaving Copyediting for Computing

A copyeditor for a computer publication wants to change careers. She's thinking of taking a few computer language courses with an eye toward moving into UNIX system administration -- a wide-open field. As someone who has changed careers once or twice, I'll offer a coaching session.

Zuchero, John. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Careers>Editing>Programming

Lessons Learned After Two Years (Almost) in the Self-Employment Trenches  

Taking the plunge into self-employment in the field of marketing and technical communications is a major step to contemplate. The many factors that one takes for granted when working in a corporate environment become problematic when one goes out 'on one’s own.' On the other hand, staying in a boring, less than challenging, or limited job largely because of the security it carries might be called 'sure-a-cide.' In making the transition to self-employment, it is necessary to pay close attention to a number of issues, but these issues may not be obvious at the beginning. On the other hand, many concerns that might otherwise appear to be essential to this transition may basically take care of themselves and can be lowered in priority. The 'trick' is figuring which is which.

Teich, Thea. STC Proceedings (1998). Careers>Freelance

Lessons Learned After Two Years in the Self-Employment Trenches

The advantages of staying in the same profession as when you we employed in a standard way: you already know the job; no need for immediate additional training; you probably have a good idea about procedures, costs, processes.

Teich, Thea. STC Orange County (1998). Careers>Freelance

Lessons Learned the Hard Way in an Architectural Document Disaster  

Delivering project reports in radically different formats gave the client a bad impression of this consulting firm. Here's how the staff remedied the situation and learned from their mistake.

Kalvar, Shannon T. TechRepublic (2003). Careers>Consulting>Project Management>Reports

Lessons of Survivor Literature in Communicating Decisions to Downsize    

Many companies have entered a new era of human resources management–one based on transaction cost economics and one in which downsizing has become a permanent part of the corporate landscape. But their insistence on communicating decisions to downsize solely in economic terms is creating serious problems among employees who survive the layoffs. Disloyalty, disaffection, increased absenteeism, and even acts of sabotage are growing among workers who view downsizing as a social, not economic, issue. This article discusses the new era of human resources management and reviews survivor literature in an effort to provide guidance to companies about how to communicate downsizing, specifically, and how to communicate with the postdownsized workforce, generally.

Guiniven, John E. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2001). Careers>Unemployment>Workplace

The Library Brand

It's likely that few professionals worry more about how their services are perceived than librarians. Lawyers may have more reason for concern, but many of them laugh all the way to the bank. We have little if not our reputation. So the new report published by OCLC, '€œPerceptions of Libraries and Information Resources,' deserves notice. Do libraries still matter? On what level? Will library use likely increase or decrease?--generated heartwarming comments but also much to cause concern.

Tennant, Roy. Library Journal (2006). Careers>Information Design>Databases

Life Beyond Computer Documentation  

In this paper we explore the title statement by examining some of the places in an industrial, business or educational organization where a technical communicator might reside as well as some of the numerous roles the communicator might play and the kinds of products the communicator might produce. The paper is intended to help young communicators see more clearly that their job need not be limited to the routine, the mundane, and the terminally boring, and to encourage them to see that the field of technical communication is far broader that just the production of computer documentation.

Wise, Daniel E. STC Proceedings (2002). Careers>TC>Documentation

The Life of a Lone Writer

'Lone writers' — those people who work as their employer’s only staff writers — are a different breed, with their own unique set of professional and personal challenges. At the same time a blessing and a curse, the lone writer life offers flexibility, variety, and autonomy, along with feelings of stress, isolation, and burnout.

Potsus, Whitney Beth. Writing Assistance (2006). Careers>TC>Technical Writing

Listen, Observe, Speak

When you are a speaker, you communicate. When you are the audience, you communicate. As a member of the development team, the technical writer has to deal with hundreds of intelligent egos. There are the programmers who think only about solutions and technology (not about people and their emotions). A technical writer would definitely feel hurt, when developers talk down to him. Managers on the other hand are likely to have oodles of people skills and may not have technical skills. Therefore, they may talk nicely to you. Nevertheless, a technical writer may feel that managers do not appreciate his technical skills.

Kamath, Gurudutt R. IT People (2002). Careers>Writing>Technical Writing>Workplace

Listen, the Numbers are Singing

Among the constant chattering noise that these numbers are making, they also sing some common tunes.

Naik, Paresh. Indus (2005). Careers>Salaries>Regional>India

Living in Cubeville

Someone told me recently that business owners favor cubicles because they are less expensive to build than walls; they are easy to break down and rearrange; and they depreciate in seven years, as opposed to walls, which depreciate in thirty years. In short, our 'cubes' are cost efficient, and they're probably here to stay. How, then, are we to deal with the obstacles that they present? We don't have enough space to spread out our documents. We go crazy trying to tune out the conversation taking place in the cubicle next door. Few cubicles have doors, and people tend to view our open entranceways as open invitations to stop by and chat. Last, but not least, cubicles sometimes feel like hamster cages, causing us to feel more like 'a number' than a human being. There is no way to make it nice; but there are ways to make it better. Here are some ways to cope.

Shuman, Ceil. Carolina Communique (1998). Careers>Workplace

Living to Work or Working to Live?  

When your life is out of balance, make a separation between your job and your work. Your job is what you're paid to do; your work fulfills your life's purpose. You can discover your work by paying close attention to the things that attract and motivate you. While you search, use your job to build up 'Working Capital' to support your work. Working Capital is created by using good money management and investing skills.

Stahlman, Gretchen. STC Proceedings (2003). Careers>Advice