Medical Writers Give Career Changers Plans of Action

Those who are interested in breaking into medical writing received the inside scoop from L. Megan Day and Dr. Susan Dakin, the panelists at the chapter meeting on January 9 at Dreyfus Auditorium at Research Triangle Institute. Day has a bachelor's degree in chemistry, a master's degree in anatomy and has written for pharmaceutical companies for 10 years. Dakin has a bachelor's degree in biology and psychology and a Ph.D. in zoology. Self-employed since 1984, her specialties are scientific writing and proposal writing.

Harvey, Rachel A. Carolina Communique (2003). Careers>Writing>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Member Profile and Salary Survey

The goal of the 2000 Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) Member Profile and Salary Survey was to gather information that would enable the association to understand the make-up of the membership in order to ensure their needs are being met.

Usability Professionals Association (2000). Careers>Salaries>Usability

The Mentor Advantage  

There are many advantages to having mentors: They can teach you new skills, impart their knowledge, and help you increase your self-confidence. Having a mentor, or several of them, can help on all fronts. In fact, in a 2000 survey by The Creative Group, 94 percent of executives polled said having a mentor is important for professionals just beginning their careers.

Leonard-Wilkinson, Theresa A. Intercom (2003). Careers>Mentoring

A Mentor's Approach to Managing Technical Communicators

A manager, especially a more hard-nosed type, may pick up a writer's draft and attack the writer, circling mistakes with red ink, demanding rewrites, and peppering the work with negative remarks. If the manager is uptight, it doesn't take very long for subordinates to become uptight also. And being too managerial may end up creating an adversarial relationship, which can thwart the writer's professional growth. On the other hand, a supportive and nurturing fellow worker -- a mentor, in other words -- can help create a positive and productive team environment. Mentors may have to be patient with their writers at times, but that patience should pay off, long-term, in results and accomplishments. When you find ways to make your people look good, they will in turn make you look good.

Sullivan, Bill. Carolina Communique (1998). Careers>Management>Mentoring

Mentoring: A Gentle Alliance

The mentor relationship has been called the 'pinnacle of work relationships.' A mentor is more than a peer, more than a coach, even more than a sponsor. Mentors typically have influence within the organization or community. They use this influence to empower their protègès. The mentor relationship is really a partnership--the mentor provides guidance and opportunities, the protègè provides energy and a fresh perspective.

Laurent, J. Suzanna. Boston Broadside (2006). Careers>Mentoring

Mentoring as a Two-Way Street

In a profession that does not have clear discipline boundaries or many built-in mentorships with professors and internships, most professionals in technical communication depend on fellow professionals as mentors.

Smith, Andy and Bill Albing. Carolina Communique (2006). Careers>Mentoring

The Mentoring Concept  

The Mentoring Concept is a plan for training new writers quickly in a complex environment. A mentoring team uses checklists to plan for the training of new writers. The role of each member of the mentoring team is clearly defined. The key to the success of the mentoring relationship is the effective communication of responsibilities, requirements, and progress.

Lindsey, Jean. STC Proceedings (1993). Careers>Mentoring>Writing

Mentoring for Mainstream Usability

What mentoring is, and how it is different from consulting, training, or educating.

Schaffer, Eric M. and Susan Weinschenk. Human Factors International (2006). Careers>Mentoring>Usability

Mentoring in a Business Environment  

Describes mentor-student relationship from both perspectives, describing the experiences of a corporate mentor and mentee and the changes in positions for writers that came with tools migration (from Ventura Publisher to FrameMaker) and new writing standards and guidelines.

Robart, Kay and K.C. Francis. Intercom (2001). Careers>Mentoring>Workplace

The Mentoring Program at Silicon Valley Chapter

The Silicon Valley Chapter STC began its mentoring program in 1999. We developed the program in response to the many requests we were receiving from students, members, and practitioners in the local area for mentors within the local STC chapter. I hope to help other chapters meet their members' needs by describing how the Silicon Valley chapter established its program.

Fisher, Lori H. Tieline (2001). Careers>Mentoring>Community Building

A Mentoring Program for Web Designers  

Creating a mentoring program for technical writers requires quite a bit of coordination.

Leonard-Wilkinson, Theresa A. Intercom (2001). Careers>Collaboration>Mentoring

Mentoring: Providing Professional and Organizational Benefits    

The role of mentoring in career development is changing. This paper examines how and why these changes are happening and what management can do to encourage mentoring as an employee development technique. Mentoring provides career benefits as well as psychological benefits for both mentors and protégés, and can facilitate a working environment that encourages individual growth.

Vallone, Thomas J. and Carole Smith. STC Proceedings (1996). Careers>Mentoring

The Meter is Running: Setting Consulting Rates for Independence  

Setting your billing rate can be one of the most difficult and mysterious aspects of operating a consulting practice. There are nearly as many approaches as there are practitioners, with results that range from consultants who price themselves out of the market to those who fold because they simply cannot make enough money to survive. By employing a straightforward business model that includes estimates for expenses, labor and, yes, profit, independent consultants, both fledgling and established, can establish billing rates that are fair to consultant and client alike.

Juillet, Christopher. STC Proceedings (2002). Careers>Consulting>Pricing>Estimating

Methods of Providing Employment Information  

STC Employment Information Committees provide information to employers and job seekers in a variety of ways. They help job seekers with job hunting skills and resume writing. They enable job seekers to register their names with job banks and to receive job postings. They enable employers to list job postings and to receive names of job seekers. Many different methods are used to provide this information: newsletter articles, resume seminars, job fairs and workshops, job-seeking counseling, networking at meetings, resume banks, job listings, job phone lines, electronic bulletin boards, and e-mail listings.

Masse, Roger E. STC Proceedings (1995). Careers>TC>Community Building>STC

Le Métier de Rédacteur Technique  

Le rôle du rédacteur technique est de permettre une compréhension et une utilisation simple d'un produit ou d'un service. Pour cela, il utilise un langage clair et pertinent, adapté au public concerné. Le rédacteur se met à la portée de l'utilisateur. Il connaît son public et l'usage qu'il fera du produit. Le niveau de vulgarisation varie donc en fonction de l'utilisateur. Le rédacteur technique est capable d'exécuter une grande variété de tâches.

Redtech. (French) Careers>Editing>TC

The Million Dollar Letter: Some Hints On How to Write One    

This article suggests ways of writing a truly effective cover letter, an extremely important document in the search for a job. First, features gleaned from 13 model letters in technical writing textbooks yield figures on the number of words, sentences, and paragraphs per letter, plus the average number of words per sentence and paragraph, information helpful to those with little or no knowledge of how to write a strong cover letter. Second, the article surveys what the textbook writers offer as advice about the rhetorical principles that should be employed in composing cover letters. One piece of advice given by almost all of the experts is that writers should try to exude an energetic attitude, yet these same authorities do not delineate just how to display such a posture in the letters themselves. Third, examination of the letters reveals that one way that experts insert verve into cover letters is to use verbals, particularly gerunds, participles, and infinitives. In fact, 92.58% of the sentences in the 13 model letters have some type of verbal in them. The advantage of employing verbals is that while they are used for other parts of speech, they still retain the residue of action in their meaning. Fourth, the article describes the results of a survey to determine the acceptance of such constructions in the minds of two sets of readers: first-year writing students and third-year technical writing students. In both groups, more than 75% of the students preferred a paragraph with verbals in it over a paragraph devoid of verbals. Finally, the article suggests "sentence combining" as a procedure for teaching technical writing students how to combine basic sentences into verbals to garner variety and economy, one of the hallmarks of technical writing.

Myers, Marshall. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2004). Careers>Resumes>Cover Letters

Misclassified Workers (Part I)

This two-part article looks at the comparative costs of employees versus independent contractors, helps you to classify workers as either independent contractors or employees, and (in the second part) will examine the consequences of misclassification as it affects clients, independent contractors, and third party payers (such as a consulting firm or a contract agency).

Boston Broadside. Careers>Management

Misclassified Workers (Part II): A Financial Time Bomb

This article examines some of the consequences of misclassifying workers as independent contractors when they should be treated as employees.

Randolph, Brett W.F. Boston Broadside (1992). Careers>Management

Mission Statements: Why You Might Want One

I recently started a new job. The group I manage is new and all the people on my team have recently been transferred into this group. Additionally, each person has spent a lot of time in the recent past working on individual, solitary projects, and has not regularly been part of a collaborative team.

Malone, Erin. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Careers>Project Management>Writing

A Mixed Bag of Job Prospects for Tech Writers

One of the areas the 2001 ITAA survey looks at is supply and demand. Of the estimated 258,332 jobs that IT hiring managers predict they will add this year, only 1,799, or less than 1%, are for tech writers. This is down a whopping 91% from the year 2000 where the 20,773 available tech writer jobs accounted for almost 5% of the total. The news may not be as bad as it sounds. On the supply side, there is an expected shortfall of 1,008 qualified candidates in filling the open tech writer jobs.

Welinske, Joe. WritersUA (2001). Careers>Writing>Technical Writing

Modeling the Creative Organization

A few months ago, on the cusp of another reorganization, my boss challenged me to present ideas about how my group should be organized. The challenge: 'If you could organize the group in whatever way you wanted, what would you recommend doing?' Everyone who has ever been a manager longs to hear those words.

Malone, Erin. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Careers>Management

Momma, Don't Let Your Babies be Tech Writers

If you have the stomach for it, technical writing can be the path to a full-time writing career. I did it for three years before switching to general business writing, which offers more variety. If you decide to go technical, be sure to keep reading the work of authors you admire so your day job doesn't make you forget everything you ever knew about 'real' writing.

Wormald, Karen. Absolute Write (2001). Careers>TC>Writing>Technical Writing

Money Or The Gun

Businesses large and small can focus on what they do best by outsourcing non-core functions such as debt recovery.

Krueger, Ron. Outsourcing Institute, The (2006). Careers>Management>Outsourcing>Offshoring

Most Recent Job Vacancies

Job vacancies that the STC UK Chapter has been notified are currently available.

STC United Kingdom. Careers>Job Listings>Regional>United Kingdom