Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter
April/May 2010
| Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter April/May 2010 |
Whether out of a job or just up against the technical communication salary ceiling, many technical communicators are asking themselves "what now?" How do I continue to grow my career?
To answer that question, in March Jack Molisani visited the San Francisco chapter to explore alternate career paths for technical communicators.
Over the years Molisani has occupied many chairs around the hiring table. He has worked as a technical writer, as a documentation project manager, and as a technical recruiter. He owns ProSpring Technical Staffing, a staffing agency specializing in permanent and contract technical writing opportunities, and is the executive director of the LavaCon Conference on Professional Development. He often writes employment related articles for STC publications and is a popular speaker at STC events. He is currently an STC Associate Fellow, and will become a Fellow at the STC Summit in May.
Jack began by describing a typical technical communication career path. According to STC data, approximately one half of technical communicators enter the profession with a degree in English; the other half transfer in from another profession. However they start, after four or five years, most become senior technical writers, and then stay at that level for the rest of their working lives. Jack noted that while a few become documentation managers, not enough do so to make this path typical.
Another path is to stop being an employee, and become a contractor or the owner of a technical communication business. Jack said this is a viable path for those who like bringing in their own business and billing their own hours. However, this is not for everyone; many do not have the temperament for the contractor or business owner lifestyle.
Luckily, Jack said, there is also a third path: take your skills and move them to a related field. Following this path, Jack said, "You do the same things you did before but you do not identify yourself as a technical writer, but as something else."
Jack dedicated much of his talk to explaining how this would work. He discussed the core competencies of technical communicators and how those core competencies might be transferable to specific jobs. He also explored the average compensation levels for those jobs versus technical writing jobs. Finally, he addressed strategies for moving to a new field.
Technical communicators who have reached the senior level have developed a number of core competencies. In addition to possessing writing skills, most are adept at critical thinking (Does this belong in the manual?) and quickly mastering new subjects. Most are familiar with audience and requirement analysis, document and project planning, graphic design, marketing, and presentation. Many are skilled at interviewing, workplace negotiation, and conflict resolution (reconciling conflicting orders, edits, or experts). Many have become familiar with computer programming, and with the technology of the industry in which they have worked.
Jack says that many technical communicators could breathe new life into their careers by specializing in a subset of the skills they already have, and marketing them under another name. For example, technical communicators spend much of their time identifying the audience, purpose, and various requirements for the projects on which they work. "This," he said, "is also what business analysts do—for more money."
Here are some of the fields one might consider: accessibility, business/software analysis, change management, coding/programming, compliance, content management, corporate communication, documentation management, graphic design/illustration, id/courseware development, localization/internationalization, marketing, product management, project management, proposal management, quality assurance, release management, training, usability, user interface design, and website development. The list could go on.
Jack says that although these allied fields share skill sets with technical communication, many of them are more highly valued by management and thus command better rates of compensation. Why? Because they are perceived by management to directly add value, reduce costs, or generate revenue. For technology companies, the most valued area (besides sales and marketing) is product development. Jack says that the more connected you are to the front of the development cycle, the more value you will be perceived to have.
Unfortunately for technical communicators, Jack said, documentation tends to come at the end of the development cycle. As management sees it, he said, "the product can be shipped without the manual, or it can be written by the engineers; it won’t be as good, but users don’t read it anyway, so who cares?" Documentation is viewed as a commodity, "something to be acquired at the lowest possible price given an acceptable level of quality." Illustrators and product testers, he said, tend to be viewed the same way.
To test his thesis about career paths, Jack created a webpage survey asking for compensation and other information and promoted it on various technical communication and job related discussion lists.
In the end, he got 351 responses, both from people who were still in technical communication (to establish a baseline for comparison) and from those who had transferred into a new field. He tabulated the results in a series of graphs showing what field people had transferred into, how long they had been in their new field, and what they were getting in the way of compensation.
Jack stressed that the results are tentative. The sample was small, and the respondents were self selected, which can produce biased results. Also figures from employees, contractors, and business owners are inherently hard to compare because their situations are so different. A number of judgment calls had to be made about how to interpolate the data. For example, some people reported annual salaries while other reported hourly rates which were then multiplied by 2080 (52 weeks times 40 hours) to make the figures comparable. However, because many contractors don’t work full time such multiplying produces problematic results. And so on.
Despite these difficulties, the survey results were interesting and can serve as a good starting point for those considering a career move.
Of the allied fields in the survey, eleven had higher average compensation than the average for technical communication, two were compensated about the same, and nine were lower.
From the results, it appears that to benefit from transferring to an allied field, one must choose wisely. Another result was that the people who reported the highest compensation were business owners, followed by contractors, and finally employees. For those who want to investigate the results more closely, the graphs and slides for Jack's full presentation can be found at http://prospringstaffing.com/resource/alternate_career_paths.pdf
Jack does not suggest that making the transition from technical communications will be easy, but that with time, planning, and preparation it can be done. Once you have decided on the direction you want to go, there are a number of moves you can make.
To begin, he suggests, try moving in your new direction by exploiting opportunities at your current employment. If you want to move into training, ask to do some training for your coworkers, and so on.
"Wherever you are in life, figure out where one of your skills might be used and rebrand yourself. It is all about branding. It’s how you are perceived."
Another strategy he suggests is to take classes and earn certificates to fill in any gaps between what you are doing now and what you want to do. The idea is to build experience and credibility. If you like usability, he said, do a certificate program in usability and start marketing yourself as a usability analyst. Taking courses lets you learn the vocabulary, gives you credentials, and lets you meet people in the field.
Slides for Jack's presentation, along with articles and other advice on managing your career can be found at http://prospringstaffing.com/resource/
Patrick Lufkin is an STC Associate Fellow and Chair of the Kenneth M. Gordon Memorial Scholarship for Technical Communication, and co-manager of the Touchstone Technical Communication Competition.