Senior in College, Tech Comm Major, Looking for a Job
- Will receive a Bachelor’s degree in technical communication from a respected program with a minor in international business
- Student member of STC
- Proficient in speaking Chinese and Spanish in addition to English
“The greatest job in the world would be one where I can travel around, living in different places, and using my techncial communication skills. I don’t care so much what kind of company it is, so long as it has strong international opportunities.”
Motivation
Jimmy is a senior in college, a technical communication major looking for his first full-time job. He’s open to taking any job that uses his skills and meets his salary requirements, but he really would like to find something that captures his interest and starts him on his career path.
Ever since he was young, moving around the world with his Air Force family, Jimmy has wanted to work abroad. He loves living in new places and learning how other people live, work, and play. The idea of starting to work for one company in the US and staying there his whole life sounds deadly dull to him. He’s had an internship in business and one in technical communication, and he knows he wants to put his Technical Communication skills to work in an international company of some kind.
Key Attributes
- Strong language skills and cultural awareness
- Prepared for entry-level business jobs, but hopes to use his technical communication skills most
- Not afraid to move around the world and start new ventures
- Adapts easily to any social situation and enjoys working in groups
Tasks
- Uses Adobe Creative Suite to design résumés, menus, and brochures for a local print shop, charging them $50 an hour but often working more hours on a project than he charges
- Is a freelance website designer and content developer using a variety of tools
- Teaching himself digital content software programs as time permits, but hasn’t gone far with it
- Reads books on business best practices, both for class and for pleasure
Informational Needs/Goals
- Wants practitioner stories about how technical communication skills fit into the international business world
- Investigate how his language speaking skills can be employed somehow other than sitting at a desk doing translations (which he does not feel proficient enough to do)
- Needs to find a way to narrow his job goals to begin a strategic search
- Would like to find a mentor in STC who would be willing to chat and share stories
- Must find out specifics of what to do to prepare to work abroad (for example, visas)
Scenario of Use: Jimmy Chin
- Jimmy is familiar with STC and naturally turns there first to seek information.
- He looks around the site for any information about international business. The Google® search on the site produces over 50 hits, but they are mostly presentation materials from conference proceedings. He wonders if he needs to use different search terms.
- He locates the SIG groups after going over the whole group of drop-down menus. After browsing through them, he doesn’t see much in the way of international technical communication. He backtracks to the list of communities and finds a link to the Canada West Coast Community
- He looks around the Canada West Coast site to see if he can find someone to chat with about his career plans. He’ll start by emailing a few of them to see what kind of response he gets.
Jimmy Chin is a perfect candidate for an interactive element of the TCKP that allows him to find his mentor or mentors within STC. E-mailing members of the Canada West Coast community is a message-in-a-bottle approach: he can only hope that someone will find his message and respond to him. He might be more encouraged by being able to post a query to the entire STC membership on the TCKP site, in addition to directly querying members of the Canadian community; however, he needs to know which members to ask, which means he needs a way of getting information about the interests and areas of expertise of all the community members.