Business/Tech Writing

A two-fer. Two useful posts/pages from Tempered Radical.

These are important for my classes, both FYC and Business Writing. So I thought they might be relevant for you too.

First, Visual Persuasion resources, links, and information.

Then, PowerPoint can be better. 5 Tips for Creating PP Slides that Won’t Bore Your Audience

However, with the proverb “A word to the wise is sufficient” in mind, I will quote Presentation Zen:

One thing we need to constantly remind ourselves is that slides and other forms of projected visualization—no matter how “cool” they may be—are not appropriate for every context. Multimedia is great for presentations before large groups such as keynote addresses or conference presentations, but in meetings where you want to actively discuss issues or go over details in depth, slides—especially the snooze-inducing bulletpoint variety, which are never a good idea—are almost always counter productive.

6 Things Interviewers Are (or Should Be) Looking For

Something to think about.

Some crazy stuff. Does it work?

20 Creative Resume Designs

20 Resume Tactics to Avoid

Too often, job seekers get overly creative or personal with their résumés in order to make an impression, but irrelevant information and goofy details can be perceived as unprofessional and may cause the résumé to be rejected on the spot.

Some of them were particularly poor choices. For example:
“Candidate included that he was arrested for assaulting his previous boss.”

Others were particularly odd choices.
“Candidates — a husband and wife looking to job share — submitted a co-written poem.”

Some were the result of poor editing.
“Candidate said that he would be a “good asset to the company,” but failed to include the “et” in the word ‘asset.’”

Some were clearly lacking professionalism.
“Candidate’s email address on the résumé had “shakinmybootie” in it.”

All of them were actually done. All of them sunk the candidate.

These are the kinds of things we need to make sure to talk about with our business writing students. Sometimes they too can’t tell the difference between “catching attention” and “going down in flames.”

You bet. Want to see some students snap to attention? Tell them that in the professions, in management, where they want to be, it’s the rare boss that will let them do C work or even B work, over and over. It’s A work every day, or they can be replaced, and especially these days.

I tell students that and let them know that I was a late-life Ph.D. who hired — and fired — for decades, first. And then I tell them about as many as five hundred applicants even for internships, all those cover letters and resumes to sort, a process in which I sometimes assisted, because I can spell, punctuate, etc. First, yes, out went any with errors, typos, etc.; that usually cut the stack by more than half. The rest were sorted by GPAs, because we wanted reliability, and students who don’t show up and don’t turn in work don’t get good grades. Then the boss looked at the top twenty-five — maybe, if he had time, or I did so — to pick ten to check their credentials, references, and writing samples to narrow the field to five for interviews. Of those, in a good year, two got internships. Often, only one did so. And you bet they had to do A work every day.

from ProfTowanda on the CHE fora

Aggarwal explains that visitors to corporate websites or employee blogs do not expect to see anything but positive commentary on company products and services. Critical commentary is seen as reflecting the integrity of employees and honesty and openness from the company about their products or services, he said.

from Live Science’s post “Disgruntled Employees Can Be Good for Business.

So students need to learn to write 80/20 or 85/15… It’s an interesting idea.

I became an English professor because: EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW HOW TO WRITE. I did not become a history professor because not everyone can benefit from knowledge about what has happened in the past. Some people just don’t get it.

But everyone needs to know how to write. Writing is communication and communication is essential.

Don’t believe me? Okay. Believe social marketing guru Seth Godin.

In his post How to get A Job with a Small Company he says:

Learn to write. Writing is a form of selling, one step removed. There’s more writing in business today than ever before, and if you can become a persuasive copywriter, you’re practically a salesperson, and even better, your work scales.

3. Learn to produce extraordinary video and multimedia. This is just like writing, but for people who don’t like to read. Even better, be sure to mix this skill with significant tech skills. Yes, you can learn to code. The fact that you don’t feel like it is one reason it’s a scarce skill.

Learn to write.
Learn to produce extraordinary video and multimedia.

THAT is what I am teaching in my fyc. THAT is what my students need to be learning to get a job, have a career, and support a family. It may be what they need to be able to eat.

Is learning to write about more than a job? Absolutely. But it does help to be able to put food on the table if you can get a job. I remember when I didn’t always have food on the table. I don’t want my students to have those kind of memories, for themselves or for their children.

I need to make sure I also include this in my business writing class.

The Kansas State Collegian has an article entitled Technology Complicates Classes, Frustrates Students, written by Mary Renee Shirk.

Now professors post a syllabus and change it, sometimes daily, sometimes more than once a day. They expect you to check it every single day and adapt your understanding of the world around you and your work schedule, and your finances, and fit this new set of commandments into your life.
…
Now, professors are requiring a thumb drive or hard drive or DVDs or CDs or camera or flash card or batteries or six reams of paper, not to mention access to a high-volume color printer 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
…
Some professors now require you to get a Google account or YouTube account or WordPress account or new Facebook account or join some other random website used specifically for and only for that class. All these accounts, of course, require different usernames and passwords that you’ll most likely forget.

Now added to the regular class load and all of the above is watching the latest YouTube video or following the class on Twitter and networking with your classmates on LinkedIn.

Just to make things even more interesting, every professor has a different requirement for the number of times you’re supposed to check your email, the syllabus, K-State Online, the WordPress blog and any/all of the other online resources for that class.

I can totally understand these issues, even the ones I haven’t personally experienced. And I confess to having cringed a bit over changing the syllabus every day, since I know that I do more of that right now (with new classes at a new uni) than I should for the good of the students.

The idea of requiring students to print of hundreds of PDFs (for us oldies, those are the copied books we’d get full of different essays from different sources) is both ludicrous and expensive. However, it may be that the professors expect the students to read the PDFs and this particular student knows that reading online is of poorer quality than reading paper. So the PDF printing might be a feature of the student’s desire to do well in class rather than an actual requirement. However, I can also see the possibility of a professor requiring that they be printed out so that he/she can see that you have at least looked at them. That’s a problem if there are more than one or two.

Then there is the problem of multiple accounts for various things. Since I’ve required students to register for my classroom blog and for Twitter, I know that those can be an issue. However, the blog is available for a semester and a student can change the password without my help, so I don’t see that as a problem. Twitter didn’t have to be only for the class, though they did have to post and follow me (not my @DrDavisTCE account) for credit. But I also know my students have to get on Blackboard and blogging is available there, so my classroom blog might unnecessarily complicate their lives.

So, if technology can unnecessarily complicate students’ lives and definitely frustrates them at times, why am I such a proponent?

Two reasons. (Remember. I have at least two reasons for everything.)

One is that students often have a very limited view of technology. They do not understand how what they do for fun and play and personal things can transfer to academics and the business world. I try to bridge that knowledge gap by giving them experience doing tech for school and/or work projects (in business writing). The students need to know that businesses and schools can access some of their accounts and see what they are doing and that the students should be careful what they post. Discussing this in terms of the classroom situation helps to make that clear.

Another reason is that students often have very limited experience with technology. Ten percent of my students last year had never touched a computer prior to my class. Only ten percent of my students this year had done any blogging and none were on Twitter. Many people, especially older people who might hire my students, assume a much greater experience and facility with tech than my students (both at CCs and at the SLAC) have had. This is a problem for them when they get out into the working world.

A third reason (see, I said I often have more than two) is that all of the colleges at which I have taught in the last five years have felt like it was part of their mission to expose students to technology. One required use of technology in the classroom. All of them offered the option of having tech in the classroom, which I availed myself of eagerly. And my present university focuses on technological innovation being used within the classroom, so I need to be engaged with that.

If social media is such a big deal, and it can be, then why aren’t all the students active participants in it? Why don’t they know tech as well as the older generation assumes?

I think some of this is the fluency with texting, which most older folks don’t have. Also, no one knows how to do something they haven’t been exposed to. Some of the students just haven’t ever heard of programs and opportunities on the net. Some have heard but have never tried them out. I give students a safe place to move beyond their own technology boundaries and learn more. And I don’t just give them the opportunity, I require it.

While technology can frustrate students, and teachers, I think that I would be failing in my mission of teaching my students to write what they need to know how to write in order to graduate from college if I weren’t having them work in technology. Even when that “writing” is a digital presentation.

This element of the conceptual age, according to Daniel Pink, is incredibly important. I agree. My experience has shown that what we do and HOW we do it makes a difference.

If you don’t think so, remember this. Long ago researchers found that typed papers did better than handwritten papers. The design was more uniform and, therefore, seen as better.

Here is an article on how design, and digital visualization, can impact résumés.

This is what such a résumé might look like:

A link to sign up for Vizualize.me.