Abstract

The process of socialization by which a newly hired Technical Communication professional adapts to an organizational context consists of the following steps: formal training, preparing for employer’s expectations, transitioning from student to employee, new employee orientation, on-the-job training, and long-term professional and personal growth. A survey and analysis of peer-reviewed works relevant to these steps indicates that most studies deal with the first five of these steps with a greater degree of thoroughness than the final most crucial step. Many works in the literature emphasize the evolving role of the TC professional as a "boundary spanner" across various disciplines of the organization but few provide details on how to accomplish this. I have identified four potential elements of this final pathway to assist the TC professional in achieving the role of boundary spanner: leadership among your peers, ownership of your development, entrepreneurship of your growth and the growth of the organization, and stewardship of your goals and those of the organization.

Introduction

Individual Work Experience – The Framework of the Problem

As part of the requirement for a Bachelor of Science degree in Technical Communication, I served a summer internship. In the process I found the biggest challenge was not completing the assigned tasks but incorporating myself into the corporate structure and leveraging my specific skills. Specifically, I was originally placed under a Technical Communication (TC) professional who was to govern my workflow and act as a point of contact for all of my assigned activities. This arrangement changed quickly as I was instructed by my internship contact to make my own contacts and take the necessary actions to complete my work. When projects became more difficult and consuming, she redirected my requests for advice and guidance back to me. I realized then that this experience might not fulfill the traditional expectation of an intern to work with a seasoned TC professional.

The issues I observed in this experience are the same as those facing new hires in general, regardless of their employer. Some of these issues are partially addressed in the peer reviewed literature, but coverage of some equally important issues seems scant. These include the acquisition of non-technical (i.e. people) skills that are taught neither in TC nor purely technical curricula; a few (Kalmbach, Jobst, & Meese, 1999 and Wilson and Ford, 2003) have recognized such overlooked skills as essential. Some of these skills might include understanding organizational dynamics, and program, project, and time management. While program, project, and time management skills are taught indirectly through assignments (such as a senior thesis), students often do not make the correlation between the soft skills acquired through such activity and the applicability of these skills in the workplace.

I propose to identify various strategies and tactics of corporate socialization that the open refereed literature has addressed, to identify potential gaps in what the literature, and to propose additional courses of action for academics, employers, and students. The results of this thesis can help those in academia better serve the profession, help graduates more quickly and efficiently fulfill their employer’s expectations, and form the basis for additional research.

Socialization of anyone entering a new professional environment is no less important for the student destined for academia than one whose interests are more aligned with the private sector. This work is more an outgrowth of the author’s internship experience in the private sector, but can also illuminate some of the pathways to socialization for anyone entering a new professional environment, public or private.

Aspects of the Problem

Formal training in TC curricula provides the student and future practitioner with the necessary foundations, principles, and mindsets necessary for the successful pursuit of our profession. However, just as with any other profession, one must grow into the job, and maybe transform the job in the process. The private sector is evolving to include the technical communicator as a partner essential to corporate success (Conklin, 2006), and academic faculty and the curricula they administer are attempting to show more sensitivity to employers’ needs (Rainey, Turner, & Dayton, 2005 and Rehling 1998). The pathway to forging this partnership is fraught with hurdles to be surmounted by both employer and employee. For the employee, achieving the necessary level of trust, confidence, and respect in order to become a full team member can be daunting. For the employer, streamlining this pathway can be equally daunting. The adaptation of the employee to meet the employer’s expectations and the adaptation of the employer to meet the individual employee’s needs is essential to the process called socialization.

A preliminary survey of the literature reveals broad but non-comprehensive treatment of the problem of socialization of the new technical communicator within the corporate context. All who examine the subject agree that the socialization process is essential (Allen, 2004).  Some of these previous works have approached the subject from pedagogical theory (St Amant, 2003, Schreiber, 1993, and Brady, 2007), some frame the problem in terms of establishing the collaborative environment (Bekins & Williams, 2006), and others concern themselves more with changes the graduate/new employee might bring to the corporate context rather than adaptation to the corporate context (Harrison & Debs, 1988).

Few, however, have outlined an integrated approach that can leverage the existing unique strengths of members of a three-way partnership: educational institution, corporation, and individual. An integrated approach might constitute principally a cooperative adaptation among the three. Opportunities for an individual to change the course of either industry or academia are probably few; the opportunities for an individual to optimally posture oneself for streamlined or accelerated socialization into the specific employer’s corporate context may be many.  Specifically, these opportunities might include:

• Pursuit of required formal training
• Pursuit of elective formal training that would at worst add value to the student’s transcript and at best prove as essential as required courses
• Acquisition of skills, strategies, and tactics that would have been difficult to learn only from formal training

Purpose and Approach

Purpose

The purpose of this thesis is to explore previous treatments of the socialization process, to identify gaps in the coverage, and to recommend further study or action.

The unifying question of this work is: What advance preparation might a student in TC pursue in order to streamline, expedite, or otherwise accelerate the individual’s transition from student to productive valued member (even if newly hired) of an employer’s product realization team? Several subordinate questions constitute the underpinning of this inquiry:

• How does academia attempt to prepare the student for the workplace?
• How does industry perceive formal academic preparation as meeting industry needs?
• What additional opportunities might the student identify during formal preparation, such as course work not specifically required for a formal degree?
• What past and present work-life experiences might a student acquire and leverage, not only to get a (nominally) TC job, but also to keep the job and demonstrate the new hire’s ability to add value beyond the initial and immediate requirements of a job?
• What are some strategies for evolving a job into a career?

Approach

I started the study with a review of the literature, with an emphasis on peer-reviewed journal articles, to collect relevant findings on the process of socialization of the Technical Communication professional into the workplace. The literature study suggested and enabled several logical follow-on activities, specifically:

1. A summary of pertinent findings of the collected works. I noted which steps in the socialization process each work researched, observed, and reported in sufficient detail to allow comparison and synthesis with other works.
2. Identification of steps in the socialization process that are considered by multiple authors as essential. Analysis of these works invited comparison of their treatment of themes emphasized in academically-oriented papers with those in management-oriented papers. In addition, identifying themes emphasized by technical communicators but not management (and vice versa).
3. Comparison of the socialization process as documented in the literature with personal experience in the workplace.  I identified themes (if any) that neither academics nor management nor practicing technical communicators have addressed, and may need further study.

Finally, I offer some additional lessons learned from work experience, and recommend topics having potential payoffs. These include (a) formal studies by TC professionals; (b) additional preparation of TC students through a suitably amended curriculum; and/or (c) further discussion in forums such as seminars, workshops, etc.

What is “Socialization”?

Socialization is a new employee’s adaptation to the situational context represented by the employer’s line of business, spectrum of products, internal work processes, and expectations with regard to its bottom line. I apply the term socialization in this thesis to denote several steps in this ongoing process of adaptation.  The results of this process are twofold, and mutually beneficial to both employer and employee:

1. A newcomer to an employer learns the skills appropriate to social position and contributes to the organizational mission, both tangibly (e.g., making product) and intangibly (e.g., process improvement and problem solving).
2. The newcomer grows into the job and brings skills and talents into the organizational context.

The Socialization Process as a Framework for Discussion

According to the literature, the socialization process actually begins at the time when the student chooses a specific career path, in this case, that of the technical communicator.  For the purposes of this thesis, one can conveniently envision the process to consist of the following phases. I have organized these phases into a proposed model of the socialization process that may prove a useful framework for discussion.

Formal training.  Planning one’s formal training curricula is a collaborative effort between the student and the academic department, typically represented by the student’s faculty advisor, who counsels the student in the proper selection of coursework in order to (a) fulfill the core requirements of the department, (b) provide the student with a specified level of competence, and (c) complement the requirements with breadth-enhancing studies consistent with the student’s individual interests related to the field.  Formal training requirements vary among undergraduate programs.  A Bachelor of Science degree may require some training in one or more technical fields in addition to TC-specific curricula, whereas a Bachelor of Arts degree may not.  The student’s specific employment goals (e.g., more versus less technical interests) will influence the student’s choice among institutions and BS versus BA programs.

Formal training and fulfillment of a department’s core requirements may include serving a student internship.  Ideally, an internship experience, even if considered a part of formal training, incorporates aspects of other phases in the socialization process. This includes preparing for employer’s expectations, a partial and temporary transition from student to employee, orientation to a job, and at least minimal on-the-job training.  At the same time, the internship in its own limited way can be an opportunity for professional growth.  At minimum, the student intern may be better prepared to make certain longer-term commitments (or not) based on the internship experience.

Preparing for employer’s expectations.  Learning the expectations of prospective employers with whom the student might wish to form a career partnership is largely the responsibility of the student.  However, placement counseling assistance and service needs to be available to guide the student.  The traditional avenues for learning these expectations include guest speakers, job fairs, job interviews, internships, and part-time jobs.

Transition from Student to Employee.  Landing the job seems at times the student’s greatest hurdle.  Many who have newly made the transition from student to employee learn that the hurdle is not getting the job, but keeping the job, or even transforming the job to become something better for both employee and employer.

New employee orientation.  Once a new employee has made a certain level of commitment to the employer, the orientation of the employee to the new job becomes a partnership between the employer and the employee, with much of the burden placed on the employer.

On-the-job training.  After a new employee has learned some of the employer’s fundamental expectations, many of which relate to the mechanics and formalities of the workplace, the employee may be assigned tasks that are relevant to the employer’s line-of-business, but perhaps consisting of lower-risk, lower-visibility projects.  The employee may be assigned such projects in order to allow the employee to develop certain skills and knowledge of the business.  Successful adaptation of the employee to the expectations for these projects may warrant a higher degree of trust, and earn the assignment of higher-risk, higher-visibility responsibilities.  This may be among the most difficult of the transitions for the employee and embodies much of the socialization process.

Managing professional and personal growth.  Employers generally recognize that responsibility for managing one’s professional and personal growth falls on the employee.  This is true whether the employee remains with the employer in the same job for many years, does several different jobs with the same employer, or does various jobs for several different employers over the course of a career.  Ideally, professional growth is a partnership, wherein the employer identifies and provides opportunities, and the employee pursues these opportunities as consistent with basic job responsibilities.

These phases (graphically depicted by the flowchart in Figure 1) are in a larger sense iterative, requiring either employee or employer or both to recycle through one or more phases in response to changes in the corporate culture, the evolving skills and needs of the individual, or both.  In addition, the overlap of some key activities (rectangles) into more than one phase (separated by horizontal dashed lines) and more than one environment (depicted by the vertical swimlanes) reflects the overall complexity of the process.

Figure 1. Flow-diagram of the socialization process

Review of Literature

This work organizes the literature review according to four general topics, which coincide approximately with major phases in the process of socialization outlined above. Some of these topics relate directly to the principal research questions posed by this thesis.

• What skills do TC programs teach? How does academia attempt to prepare the student for the workplace?
• What skills do employers want? How does industry perceive formal academic preparation as meeting industrial needs?
• How do employers orient their new hires? How do employers supplement their new hire’s formal training to better meet mutual needs?
• What can the individual do before and after getting hired? What additional opportunities might the student identify during formal preparation, such as course work not specifically required for a formal degree?

These topics relate to some of the aspects of the problem described above, and overlap the socialization steps outlined above.  The pivotal step of actually getting a job is beyond the scope of this work.

Comparison of these topics with the principal research questions reveals a gap. The literature asserts the importance of adding value beyond one’s job requirements but offers little specific guidance for accomplishing this—the next-to-last research question. Neither does the literature address the final research question—how to evolve a job into a career.

This section seeks to identify common themes in key pieces of research, infer and synthesize any consensus among them, and identify potential conflicts.  A gap analysis and identification of pathways to resolving remaining conflicts form the basis for possible further research and/or discussion.

What skills do TC programs teach?

Several works address the adequacy of formal TC curricula required by academic departments. An early work by Kalmbach, Jobst, and Meese (1986) recognizes the need to balance formal training in rhetoric with the acquisition of skills that enable more versatility.  The authors recognize the value of technical specialization, and suggest the success derived from specialization might be either short-lived or self-limiting. 

Allen’s 2004 study argues for an assessment of how well technical communication curricula prepare graduates to contribute to their business-oriented employers. Specific skills not necessarily acquired in pursuing formal curricula include business operations, project management, problem solving skills, and scientific and technical knowledge.

Brady’s 2007 survey assessed various methods of problem solving based on individual experiences. The profound differences in social setting notwithstanding, the basic theory of problem solving was found to remain the same.

Rainey, Turner, and Dayton (2005) compare perspectives of educators in academia with those of TC managers in industry, identify the skills each considers most important to the success of the TC professional, and suggest some additional avenues of collaboration between the two groups that would result in feedback to designers of curricula, and hence improvement in curricular offerings more closely aligned with managerial expectations. As in other works, the authors conclude that less technical (people) skills rank as highly as writing skills.  This premise is an important concept to be examined in this work. 

St. Amant (2003) specifically targets the internship as an essential component in the preparation of students for the TC profession.  First examining the structure of the traditional internship and its component roles (intern, provider, and advisor/overseer), the author recommends that broader sharing of information among all three roles yields more efficient and dynamic feedback channels for continuous improvement of the internship experiences.  Academia and industry have consistently recognized and adopted the internship as an indispensable component of a student’s pre-professional training and experience, which should enable students to acquire some on-the-job non-technical skills, such as project planning and management.

Schreiber (1993) identifies a gap between the academic setting and the workplace, postulating that curricula do not adequately prepare the student to become an early-functioning productive new hire in a corporate setting. 

What skills do employers want?

The new graduate attains a level of confidence upon receiving the degree. This bubble may burst when the new graduate-turned-new-hire discovers the rules of academia do not always apply to the rules of business. Most of the student’s training involved producing written artifacts represented by class assignments, projects, and theses. The student may be less aware that these artifacts required less obvious skills such as collaboration, sharing vision, individual responsibility, leadership, and eliciting needed information.

Bekins and Williams (2006) eloquently argue that the technical communicator, especially in the for-profit sector, must become part-and-parcel of the product development and production process, not simply a generator of product-documenting prose after-the-fact.  The TC professional thus adds value by being a jack-of-all-trades in the eyes of the employer, and therefore needs to acquire such skills as project management, product management, and people management, thus expanding the scope of the TC profession to position TC professionals as true value-added creative contributors.

Whiteside (2003) “examines the skills that recent technical communication graduates and managers believe technical communication students need before entering business and industry as new technical communicators.”  The author makes the case that academia needs to prepare students to meet managers’ expectations when the students become professionals, and that curriculum planners might better partner with industries that hire their graduates.

How do employers orient their new hire?

Most employers make certain expectations clear to the new hire. Obvious among these are work schedule, workplace ethics and behavior, “where’s the bathroom,” etc. Some employers spend more resources than others on orientation.

Bist (1996) outlines in detail a program for indoctrinating new hires into the desired organizational context, presuming a firm foundation in the art of writing itself.  The emphasis is on a proactive stance on the part of the company, placing the burden on the company to make clear certain aspects of company operation that the company needs the new hire to learn, specifically (1) the corporate culture, (2) the internal process of document generation, review, and production, (3) internally adopted writing style and formatting, and (4) technical tools the company has adopted for production.  Bist recognizes that perhaps costly proactivity on the part of the employer to streamline the assimilation of the new hire is as necessary investment that avoids the pitfalls of uncontrolled absorption of this information by random interactions. 

Anson and Forsberg (1990) contrast lateral versus vertical transfer of one’s skills, strengths, talents, and interests. They consider lateral transfer the application of skills learned in college with little modification or adaptation to the situational context. Vertical transfer includes problem solving, boundary spanning (though not specifically mentioned), and leveraging one’s life experiences. These life experiences might include the variety of jobs one has held, working on various projects, and perhaps course assignments that mimic on a smaller scale the situational context likely to be encountered in the workplace.

What can the individual do?

Clearly the student yields some personal sovereignty to the program faculty who determine the rules for obtaining a degree. Equally clearly, the new hire yields some personal sovereignty to the employer who has expectations of certain knowledge and performance. The individual retains freedom of choice in several arenas. How these choices are made can determine success or failure.

Anson and Forsberg (1990) examined the “transitions that writers make when moving from academic to professional discourse communities,” and yet again demonstrated the idea that success in the technical communication field is less about the skills acquired in the students’ educational programs and more about developing strategies of intellectual adaptation.  The fact that this paper focuses on the frustrations and accommodations of interns relates to the thesis author’s internship experiences, and led to an interest in this transitional process and how it might be streamlined.

Every social context involves relationships. These relationships in industrial institutions are commonly hierarchical which implies the distribution of power. Moore (1999) recommends strategies for coping with and perhaps mitigating the effects of conflict. This case study illustrates the need for an incisive understanding of a social context to which students may or may not have been exposed prior to entering the workplace.

The work of Haselkorn et al. highlights highly diverse projects in which technical communicators have had to extend their focus beyond document production. Thus it shows how the expanding role of technical communicators enhances the value of program graduates provided they are prepared to extend themselves.

Harrison and Debs (1988) introduce the role of the technical communicator as a “boundary-spanner” uniquely positioned to transcend internal organizational barriers as facilitators of information flow.  The authors emphasize non-technical (interpersonal) skills as well as business savvy (knowledge of organization operation), and writing specific to the organizational context.

From a series of cyber-commentaries from holders of graduate degrees, Wilson and Ford (2003) compiled a collection of candid perspectives TC graduates have developed as these graduates compare their expectations upon entering their professional experiences with the realities of their respective workplaces. The authors summarized their findings in a series of suggestions to streamline the transition: (1) include some general business savvy in formal curricula, (2) “teach the students to market themselves,” (3) force students to extract information for themselves, albeit difficult, (4) establish a mentoring program, (5) clearly establish the tech communicator's role in project teams, from cradle-to-grave, and (6) foster professional growth. However, while pursuing the first three is the responsibility of those in academia, the others belong to the employer.  These insights require some follow-up to narrow the gap between what to do and how to do it.  The employer role might be an especially hard-sell.

Necessity vs. Sufficiency

Katz (1998b) articulates a process and resources by which newcomers to an employer’s social context can obtain optimal guidance in fulfilling employer expectations. If these processes and resources are fully implemented in the new hire’s workplace we might infer that this is the making of the best of all possible worlds – employment nirvana.

Let us presume for a moment that all of the resources and processes recommended by Katz (1998b) are in place, including orientation, training, mentors, and written materials. Also presume that Katz’s specific recommendations are adopted, including (1) a new-hire orientation that does clearly identify available resources, (2) introductions to coworkers, (3) the offering of continuing shorter-focused training activities, and (4) the availability of up-to-date written materials that articulate policies, procedures, benefits, models of products to be emulated, and rules of style, and addressing frequently asked questions.  In addition, presume that as a part of on-the-job training, newcomers are (1) assigned collaborative tasks with more experienced personnel, (2) pointed to appropriate SMEs, and (3) given time and opportunity for informal social interaction.  Presume the newcomer has, in such an ideal environment, found it easy to adopt proactive strategies to discover the virtual rules or non-rules by direct questioning, testing limits, casual conversation, and in-process observation of peers.

All of the above, according to Katz, is in principle necessary. To walk into such an organizational context would be ideal. Would having all this mean that the newcomer has it made? No, but the newcomer will have a higher success rate given the well organized and complete set of tools that Katz describes. However, the availability of the tools does not assure success so much as how the individual implements these tools.

The Path to Success

The work of Hart and Conklin (2006) describes an ultimate role of the effective technical communicator, that of the boundary spanner, who facilitates the flow of communication rather than that of a wordsmith responsible for a final written product.  This role implies that the technical communicator is involved in virtually every phase of a project, from its birth as a concept to final production.  Hart and Conklin, however, do not offer specific guidance on how one assumes the role they have described.  Katz (1998b) defines for us the beginning of the pathway, while Hart and Conklin define for us the end.  What is missing is a guidebook to all the intervening territory.

What then needs to be the would-be newcomer’s mindset in pursuing the pathway?

This mindset needs to begin to grow at the earliest stages of professional development in school. Such a long-range view of one’s individual desired final state can be difficult for young people having minimal work experience. However, I have found in my own experience (both in an internship and in other jobs) the following premises: assume leadership, broaden one’s curriculum, practice entrepreneurship, and focus on the employer’s bottom line. I offer some specific and non-specific (given their proprietary nature) examples from my own experience in various career and internship experiences.

Determine To Be a Leader

I found gaps in the coverage of tasks that needed to be performed to enhance and advance the business. In discreetly pointing out these gaps to management, without importing obnoxious tone or sense of panic, I offered ideas, perceptions, and skills (some TC-related, some not) for improved coverage. However, given a degree of corporate inertia, this was oftentimes a hard-sell to convince others that what I offered would truly gain some efficiancies.

Think Outside the Catalogue

Although the TC course curriculum requirements are explicit and necessary to get one's degree, learn from the weaknesses or failures of your colleagues that employers want more. Set yourself apart in competition for jobs. For example, do not be content with knowledge of editing, styles, rhetoric.  Acquire skills in dealing with people and business.  For example, some of these skills are acquired, practiced, and nurtured through a pursuit of certification as a Project Management Professional.

I found numerous opportunities for continuing education, especially specialized training in advanced technologies, and a knowledge of which technologies were evolving as essential to the growth of the business. When someone needed to become certified in fiber optics, I volunteered. Not only did I become the subject matter expert, but the new skills I gained enabled me to not only perform the technical tasks not previously attempted in-house, but gave me detailed understanding of the effort so that I could effectively communicate its complexities to the program sponsors.

Because of a demonstrated interest, competence, and conversance in the subject, I was chosen to travel to a training course to learn the finer points of high-speed photography. Not only did I gain detailed insight into the capabilities and limitations of such, but I equipped myself to better contribute to interdisciplinary project teams that required this technology and the documentation of its use in project work.

Aim for Entrepreneurship

Immerse yourself in the organizational vision and mission statements. What’s that? The organization does not have these? Ahhhhh opportunity. I have yet to gain a chair at the table (at least with this company) where higher-level corporate rhetoric is generated for organizational goals. However, by continuing to demonstrate technical breadth and communication excellence, I hope to be recognized as a resource knowledgeable about current organizational capabilities, resources, and strengths that can be grown into new lines of business. Already organizational management has developed a new appreciation of the value of documentation (i.e. assessments, analyses, and instrumentation reports) – a position echoed by our program sponsor. As a result, more resources for documentation have been allotted and documentation is now considered an essential item in our product line.

Keep Sight of the Bottom Line

If your employer is for-profit, this will be monetary. If not, the bottom line might be reputation, prestige, competence, credibility, etc. However, it is still a bottom line – have a sense of business and contribute to bottom line.

Our organizational bottom line is measured by the delight our principal customer and program sponsor takes in our successes. My contributions as a technical communicator on relating these successes place our organization in the spotlight. I can only use the achievements of others and myself; the content, style, and manner of the presentation of our achievements is largely my responsibility. It can be a weighty one.

Conclusion

Beginning with my definition of socialization, I identified several steps in the process and examined the literature to determine how previous works correlated TC curricula with workplace expectations. Many works described the evolving role of the TC professional beyond that of editor/writer/document producer. Some works described the obvious role of new hire orientation in the short term, and new employee development in the longer term. Several works emphasized the importance of maintaining a breadth of skills that would facilitate effective interaction with a broad spectrum of project team members. One work in particular identified orientation procedures to equip the new hire for success.

There is a strong consensus that the most successful TC professionals are also the most versatile. This versatility is more crucial to the success of the TC professional than to that of any other member of the organization.

What the literature is missing is a method of cultivating this versatility. I identified four promising strategies for enhancing individual versatility: leadership among your peers, ownership of your development, entrepreneurship of your growth and the growth of the organization, and stewardship of your goals and those of the organization.

Where do you find the guiding principal that unifies all of this? That principal rests in a characteristic of virtually every organization—interest in the bottom line.

What is your personal bottom line, and how do you optimize it?  The crux of a personal bottom line rests in personal choices—formal preparation, adaptability, and willingness to collaborate. Learn the business. Take on the role of a boundary spanner within the context of the organization.   Conversance in your employer’s lines of business might not have been specifically taught in TC curricula.  However, a motivation to learn such conversance must be internal, not external.  Thus, the technical communicator’s role evolves to the mutual benefit of the individual and the business.

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