Posts Tagged ‘domain’
The Impressive Potential of Freelancing
With rising opportunities and variety of work coming in, freelancing is on the rise. Freelancing allows you a lot of freedom and flexibility as you can work from home and can decide how much workload you want to take. A lot of outsourced work is being offered to freelancers and several of them need English writing skills. You get paid to read and write articles on various topics and post them on blogs or as website content. Since a good number of these opportunities are being outsourced, there are opportunities for you to earn in foreign currencies and thus increase your earning potential.
Generally for jobs that involve writing, you need to be a keen researcher in addition to having excellent writing skills. You will either be given a domain or a topic on which you have to write a number of articles. At the end of the month your pay will depend on the number of articles you have contributed. If you are a working professional looking to increase your earning, you can consider writing a few articles per month to add more to your salary. However there are people who do this full time and some of their earnings are on par with people going for work to offices.
More posts and specific freelance opportunities will follow.
Get Trained and Master Your Domain
Would you like to be known as the jack of all trades or master of a domain? As you go ahead in your profession, you have to keep this in mind. You may have a set of skills that makes you eligible for several positions. But it is always wise to select a domain that you like best and stick to it so that in a few years, you come to be regarded as one of the authorities.
Jumping jobs and exploring different avenues might sound exciting but that never allows you to settle in a particular line of work. You end up learning the basics of a lot of domains but will never be able to master any. Your growth and prestige largely depends upon your mastery, so a concentrated effort on an area of your liking is advisable. Frequent job changes and alteration of position also results in a question mark on your credibility. Looking at your records, Companies will not be able to trust your commitment. It is always more impressive to display a record of excellence along a particular line of work as opposed to dabbling in a variety of spheres.
Make your choice early in your career. Decide upon an area that you find exciting and rewarding at the some time. Equip yourself with all the skills necessary to make it big in the area of your choice and stick to it. With all the experience and expertise that you will gain, you might even consider starting your own company after a while.
Go The Diploma Way
If you do not have the time or means to pursue a full-fledged degree course or if you are already working and would like to pick up some additional skills in your domain, a diploma might be the perfect choice. Over the years, diploma courses have become quite popular and with the introduction of new domains, new diploma courses are being offered to cater to the demands. A diploma course aims to provide the required skills within a limited time and sometimes work better since it is more focused.
In India, diploma courses are often not placed at the same level as regular degree courses which results in most students shying away from them. However, in terms of job-opportunities, there is a healthy demand for diploma holders. Plenty of diploma holders get job offers immediately after completing their education. Where it takes a considerable amount of time to start a new degree course with adequate faculty and infrastructure, short-term diploma courses are easier to implement. Owing to this, diplomas can boast of offering a wide variety of skills and sometimes outperforming degrees in making students job-ready.
Open universities like IGNOU have several diplomas to offer in distance mode. So if you are looking at honing specific skills or eyeing an emerging domain, check out what diplomas are bringing to the table.
Stop by the Finishing School For Job Training on Your Way to the Industry
Conducting finishing schools for students on the threshold of entering the industry is emerging as a welcome initiative. I have come across several reports of colleges and universities arranging finishing schools which are all about putting the icing on the cake. Throughout the years spent on their courses, students have been made to focus primarily on theory and domain knowledge. However, as it is well known, you need a lot more than just domain knowledge to make yourself the right choice for recruiters. Finishing schools attempt to equip students with all the necessary extras to make them employable.
To instill confidence in the students to face recruitment tests and interviews, finishing schools train the participants in all they can expect from the selection process. Effective communication, logical reasoning, numerical and analytical prowess, group discussions and interviews are put under the limelight and plenty of practice sessions enable students to form a reasonably clear idea of the kind of questions that await them in the tests and interviews. Some finishing schools also incorporate workshops where students get trained in some important software which they will have to work with on a daily basis.
Much as I admire this concept, I hope institutions do not leave everything to the finishing schools and keep training students as they pursue their courses. Otherwise the finishing schools might be left with too much to handle and too little time in which to handle everything.
Exploring Technical Writing Jobs
Time to look at another prominent and attractive opening in the domain of language and communication, namely, technical writing. A basic research reveals that almost all big and small companies in the industry have requirements for technical writers. So if you happen to be good with the English language and are looking for a job that involves writing and also exposes you to cutting edge technology and latest products launched by different companies then technical writing could be a profile you will enjoy.
Most companies would require you to write about their products, launches and other news related to their research. So you will be writing user manuals, designing brochures and working closely with the development team to form a good understanding of the offerings of your company. As a technical writer, you will be catering to all the users of your company’s products and that can be a big number. You need to remember that your audience will consist of people with and without an understanding of technology so your writing should explain things in a clear and straightforward manner.
People generally get put off by a lot of text so you will have to cultivate a skill for designing. If you take a look at the user manuals of products launched by some big names, you will see almost every page carries pictures, illustrations and the text is arranged in short paragraphs. Often buletted points are used so that the main features get highlighted. If you are trying to explain to your clients how to operate a product, it is important that you show the various processes through pictures in addition to writing the steps down. Using different font colours and formatting will make your work visually appealing. You can consider using different background colours for different sections. Needless to say that a good knowledge of MS Office and a few photo-editing software will be an added advantage.
As for the origin of technical writing, I got a surprising piece of information in the process of finding out more about it. According to Wikipedia, the practice of technical writing can be traced back to ancient Greece and the Renaissance (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries). However, the full fledged utilisation of it came into being during the first world war when a lot of technical documentation was required by the military,manufacturing, electronics and aerospace industries.
Consider Internship Jobs
If you want to taste professional life before plunging into it and would like to experience what it feels like to handle a real time project, an internship can be a very good idea. Several major concerns offer opportunities for internship where you get to learn all about life at work and gain valuable experience in the domain of your choice. Internships can be part time or full time for a limited period, so you can probably take them up along with your studies. Internships can help you make up your mind on your choice of career as there is nothing better than to actually be a part of the industry and learn your work hands on.
Bear in mind however that internships might or might not come with a stipend all the time. So you might have to arrange for your accommodation and travel if your company asks you to report to an office in another state or country. However, good performance will always be rewarded and the company might offer you a position at the end of your internship if you manage to impress them. Google, Infosys and even the United Nations among many others, offer good internship opportunities.
Training Blues
While everyone agrees upon the advantages of students equipping themselves with good communication skills, what is neglected is the prospect of professionals who can train the students. I am talking about the teachers in various Engineering colleges here. It goes without saying that to be successful as a teacher in this field, one needs to have a clear understanding of the needs of the industry and the kind of communication skills desired. By and large, the industry requires its workforce to be aware of domain-specific scientific and technical vocabulary, ability to speak politely and positively, reporting, clear and precise writing and making presentations. Now the question is how many teachers teaching English courses in our Engineering colleges possess these skills?
Many of the teachers recruited by engineering colleges are graduates or post-graduates in English where the emphasis is on English literature. As a result, they are largely unaware of the demands of the industry and most of the English course outline handed out is lost on them. They struggle to make sense of the technical vocabulary and other Industry-specific nuances. Upon asking, I was told by people in the Industry that during their college days, their English teachers often found themselves as baffled by the syllabus as them. Nowadays some reputed institutions like EFLU are offering courses on TEFL/TESL which are attempting to address such demands but good courses of this kind remain few and far between. With the growing demand for professionals with good communication skills, opportunities galore for teachers/trainers who can impart these skills as well. The sooner we realize this, the better.
Sylla-Bias
Most of our universities and colleges offering technical education seem to realize the importance of English communication skills beside domain knowledge. All the students are required to take a course on English which is designed to focus extensively on communication skills. So where does this course go wrong?
As far as the syllabus is concerned, the emphasis, understandably, is on developing LSRW skills and not on English literature. Students are required to read passages, attempt comprehension questions, develop an understanding for lexical and contextual meanings, listen for general and specific information, practice JAM (Just A Minute) sessions and so on which all sound quite impressive. However, what remains unimpressive is the performance of many students in the interviews.
Several Universities implement the English course only in the first semester. B.Tech is a six semester course. One wonders how much of the English course a student retains at the end of the course unless he/she has kept in touch regularly. One needs to think about there being more courses on English communication or spreading the English course over a considerable part of the entire duration for it to be more effective and helpful for the students.
We also need to understand that the focus of students coming to study engineering will be on the technical courses since they’ll want to be masters of their domain. The English course ends up being looked at as just an extra or even a burden sometimes. I have seen some of my friends studying engineering and for them it’s all about putting up with this trouble rather than taking a serious interest in it. Implementing courses alone won’t serve the purpose. It is up to the lecturer to make the students realize the importance of English communication skills in professional life and devise ways to keep the students interested. In the posts to come, I’ll attempt to look at the lecturers’ approaches to the English courses in engineering colleges.