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I voted for marketers. I did so because the demonstrated ability to successfully market a product can be used in a broad number of fields, and in my part of the country at least, there is a much greater demand for marketers than technical communicators. I think also that there is more awareness of the need for marketers and marketing in general. The average business person knows of his need for a marketing strategy and advertising and might hire people to handle these tasks, whereas he might not hire a separate person to write about how to use the product (if instructions are even needed.)
In my experience few people know what a technical communicator does or the value that we add until they've actually worked with a good one. This lack of awareness often means we have to blaze our own paths to avoid being pigeonholed. But to do that takes a certain temperament or at least the ability to envision and proactively seek new opportunities for yourself. For example a tech writer often can gather requirements, design GUIs and so forth. But the average manager might not recognize that. So you have to demonstrate that you can do those things by taking on extra work before you actually officially do those tasks. Not everyone wants to go through that process and sometimes there is no opportunity to do those things on a job.
Ultimately though, career prospects depend on factors in addition to field of choice. Geography, educational background, competency, commitment to excellence, ability to exceed customer expectations (whether it is your boss or consumers of a product), personal ambition, and economic realities contribute to the prospects that a person has.
Chantel
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: TechWhirl Admin
> Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 11:25 AM
> To: Techwr-l
> Subject: TechWhirl: Technical Communication Recap for August 31, 2012
>
> ... This week's poll asks whether you believe technical communicators or
> marketers have better career prospects
> <http://techwhirl.com/business/polls/technical-communication-poll-best-c
> areer-prospects/>. It may be a case of the grass is always greener
> somewhere else, or there may be some real trends hidden among the votes.
> So far the results have been about evenly split, and we'd sure like to
> hear from folks in both camps on why they feel the way they do...
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