Anh thư vào vai người chuyển giới
“Are you sure you can study capnuochaiphong.com?,” my mother asked me the day I was accepted as an capnuochaiphong.com major at UW. Ever since I told her I wanted to study literature in high school, she was concerned about the career opportunities I would be able lớn find. My Vietnamese mother knows little capnuochaiphong.com và grew up in an economy where studying language doesn’t lead to lớn lucrative careers. Even in her life, she didn’t use her pedagogy degree, so her question was meant lớn serve as a “reality-check” whenever I spoke highly of fiction, creativity, và Carol Ann Duffy.
One and a half years later, with the enriching experience of a few writing gigs và a London study abroad trip, I applied for a Microsoft content Experience (CX) internship. Four days after my on-site interview at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, the recruiter called and said, “I’m here to bring good news”. I immediately covered my mouth khổng lồ muffle my screams of joy.
“Are you sure you can work at Microsoft?,” my mother asked when I was 2 weeks into my internship. What she wanted lớn know was whether I was “fitting in” the American corporate culture. “Do your American co-workers understand you?” và “Can you handle the work?” were some of her recurring thoughts. This time, I also began khổng lồ question if I had what it took to lớn cut it at a “Big 5” tech company. As much as my mother poked my insecurity, she had all the reasons khổng lồ doubt her daughter’s incongruence with social norms - I study literature in a language that is not mine, & I work in a male-dominated engineering company as a woman in humanities.
I remember sitting in a big conference room with all the interns on orientation day. When the host said “Who here is a software engineer intern?,” three-quarters of the room chanted in unison. How many CX interns were there in total? Four.
Writing in tech is a career option that is trending among humanities majors. This article offers advice and guidance for students with humanities backgrounds who are wondering if tech is right for them.
So what does a CX intern do?
The job description that I was sent described a CX intern as a “tech-savvy writer” who can “design and write nội dung in-product và for the web that helps customers achieve great things with Microsoft hardware, software, và services,” and “map what you’re delivering to the big picture.”
Although recruiters seek out writing majors, the work isn’t just pure writing. Interns are expected lớn show critical thinking in the “development, design, deployment, vision, & business strategy” of their work. This is true in my case because I had to lớn build a project that was born out of an abstract idea from scratch. What made my experience enriching was the autonomy I had over my content, thanks to a team who supported my creativity, my experiments và allowed me lớn grow from mistakes - all the necessary training for growth mindset.
Intern projects vary depending on your skillset và managers. The other CX interns created an inclusive security word bank, an internal writing style guide, and templates for a new product; skills such as design, data collection, and project management were integral in their jobs. As for me, I led the inclusive language project using thiết kế thinking methodologies và collaborating with teams in the United States!
Microsoft, without doubt, creates a successful intern program every year. The company hosts activities around campus to encourage a balance between work and social life. The heart of intern events aims to lớn build curiosity in tech and give us exclusive networking opportunities even with executives! Some of my few memorable events were the Women’s Symposium (with Amy Hood), International day, Intern Day (with Satya Nadella, Brad Smith, & Sean Paul), the Intern Yacht Party, Food Fest, Fireside chats with CVPs, and the Treehouse Talks, a storytelling event where I did a stand-up!
The future of writing in tech. Bạn đang xem: Anh thư vào vai người chuyển giới
If there’s a bubble that’s growing for writers in tech, it’s Conversational User Interface (CUI) - the design of conversations for voice assistants và chatbots. During my internship, I shadowed the Personality Chatbot Project led by my manager. As a team, we built queries for each scenario, strategies for localizers, and make sure conversations between a human and bot are ethical & inclusive.
Collaborating in this project makes me excited lớn be a tech writer in the future. No longer were the days of engineering jargon và unfriendly 404 errors. The voice and tone of devices are changing to lớn become more human và natural to interact. As CEO Satya Nadella said “Human language is the new UI layer, bots are like new applications, and digital assistants are meta apps. Intelligence is infused into all of your interactions.”
In the years to lớn come, I can only hope the next strings of words to lớn be equally as important as the next strings of code. Writers are in the process of rebranding the voice of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as that currently on screens. However, with “great dialog comes great responsibility” - coined by the original editorial writer of Cortana, Deborah Harrison - writers have the challenge of creating dialogues that honor human emotional truth at the moment of interaction.
How can I prepare a resume for a CX internship?
Breaking into CX is hard for students. Many people enter User Experience (UX) Writing or CX (as they gọi it at Microsoft) with a rich writing portfolio in professional industries. Since the field is still emerging, there aren’t many resources for students to lớn explore.
However, tech companies offer CX internships every year. capnuochaiphong.com, Communications, and Journalism majors are in demand for these roles because we specialize in writing, storytelling, và strategizing content. These skills can be built in extracurricular activities such as working as editors, writers, journalists, or video clip editors for on-campus organizations. For writers, preparing some published articles is a strong stepping stone - opportunities to write for a tech, neuroscience, literary journal, và the university’s newspapers are open yearly.
In addition, having some knowledge of kiến thiết thinking và data can make you a better candidate. I am an capnuochaiphong.com major with an Informatics minor; the knowledge I gained in my Informatics classes allows me to leverage my colleagues’ work faster. Even if getting another minor or a second major is not an option for you, building competency in design thinking can be learned from reading and social networking. Khổng lồ be honest, most of my kiến thiết competency comes from my extracurricular hustle. Within UW, there are so many student-led organizations that offer mentorship from professionals in the industry. During Winter quarter, I participated in kiến thiết sprints hosted by Dubstech’s “The UX Club.” Not only did I improve my ideation and prototyping skills, but I’ve also made connections with members who are either ahead or on the same journey as me. Realizing the potential of this club, I wrote articles documenting the events and the values of student-to-student teaching.
Whatever you do, don’t forget khổng lồ show your work in a portfolio. This is your space to lớn brand yourself and flaunt your talent. Something I witnessed among my colleagues at Microsoft is that everyone is unique & comes from all walks of life. In my office alone, there are published authors, poets, teachers, songwriters, bloggers, đoạn clip game writers, film enthusiast, booksellers, and a founder of an ethical clothing company. There is not one mold to lớn emulate, but lớn be yourself và sell your story (that’s when the storytelling skill comes in handy). For me, coming from Vietnam khổng lồ study literature and expressing the values of diversity and inclusion made a stellar impression, despite feeling insecure about this very own identity at the beginning of my journey.
My last e-mail as a Microsoft intern was titled “Standing on the shoulders of giants,” one of my favorite quotes by Isaac Newton. It expresses the meaning of “discovering truth by building on previous discoveries.” That was the experience I had as a CX intern. Every day, I had the opportunity to lớn meet a colleague who has gone through years of learning, và is now impacting billions of customers, one UI string at a time.
Near the over of my internship, I have a clearer professional và personal vision, and I’m privileged to lớn realize this early in my career. That’s what internships are for - lớn make you hopeful about who you’re dreaming lớn be.
