What Professional Communication Careers Look Like

The profession is growing so fast and in so many ways that it is difficult to find a description that lasts long. Not only are the traditional, mainstream jobs growing more complicated, but the profession is continuously spinning off more and more exciting new careers. Recent new and sometimes surprising careers include professional blogger and social media specialist, user experience analyst, information architect, animator, game narrator, content analyst, process preservationist, and more. The jobs are constantly spinning out other careers. Fairly recently, technical animation sprang up along with professional YouTuber. As recently as 15 years ago, the term technical writer applied almost exclusively to hardware and software documentation. The same list now tops 55 professions, and many of them regularly show up in the top three of US News and World Report and Money Magazine’s list of best careers. This past year, two professional communication careers, (content manager, and Web developer) surpassed electrical engineering to top that list.

Just as diverse as the number of professions are the different skills and talents the jobs demand. The skills and talents of an editor, for example, will be largely different from those of a copywriter or Web designer. The very meticulous and focused mindset of an excellent copyeditor is the opposite of the creativity and adaptability that a Web designer would need. As you will see as you read this book, no matter what your skills and talents, there is a place in the larger profession of professional communicator for you.

Salaries in Professional Communication

Salaries in the many fields vary wildly. You might take an entry level job that pays a yearly salary as small as $35,000, but you might rise through the ranks to a salary that exceeds $500,000. Entry level documentation jobs often pay more than $50,000 and sometimes more than $75,000, while freelance, part time copywriters might earn less than $15,000 (but if you are homebound, this might be just the kind of job you need). Contractors and consultants with special skills can earn more than a million/year.

The salary a job pays mostly depends on the geographical location of the job, your skills, and the kind of company you work for. A startup business in Liberal, KS cannot pay you as much as Google or Amazon will pay their Silicon Valley writers. A student intern in an IBM Silicon Valley facility might earn $50K, but only $35K in the same company in Denver, and little or nothing at all in Logan, UT.

Professional writers today are almost never just writers. They will work within environments that will require at least a little understanding of the inner structures of digital media. They might do a bit of programming, they will use software typically only used by professionals (and so not necessarily easy), and they may work within complex or complicated information systems.

Evolution of Careers in Professional Communication

New careers are springing up every year. In 2014, my book ReaderCentric Writing for Digital Media was published. Among the things in the book is a proposal for a new career in professional communication. I called the process that hypothetical person would do, “content quality evaluation.” Recently, I read an ad that described the same skills for a job they called “content quality assessment,” and they were offering $268K per year for that employee. This is a new career that sprang up within the past two years.

You are the one who ultimately determines your starting salary. The job and salary will depend on your talents and how well you learn what you need to know to land that first job, and in the future it will be determined by which learning curves you want to tackle.