Perfect Your Party Pitch

October 2015

You’re at an industry event and you bump into a former colleague you haven’t seen in years. She smiles and enthusiastically asks you what you’re doing now. You open your mouth, and then pause. How on earth do you start to explain your job?

As professional communicators it’s essential that we can explain what we do in a quick, interesting, and memorable way. Surely it shouldn’t be that hard - after all, it’s what we do every day with technical information! But many of us struggle to verbalise a sufficient response off the cuff.

Recently we ran a survey to crowd-source the perfect pitch from your fellow TechCommNZ members and here are the results. We've also thrown some more ideas into the mix, some of which we pinched from our colleagues in the UK. We'll leave you to decide which are punchy enough for you to use.

So, what do you do?

  • I write technical information for technical and non-technical people. I write the help you see in software like Excel, and I write user guides and manuals too. I also make videos that explain how to do things. I work in the IT industry but you can find technical writers in manufacturing, medicine, aviation, law and many other industries.
  • I make the customer's experience great by providing the information they need in the most convenient format. I translate the technical experts' messages into something customers will easily understand. I and my colleagues create websites, product instructions, forms, signs and warnings, "how-tos", software help, and all sorts of other things. You see examples of our work online and in print many times every day.
  • I condense complex subjects into comprehensible information that people can use - to understand, to manage, to act.
  • I describe what people need to know, in a format they can readily access and understand.
  • I do good. I offer help to the neophytes and the confused. With my assistance, they are transformed into experts and power users.
  • I condense complex technical and legislative subjects into more digestible sets of information, focusing on what people need to know and when they need to know it, so they can perform a task correctly, have the right effect, and at the right time.
  • I work with businesses who have a ton of useful information but their employees and customers can’t find or access it. I help make that information easy to find, easy to read, and easy to act on. This helps the companies become more efficient and effective and keeps their customers happier.
  • I research, write and produce technical documentation that helps people understand and use our software products.

Hopefully we’ve inspired you to come up with your own party pitch for the next time you’re asked ‘What do you do?’. Remember, you don’t have to do this "off the cuff". You can do what you do best - write. Lovingly craft the perfect paragraph that explains what you do and how it helps now, and simply recite it like a pro when prompted.

Got a successful tech comm party pitch story? Tell us about it at comms@techcomm.nz.