What Skills Have You Developed by Working at the Writing Center?

Every winter and spring quarter in what I’ve dubbed “internship application season,” I’ve found myself writing and rewriting my resume and thinking about how to best talk about every job I’ve held during school. Given that I’ve worked at the Writing Center for the last two and half years in a variety of roles (peer tutor, receptionist, mentor), many of these rewriting and thinking sessions were focused on how to write and talk about my Writing Center work for positions that weren’t directly related to it. After spending what feels like far too many hours alternating between rewording resumes and preparing for interviews, I was hit with two questions:

1. Am I leaving out any important skills I’ve developed during my time here?
2. How are my coworkers talking about their Writing Center experiences?

To tackle this question, I had current Writing Center tutors fill out a survey of skills they’ve developed from working here. Here are the most commonly cited skills that Writing Center tutors said working here has helped them develop that you might consider using when writing your next resume or preparing for your next interview.

Hard skills refer to technical, measurable skills that you can be directly taught or tested on. For example, being able to do long division is a hard skill: you can either do it or you can’t, and it’s entirely possible for someone to directly teach you this skill. Another type of hard skill is fluency in a foreign language where it’s not difficult to test whether you actually know another language or not. 

The most frequently listed hard skill by Writing Center tutors was knowledge and proficiency in various citation styles. To anyone who works here, this probably doesn’t come as a surprise given that we work with writers from a variety of majors who often have questions about formatting in-text citations and bibliographies. While the jobs you’re applying for might not require in-depth knowledge of APA formatting, having a list of the various citation styles you’ve worked with might help you describe the breadth and variety of the types of writing that Writing Center tutors look at if asked to describe this role.

The second most frequently cited hard skill was proficiency with various software and platforms such as Zoom, Notion, Airtable, Slack, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Outlook. While proficiency with some of these platforms is developed just by working as a peer tutor in any capacity here (such as Slack and Microsoft Word), comfortability using other platforms was listed as being developed through specific Writing Center roles. For example, Microsoft Outlook and Airtable proficiency was often cited as being developed through working as a receptionist. 

I’ve seen internship applications ask for proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite, Notion, and Slack, so these are definitely skills that can be applied outside of the Writing Center. Consider adding them to the “skills” section of your resume!

Having the chance to develop these additional skills is also a reason to pursue new positions at the Writing Center (such as by joining a team, becoming a mentor, or applying for a leadership role)!

Soft skills refer to skills about how you work and how you interact with others. They’re skills that are often transferable between fields because they’re not tied to doing a specific type of task. Some examples of soft skills include communication, time management, and being able to work independently and remotely. If you’re looking to apply for roles that are very different from your work at the Writing Center, emphasizing the soft skills you’ve developed during your time here might be an approach you take.

The most common response for soft skills tutors have developed during their time here was communication. This is another skill that probably doesn’t come as a surprise given that our jobs involve constantly communicating feedback to writers; however, you may not have thought of the various modalities in which you’ve learned to communicate effectively that you’ve developed at the Writing Center. Tutors listed being able to communicate feedback well in person, over video call, and through written comments, reflecting the three modalities of appointments we offer. Additionally, people who’ve worked as receptionists listed developing communication skills over email, phone calls, and live chat. Thinking about the various ways your communication skills have improved while working here might be a way to give more detail when you say that working at the Writing Center allowed you to develop communication skills.

Another soft skill that many tutors listed was time management. Tutors said that this was specifically surrounding appointments because we’re expected to get through a certain number of pages every 30 minutes. Being able to keep an eye on the clock when you’re powering through a two-hour written feedback teaches you to make decisions about how to most effectively use your time which is a skill that can transfer to most other professions.

Especially because working from home or in a hybrid environment has become more common, being able to show experience successfully working remotely has become an increasingly valuable skill. Tutors who’ve chosen to work remotely on some shifts can cite their time at the Writing Center as giving them experience working independently and remotely while still having to meet deadlines.

Another soft skill that many tutors cited was being able to balance and prioritize between multiple tasks. This skill is often required in appointments with writers when we spot more than three agenda items that we could point out but need to prioritize for the sake of time and not overwhelming the writer. However, anyone who has worked a reception shift when there are multiple written feedbacks you need to send, a writer in the chat, and a phone call coming in all at the same time knows that being a receptionist also requires you to prioritize. 

Working at the Writing Center has allowed many tutors to develop both hard and soft skills that are applicable to a variety of roles. Thinking about the software you’ve become proficient in, the various modalities in which you’ve learned to communicate effectively, and examples of how you’ve demonstrated the soft skills you’ve developed can be a way to buff up your resume or elaborate on your Writing Center work in an interview. I hope that this blog post got you to think about a skill you’ve developed at the Writing Center but hadn’t been writing or talking about when applying for other roles!