Digital Workplace Experience Engineers

You can obtain a basic understanding of the work of DWEEs by evaluating the technology setup at your home. Are your computers, scanners, and other home technologies easy to use, or could they be improved? Is your Internet slow? Do print jobs seem to take forever? What other technical issues make it hard to do your homework, write reports, print or scan documents, or conduct Web research? Create a list of issues and work with your parents to try to improve your technology user experiences.

Talk with DWEEs about their educational backgrounds and careers via information interviews, which can be conducted in-person, by e-mail, on the phone, or via online video communication platforms. Suggested interview questions include: What made you want to enter this career? What do you like most and least about your job? How did you train for this field? What advice would you give to young people about preparing for the field and being successful on the job? How will advances in technology change the field? In addition, perhaps you could even job shadow an engineer.

Learn as much as you can about information technology by joining your school’s computer club, attending summer IT exploration programs at colleges and universities, and participating in software development and computer engineering competitions.

Join the Technology Student Association, which provides students with a chance to explore career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, enter academic competitions (including one on Technology Problem Solving), and participate in summer exploration programs. Visit https://tsaweb.org for more information. SkillsUSA (https://www.skillsusa.org) is another youth membership organization that offers competitions.

Some professional organizations have membership categories for students. For example, the Association for Computing Machinery offers membership for high school and college students. Members receive Communications of the ACM and XRDS (the organization’s magazine for students) and other resources.

Check out ACM Career News (https://www.acm.org/articles/careernews), the CompTIA IT Career Center (https://www.comptia.org/resources/it-career-center), and the CompTIA blog (https://www.comptia.org/blog) to learn about industry trends and career development topics.