2 - JOB DESCRIPTION

As a student involved in the entrepreneurship community at USC, I don’t think it’s a surprise that I always find myself working at a startup, regardless of whether I’m in school or on break. Currently, I’m working as a Technology Innovation Fellow at a company called Identity Review, and have been working there since August.

You might be wondering what kind of company Identity Review is, considering that identity and reviews can be related to a lot of different things--branding and marketing, restaurant reviews, social media, and more. Believe it or not, Identity Review is actually a startup in the digital identity space, which deals with Big Data and the data economy, cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, encryption, biometrics, and more. 


What I do as a Tech Innovation Fellow can be broken down into two key categories:


  • Journalism

  • Design


I’ll expand on these roles with examples of work I’ve done in the past few months.


Journalism

The majority of the work that I do for Identity Review falls under the journalism category. Here are the main tasks that I do regularly as a journalist:


  • Write articles and reports

  • Research and Outreach

  • SEO and Social media syndication


Let’s take a look at my process for completing my journalism task that was due on Tuesday this week:


First, I go into the company’s content pipeline, which is updated weekly with article assignments and a related press release for each topic. This time, my job was to write an article about Equifax acquiring Kount Identity for $640M. After reading the official press release from Kount’s website, I shot a quick email to the Kount press contact about one question I had about the news--how did this acquisition reshape Kount’s vision for the future of the industry?


In the meantime, while I waited for a reply, I began to write and conduct further research at the same time. This meant that I looked up other news articles written about the acquisition, read up on Kount and Equifax’s major products, services, and solutions, and figured out who was on each company’s leadership team. I was lucky to get a reply to my question relatively quickly, so I just inserted the quote I was given into my article and wrapped up my draft.


Before submitting my draft for editing, I had to make sure to backlink to other articles from Identity Review and credible outside sources, and write a few tweets mentioning the companies and any major figures to help with SEO and help give my article more visibility. Then, it went off to my editor, and then was posted online by the next week. (If you’re curious, you can read my article here)!


Design

Since the fellowship program at my company is small, each intern is allowed to take on projects based on any special interest areas they have. For me, this meant taking on tasks in design. My design tasks include the following:


  • Designing article headers and templates

  • Creating infographics and cards with Identity Review branding

  • Improving the UX of the website


These tasks are all relatively straightforward in their processes, thanks to the company’s previous graphic designer who created the company’s visual identity and branding guidelines. So, I don’t have to make any hard decisions about the general style of the designs and what colors to use and am always confident that my designs won’t clash with the company’s visual identity.


In terms of headers and templates, every article requires an article header image. Making these can entail overlaying graphics on edited copyright-free images, creating custom icons and designs in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and collaging together all of the above to make aesthetically pleasing designs.


Creating infographics and cards simply requires taking important statistics, figures, and data from the research the company conducts and using Identity Review’s branding guidelines to make them both pretty and cohesive with the rest of the company’s content. I typically use Adobe Illustrator and Figma to create these.


Working on UX is something new I’ve taken on, and I haven’t done much work in that area for Identity Review yet. However, my main goals are to improve and continue building out the website, squash any bugs in the browsing experience, and maybe even revamp the visual design of some pages to create a more attention-grabbing experience for site visitors.

Comments

  1. Maddie PinkJanuary 31, 2021 at 2:44 PM

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  2. Maddie PinkJanuary 31, 2021 at 2:45 PM

    Hi Serena - It's super cool that you've done a ton of startup work, and I enjoyed learning more about what you are currently doing at Identity Review. Your post is really well laid out and you do a good job thoroughly explaining each aspect of your role. In terms of further editing your job description, I would suggest adding more sentence (length) variation and going into more depth on terms like entrepreneurship and what being a Technology Innovation Fellow means.

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 31, 2021 at 8:31 PM

    Hi Serena! Very interesting and easy to read description of your responsibilities at Identity Review. It's cool that you're so passionate about entrepreneurship! A couple suggestions: as Maddie pointed out, I would make sure to add some shorter sentences to complement the longer ones, and I would also define SEO and UX for readers who do not know the industry jargon. Also, be sure to include your readability statistics at the bottom of your description. -Andrew Piazza

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  4. Eileen TakJanuary 31, 2021 at 8:32 PM

    Hey Serena, thanks for sharing! I really enjoyed getting to learn more about what you do as a Technology Innovation Fellow at Identity Review. I think working at start-up companies is so great because you really get to be hands-on at work, and you get to learn a lot about the business. Your writing is very organized, and I think overall it is very easy to read. Great job! (p.s. I checked out your article, and it's great!)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Tom ZhouJanuary 31, 2021 at 9:08 PM

    Hi Serena.
    Thanks for sharing about the your job, it sounds very interesting. I would like to hear more about it when you have the time. It is evident in your writing that you are very passionate about the start up and the industry. Your writing is very organized and methodical, making it very straight forward to read. It would be even better if you are able to condense some of your paragraphs and change the vocabulary a bit.

    ReplyDelete

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