By Jane Stilwell © 2004
TECHNICAL WRITING:
FIRST JOB FOR THE DEGREED OR
STEP UP FOR THE PROOFREADER OR TECH.
YOU ARE THERE to observe,
inquire (ask questions and listen to the answers), hear what is wanted, get a
feeling for detail and deadlines, smell the coffee and taste the Energy bars of
productivity in the air!
Ideally, you should be a Tech with some
English classes (especially technical writing English) or an English or
journalism major with the ability to visualize and no fear of the tech world
(you are there to bridge the gap, or communicate between the technical and the
nontech user, whether that means the customer or the assembler).
Know several Word Processing/Publishing
programs, such as MS Word, WordPerfect, FrameMaker, and learn some auxiliary
programs, like PowerPoint, ACCESS, Excel, FrontPage, and RoboHelp (use their
free Tutorial for 2 weeks). They don’t make anyone a Tech Writer, but they make
being a Technical Writer a lot easier, and they make your Technical Writer job
look great!.
Know.some HTML, XML, (look for these key
words in Google:
About.com HTML, XML …..takes you to http://webdesign.about.com/)
You will find a free mini-course on coding and
tags for your website.
If the job calls for JAVA, and you know
some, all the better. Find out what is asked for on the jobs you think are the
most interesting. Foreign languages are a plus. Knowing several programs makes
you flexible if you are asked to learn another one. Living in an area where
there is work is necessary, or willingness to relocate.
“I AM A WRITER.” If you qualify so
far, within Four Weeks you should have your resume out there working for you.
You are calling yourself a Technical Writer, and you are one, because you have
the training, and some samples you have created in your portfolio. If you are
starting from scratch, it will take longer, but you can do it. (Say to yourself
“I AM A TECHNICAL WRITER” and become one.) Get a job with the company you want
to work for, start getting the education you need, include some programming
languages, like JAVA. Look at the Technical Writer job descriptions on the
search engines, and start applying for them.
IT’S EASY. In other words,
any degree, even an A.A. or A.S. as long as you have some Technical or
Math/Science, and some English classes. Technical writing is even easier if you
have a B.A. or B.S. degree that
includes some of both. And if you are also a Science Fiction reader and writer,
you are a sure thing. Become a Technical Writer, a Technical Documentation
Writer. Now that I have made it sound like a con job, let me tell you that I am
quite serious.
SOME RULES. There are some
stipulations. You have to live in an area of the country where there is a
demand for Tech Writers, or be willing to relocate. I can also suggest
telecommuting and freelance Technical Writing, but that may be more difficult
without some onsite experience first. We are in a down economy but there are
jobs. You need to be especially good. Using a Proposal resume would be
impressive. A Proposal resume shows accomplishments, not just how many hours a
week you spent following directions. You may even want to travel to other
countries. There are job shops/employment agencies just for that.
Not to worry, below are links to career
Technical Writing jobs, which you can use to find the most popular areas. I show
websites (more than one!) that will demonstrate where the jobs are and suggest
other and avenues. Here are some links that will start to give you an idea of
where the jobs are:
http://www.titan.com/careers/list.html
http://www.prospring.net/Jobs/jobs.html
This is Yahoo’s CareerBuilder job search
engine, which brings up 100 jobs, more or less, all over the U.S.:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/jobseeker/jobs/jobresults
This is the message I get most of the time
when I narrow it down to Oklahoma City, for instance: Sorry, there were
no jobs posted in the past day which matched your criteria.
PUBLICATIONS: CONTRACT ENGINEERS
WEEKLY is a good service to subscribe to, $20/yr. online, but don’t do it
unless you live in an area with higher demand for Tech Writers and Editors. You
can also join or visit STC (http://stc.org/)to see if they have anything to
offer you, such as meeting in your city, jobs, and elbow-rubbing with other
writers. They can be pricey.
There are lots of search engines, don’t pay
for someone to rewrite your resume, unless you need one, in which case, you
might do better to go to someone local. Be creative, someone else CAN say
better things about you than you can, without lying, and see the best side of
you. My resume was beginning to look kind of bad, because I am not living in a
hot area and needed to account for a lapse of time. What I am doing about it is
working as a Volunteer Literacy Tutor and practicing website building skills.
It looks good on my resume, I am learning things about the language that I
didn’t know I was already using, and I am doing something worthwhile that
people admire. That might not be right for you, but find something to put on
your resume that looks more like writing and editing than what you are doing
that you want to change.
IT WAS A DARK AND
STORMY NIGHT (from
the much-used line in the Bulwer-Lytton contest, and plagiarized frequently by
Snoopy in his efforts to be a creative writer). Next, put aside all of your
illusions about not knowing how to write. My first job was QA Tech Writer for
an aerospace company. They handed me 40 pounds of paper, and said, “We want you
to be our Technical Writer, but don’t change anything, we have a contract based
on this.”
I swear to God, I am not lying. For you
proofreaders with degrees, it is a piece of cake, the only difference in many
cases is that you have more authority.
But, ask yourself, does this company have a
contract that requires them to have a Technical Writer? (There are more
interesting jobs than the ones that are just for proofreaders with a company
that has a contract that says they have to have a Technical Writer.)
SOFTWARE
DOCUMENTATION: It is not always going to be that easy. I have been booted
out of every software documentation job I have started, because they knew
nothing (that’s why they hired me!) and when they found out they had to give me
information to get anything back, they backtracked very fast.
(I wanted the information, so I could learn
software documentation! How hard can it be to interview the programmer and ask
him/her what each step requires the toll station operator or the clerk in the
7-11 or the HMO, or the assembler in the shop to do???) I have put out some
feelers, and this happens a lot. It is a good idea to learn a little
programming if this is the kind of work you want. Programmers and Software
Documenters are a mysterious breed: no one can do what they do, so they can
write their own ticket on what they do and what they charge. (Look up technical
writer salary for what you can make.)
There may be some hope, however. I am going to find some training material and examples, so that we can have the same kind of detail and step by step, cookie cutter, quality controlled software documentation samples. So
*e jobs will have you drooling, and they will require
some software documentation. Have some idea how to do that. Get some examples,
do some exercises.
ASK WHAT THE CONDITIONS ARE. At most Tech Writing jobs, typically they know that they need to specify software and environment ahead of time, and give you the software and the information to work with. They do not expect you to be a creative writer and pull a miracle out of thin air. I have found myself located in the middle of a very busy assembly floor (where my computer crashed on me three times before they decided that someone was using it at night, or the electronics was interfering and causing it to crash). I know other people who found themselves in the middle of a very cold manufacturing shop, expected to work with blue fingers. ASK AHEAD OF TIME WHERE YOU WILL BE WORKING, ASK TO SEE IT!
At this point, I'm getting really curious to get to know you a little bit. I've got about 8 more pages of really useful tips and examples here on this website. But, I would like you to introduce yourself, so that I feel like I'm not just getting lost here on the very big world wide web. If I hear from enough of you I might just have to expand on this website. :-) I may also come across other very useful information for you! So, to let you know about it, I need your name and email address. Don't worry. I'm not about to spam you or share your email address with a third party and there is a unsubscribe link at the bottom of anything I send you. Here is my Privacy Policy, if you are interested.
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