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> I need advice badly. First, some background. I was received a
> medical discharge from the Navy in 1976. From 1976 to 1992 I
> was on medical VA Disability. From 1992 to 1994, I was in a
> rehabilitation program that changed my life. As a result, in
> 1994, I enrolled in college in order to better myself, which
> I did with an English degree. I had always enjoyed writing,
> so it seemed like an English degree was appropriate for me. I
> had dropped out of high school in 10th grade to join the
> service, so graduating from college was no small feat. I
> graduated with a 3.45 GPA.
>
> When I graduated in 1998, I married, began a family, bought a
> house and became a regular guy. It was very difficult for me
> to land an entry-level job at my age, even with an employment
> specialist helping me. The problem is that I have no work
> experience due to my years of medical problems, which were
> resolved in rehab.
What kind of technical communication do you want to do? What industry do you
want to work in? Software? Manufacturing? Something else?
Do you have a Web site and samples of your work that you can post?
I was about your age when I came into technical writing/editing, and through
my school I got an internship at a software company. If your school can't
help in that regard, perhaps you could propose an internship to companies in
your area that you'd like to work for. That would allow a company to pay you
a lower rate and give you an opportunity to gain experience and make
contacts. Within three years of my $20/hr internship, I was offered a job by
another company at a mid-level technical writer's salary, a $19,000 yearly
increase. (Now, of course, I am freelancing because I was laid off along
with a third of the company I went to work for, but that's another story.)
If you can provide examples on your Web site of the work you have done as a
student, that would be a great help to you. Also, if you can produce
additional items to post online for prospective employers to view, that
would help. If you want to do software documentation, take a knotty feature
in a popular program that isn't well-documented in the software and write a
new explanation. I did that for something in Windows XP and it's one of the
more popular pages on my site. People who want to silence their modems and
can't get any decent information about how to do in the operating system,
type "modem sound turn off" or the like in Google and find my page. How many
employers find it is another question, but I have other things online that
have brought me work.
You really need more than just to post your resume on job sites. You need
your own Web site, and you need to sign all e-mail you send with the
address.
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