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Hi Megan,
Don't despair, there are kind souls out there that are willing to give a
fresh faced college student a try. I've only been working for a year,
hired right out of college, with only classroom experience, too. I was
thrown into the fire because I was the only tech writer at my present
job trying to maintain three five-hundred page manuals, keep up with
updates to the product, and learn the chemical engineering field
terminology! No copying for me.
I do know how you feel though without the required computer skills. But
all the programs that employers ask for today, MS Word, FrameMaker,
Acrobat, etc, I learned on-the-job. I only had a smattering of Macintosh
skills when I was hired. Now I am writing for a complex, client/server
database product.
I consider myself lucky that I found this job. It was only the second
job I applied for out of college and the only interview I went on. So
sometimes you do luck out.
>----------
>From: Megan Elizabeth Mc Macken[SMTP:S1057984 -at- CEDARNET -dot- CEDARVILLE -dot- EDU]
>Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 1996 2:17 PM
>To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
>Subject: entry-level positions
>Greetings! I'm a college senior who will soon begin my quest for The
>Perfect First Technical Writing Job (tm). So far I have only seen
>one entry-level job advertised, and that was in an online job
>database. Everyone else is asking for two to five years of
>experience, often with software we don't run on our network.
>Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a tech writing internship this
>summer like several of my classmates did. My internship has amounted
>to designing and creating a home page for our student chapter of the
>STC and a home page for my college's English department. I wouldn't
>say that that has been a very practical or realistic experience, but
>it's been fun and I've learned a lot of HTML.
>So, I'll graduate with no writing experience beyond what I've gotten
>from class assignments. What did the rest of you do when you found
>yourselves in this position after finishing a technical writing
>program of some sort? Did you end up standing at a copy machine day
>after day, or did some kind soul hire you and help you get into the
>technical writing groove by trusting you with real writing
>assignments? What kinds of entry-level responsibilities did you end
>up with?
>--Megan McMacken
>*********************************************************************
>Megan E. McMacken, technical writer | http://soncrest.giant.net/megan
>"The more the words, the less the mean, and how does that profit
>anyone?" --Ecclesiastes 6:11
