Breaking In

[Ned Bedinger]

Harry Husted wrote:
> I have worked as a writer for years. I only worked as a technical 
> writer for a very brief time (about one year out of nearly 20). I see 
> ads for technical writers all the time but each job I see listed 
> states you must have experience with the program or application they 
> are using.
>
> How can i break into the technical writing field if every job lead 
> specifies you must have experience with the program or system they are 
> using?
>
> Should I focus my technical writing on nontechnical writing areas?
>
> Any advice?
>
> Thanks.
>

Hi Harry--

Any employer worth their salt will be able to look at your samples of 20 
years and see whether or not you've got the stuff to analyze 
documentation problems and write readable instructions. Likewise, if you 
have ANY writing tool experience, the basic skills will transfer to most 
common writing tools. MS Word is far and away the most common tool 
provided to tech writers by employers. If you feel like it would be a 
hard sell to claim that you can ramp up quickly on tools, then set up a 
few job search agents and start winnowing the opportunities for whatever 
tools you know. They're all represented, even DTP.

There must be some merit in the ubiquitous advice about learning a tool 
and creating samples, but the oleaginousness of that approach is no 
substitute for greasing the wheels. The real thing you've got to 
overcome in order to get on the tech writing road is, in a word, risk 
aversion. There is nothing reassuring, to an employer or recruiter, 
about a sample you wrote at home for no one in particular. You, and the 
recruiter who recommends you based on such evidence, and the manager who 
hires you based on such, will risk being thrown under the bus if you 
don't work out on the job. This is the real sticking point that you need 
to handle in order to get work. You're an unknown quantity on the tech 
writing circuit, and as such you pose risks to anyone who gets you 
hired. If you have good work references, that might help mitigate the 
risks by spreading the decision responsibility over more people.

AFAIK, the standard approach to your problem is to strike up 
relationships with recruiters/contract agencies. You might consider 
asking a recruiter for an appointment to visit their office for a 
discussion. Or you could invite one to meet you for lunch. Even if you 
just do it over the phone, use the time to explain your background and 
circumstances and make it clear that you are serious and (here's the 
hook) will consider opportunities even where the pay is substandard or 
the contract is short-term. IOW, you're willing to take some career risk 
yourself, by agreeing to a few marginal contracts. If the recruiter then 
gives you the lizard eyes, or says "I'm not feeling anything, Harry," 
then you might need to up the voltage a little more. In that case, you 
might suggest that they probably get orders that they can't fill from 
their stable of cherry-picking tech-writing highliners, and you, by 
happy coincidence, currently consider yourself available for just about 
any tech writing assignment.

Don't do this if you're thin-skinned, because a shocking number of tech 
writing jobs do deserve to go unfilled. But if you're determined to 
break in and be a tech writer, and you're willing to pay those dues to 
recruiters and employers (and probably a few professional-sounding 
organizations, too, if you're status-concious), then by all means go for 
it. One way or another, the experience will probably stoke the fires 
that make you want to be a writer.

Hope this helps,


Ned Bedinger
doc at edwordsmith.com