Aaron K. Redshaw

Experience is King

As I said in the last post, How to get a job in technical writing,  there are two main obstacles that you have to overcome to get into technical writing.

1. Experience is king.

2. Technical skills trump writing skills.

Before I go into each solution in detail, I want to give you an idea of how problematic these obstacles are. I had a number of phone interviews that began and ended with the phrase, “How many years of experience do you have as a technical writer.” Unwilling to lie, I told them I had worked with a startup some, and then tried to point them to my skills, as well as my extensive portfolio. I had the mistaken idea that if they knew what I could do, years of experience would be less of an issue.

I couldn’t be more wrong. Most interviewers would not be dissuaded by any list of skills or accomplishments. They only wanted to know how many years of experience I had as a technical writer.

I want you to notice the wording here. They often used that exact phrase. They didn’t just ask me how much experience I had, but how many years of experience. I learned that until I had at least one year under my belt, I had no satisfactory answer to give.

The worst case in point was when I had gone through four interviews for one company. I met with the current technical writers, took a writing test, which I passed. They asked me some technical questions, which I also passed. It seemed they thought highly of me because they passed me on to the hiring manager. So far, so good. The manager was the guy who could actually make an offer, so I thought I had a good chance.

From the moment we started it was clear he had not read my resume because he never asked me about anything on the resume. He also never referred to my online portfolio. Immediately he asked, “How many years of experience do you have as a technical writer?” I told him about my experience with the start up, but that it was never full-time. From that point on, the interview was essentially over.

I know I’ve painted a bleak picture here. One that has been confirmed by other technical writer colleagues I’ve talked to. But just because it is hard does not mean it is impossible, and I did eventually get a job from someone who valued my skills and the experience I was able to gain. Here are some practical ways you can gain experience.

Help out a startup. Even if there is no pay involved, getting some experience this way can change everything. My little expense writing a white paper for my friend’s startup got me into a number of interviews. And you’d better believe I listed that on my resume and on LinkedIn. One good place to search for startups is through AngelList. They specialize in startups and recruiting for startups.

Volunteer. This is similar to the startup idea. Often charities cannot afford for someone to rewrite their employee manuals or technical manuals like how to install and use certain kinds of software. Often this can be geared towards new employees. Offering to learn about, and then create, a step-by-step guide for new employees might be a real help. You could do this for an animal shelter, church, public radio station, or relief organization. Keep in mind, you want to help with something technical enough that it will be similar to jobs you might apply for.

Find an internship. This mostly applies for those of you who are getting a degree in technical writing. If that’s you, an internship is a great way to go. Many companies offer them for recent gradates or those still in a college program for technical writing.

Contribute to an open source project. This may be very difficult or almost impossible. In fact, I hesitate to add it at all. Logging into GitHub and contributing to anything in a meaningful way is very difficult. The existing documentation is often so poor that it is hard to find a foothold to get a start. Other contributors might not reply to you if you ask questions. When they do reply, they often want you to read the code like a programmer and make sense of it yourself. It might take months to get a handle on what is going on at all. Now, if you have such expertise or experience to do this successfully, then this might really work out for you. There are innumerable projects that need documentation and they would welcome the help. But for most, this is a path to the most frustration with the least to show for it.

Another time, I will discuss creating your own work samples that could land you a job. But that will be when I talk about portfolios. For now, consider getting some experience with a startup or nonprofit. If you have the skills or experience to tackle an open source project, then go ahead with that route.

If you have any other ideas for getting experience in technical writing, feel free to leave a comment.