Aaron K. Redshaw

The importance of humility

When trying to get a job in technical writing, or even once you have one, humility can serve you well. Sometimes humility is learned the hard way, by running into a wall, or being turned down a few dozen times. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait for that to happen to learn humility. Here are some thoughts I have about its importance in your job search.

I don’t know what I don’t know

Here’s the thing. I think I’m pretty smart. I’ve learned some things trying to get into technical writing, and on the job. Sometimes I think I’ve arrived. But that’s not true at all. I know what I know. But I also don’t know what I don’t know. You can take a look at the comment at the end of my blog on What kind of technical writing job should I get into? and see that some of my assumptions were incorrect, at least for other locations. While it may be hard to hear that, it helps me to grow. The truth is my knowledge was incomplete. Someone else knew something I didn’t know.

It’s good to keep that in mind when trying to get into technical writing. It’s always hard to get rejections from companies. However, if they send something besides a form letter, it may really help to hear what they thought you needed to learn. Other than more experience, add any skills they mention to your list. Then learn those next.

There are people around me that know more than I do

I worked with a lot of people in other jobs before I got to technical writing. I remember when I was a high school English teacher. One teenage girl in my class was the most talented writer I had ever seen. In fact I had to admit to myself that she was a much better writer than I was. She had command of the English language to such an extent that I finally told her she could probably make it professionally if she wanted to pursue writing as a career. She had other plans though.

This carried into when I got into technical writing. When I was a temp at Google, I learned that one of their values was that their employees should be humble. I appreciated this, because it would be easy to have a big head from working at one of the top tech companies in the world. 

If you are trying to get into technical writing, be a sponge. Surround yourself with technical writers, or experts on the subjects you’re studying. I joined the Society for Technical Communication (STC) to learn from other technical writers, as well as to hear about any open positions they knew about. Each meeting I attended, I came back having learned aspects of the job I hadn’t known about previously. I also heard about good and bad companies, and what I should even look for when checking out a company. Surrounding myself with people who knew what I didn’t know made a huge difference.

At the same time, I read a great deal from Tom Johnson’s blog, got lots of tips from Andrew Davis and Paul Gustafson (recruiters from two different companies), read lots of reddit posts, and listened to Write the Docs podcasts. 

There’s so much I don’t know yet

The list of what I don’t know stretches far beyond the list of what I do know. This will always be true. I can always learn more. Even from the complete newbie. I have had new hires where I work come up with ideas that I’d never thought of. If I would have stopped listening because they were new to the industry, I would have really missed out on learning something new.

The moment I think I have nothing new to learn, I begin to shrivel up in my career. This is especially true in a job such as technical writing. 

An interesting thing about some kinds of sharks is that they get water into their gills to breathe by swimming. They don’t even sleep, because if they did, they would suffocate. This is like a technical writer, or to be more broad, a human being. We begin to die the moment we stop learning, and all learning requires a degree of humility.

The same holds when trying to get a first job in technical writing. When I was training myself to become a technical writer I would learn one skill, demonstrate what I learned by writing a portfolio item using that skill, and add it to my skills on LinkedIn and my resume. Then I’d go to the next skill. Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. Or as Dory would say, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

It’s not all about me

When I was trying to find a technical writing job, it seemed like my world got pretty small. I was consumed with my struggle to get a job. It wasn’t a bad thing for me to be focused, since I was the main breadwinner in our family. But at times I had to pull back enough to consider that I had a family, and I had friends. They had struggles, emotions, and whole other lives outside of my small world. Spending time with my wife, doing something fun with my kids, going to an STC meeting, or church event, were all important parts of my life. It was an act of humility to consider others when I was so focused on my own goals, but it gave me a better perspective on life, and made me feel better in the process. Because, in the end, when I got the job, I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to share my joy with the others around me. In order to do that, I needed to invite them in throughout the whole journey.

I worked hard, I prayed hard

Not everyone is religious, but I am. I worked really hard when I was trying to get into technical writing. You can read about how I went about it on other posts in my blog. Besides working hard, I also prayed hard. My Christian faith is central to my life, so I prayed, as well as had a lot of others praying for me. It was a daily thing.

Humility, for me, was to realize that, while I could work really hard at this, only God could make it happen. And he did. That’s my testimony. Just like I couldn’t save myself, Jesus did that, I couldn’t make an employer want to hire me. I certainly wasn’t lazy, but the God I prayed to made a way for me, and I thank him for it.