Posts about “Employment”
To be working on a project that is. At least it feels that way considering most writing projects I’ve been involved in are over after a hair-pulling night of throwing words onto a page or two. Project timelines are a bit more distended in the technical writing world. But, anyway, enough kerfuffle. What I’d like to present to you is the best business phone ever.
Yes, it’s the phone system I’ve been writing those 400-page Internal Product Specifications for.
You may as well recycle those newspaper classifieds, because that old school job-finding tool belongs in the 20th century. Spurred on by the recession, a number of tech-savvy people have started blogging on various “new school” ways of getting a job. Tech evangelist Robert Scoble has some crafty tips. I tend to agree with him when he says your blog is your résumé. After all, google my name and this blog is the first search result (and if you are a hiring manager, then please note my correct formatting of the word résumé!
The first entry of 2009! Granted, this isn’t the most updated blog in the world, but I’ve managed to keep wordbit going for around two years now, which is not bad. I recently tried to find the oldest blog in the world, and this site claims to have been blogging since 1987. But that’s just their opinion - blogs in their modern incarnation haven’t been around for more than about 10 years.
If you’re more concerned with your company culture than the size of your pay cheque, your might be interested in this Vancouver start-up. Jiibe is a user-generated service that matches your value system to a compatible company based on a questionnaire you fill out.
I can see this site being really useful to young Millennials who care a great deal about the softer aspects of job satisfaction and are in a process of self-discovery.
In this rocky economic climate, marketing yourself has never been more crucial if you want to survive the inevitable cutbacks. When it comes to technical writing, it’s a useful exercise to understand and appreciate what companies look for in a writer.
Lyndsey Amott, in an article on her website, stresses that industry knowledge should not be a primary deciding factor when mulling over suitable candidates. Her top three must-haves are:
It’s been about four months since my classmates and I graduated from the Print Futures Professional Writing Program. If you’re serious about your craft and are thinking of attending this two-year diploma program, I heartily encourage you to go for it. I love to write and I love getting paid to do it even more. But don’t kid yourself - writing well works up a mental sweat for every writer, whether oozing with talent or not.
I thought it was high time for an update on the first two weeks of my contract. As I alluded to previously, the project I’m working on right now involves the design of a new phone. It’s a complex system with many components, and is rather hush-hush at the moment so I can’t really elaborate on it. Thus far, much of the system behaviour has been decided upon verbally, which is where I come in.
I’ve just signed a 6-month contract with Vtech to work as a technical writer in their engineering department! As you probably know, Vtech primarily designs and manufactures cordless phones as well as other wireless devices.
The company usually outsources their documentation to the States. Presently, however, they’re developing a completely new product line (sorry, I can’t say what it is) and need a writer in-house. This is a new position, so the challenge for me will be in ensuring that I get the information I need from the engineers without taking too much time away from their primary tasks.
So, you’ve managed to land an interview. Congratulations! Time to prepare by going through possible interview questions and practicing in front of a mirror. Make sure you’ve done your research on the company and have some intelligent questions to ask them too.
Now what do you say once you’re sitting in the hot seat? Here are my top five tips for acing that tech-writing job interview:
Tell your potential employer that even though you don’t know everything about their widgets right now, you love learning new things.
I mentioned in part one of this series that 80% of jobs can only be found in that elusive place called “the hidden job market.” About 20% of those gigs can be gotten through employment services, cold calling, and other tactics, such as information interviews. But the other 60% are landed through referrals. That makes networking your only way to access a big chunk of the job market.
So how do you rustle up some contacts in Vancouver, a city that has a reputation for being a tad on the chilly side?
I’ve officially uploaded the latest version of my ePortolio - you can check it out here.
This website uses some flash elements and some fancy css coding and is basically geared towards technical writing employers as a way to showcase my work. I may expand it in the future to include other samples too.
For those who are interested, I designed it in Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Photoshop. I used FlashSpring Pro 2 to convert a Powerpoint to flash.
I’m going to start a series on finding a tech-writing job specifically in the high-tech hub of Vancouver, BC (which is where I happen to live). As I started the job search process myself, I noticed a dearth of information on this topic. I hope I can dig up some useful info for those in a similar position - eventually I’ll port this stuff over to my resources page.
So, without further ado, here is part 1, which will focus on job search engines.