I'd Rather Be Writing » jobs

How to Become a Content Strategist [Collaborative Post]

Tom Johnson — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:42:33 +0000

I received the following question from a reader. If you would like to respond, please add your response in the comments below.

I’m a college senior graduating this May with my degree in Technical Communication. Do you have any tips for an aspiring content strategist? What skills or knowledge set would I need to have to pursue a career in content strategy? I know that as technical communicators, we already possess a lot of the soft skills for it (e.g. a knack for understanding what the audience needs). But would it be helpful to have, say, web developing and programming skills?

Since I haven’t made a transition from tech comm to content strategy, I can hardly outline the path. But I can still tell you my thoughts. If you want to be a content strategist, you need to do what content strategists do. In Erin Kissane’s book on The Elements of Content Strategy, she lists many of the deliverables that content strategists produce: “accessibility guidelines, benchmarks, channel strategy, CMS requirements, communication plans, community and social strategy, community moderation policies, competitive analyses, content production workshops, content sourcing plans, content style guides, content templates, editorial calendars, example content, feature descriptions, gap analyses, metadata recommendations, project proposals, publishing workflow, qualitative content audit and findings, quantitative content audit and findings, resource review (people, tools, time), search-engine optimization reviews, success metrics, taxonomies, traffic analysis, usability tests, user personas, user research findings, user research plans, user scenarios, visual presentation recommendations, wireframes, workflow recommendations” (41-42).

If you want to do content strategy, simply do content strategy. It’s that simple. You probably won’t be able to land a full-fledged content strategy job right out of college. You may slowly transition into it from technical communication, editing, information science, marketing, or web design. But if you begin to incorporate the content strategist’s deliverables into your work, eventually that road will start to unfold and your momentum will increase toward that direction. Eventually, when you’ve gathered enough experience and background doing content strategy, you’ll be able to land a job with the official content strategist title. But you don’t have to wait until you have that title to do content strategy.

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My Comments on “Best Careers 2011: Technical Writer – US News and World Report”

Tom Johnson — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:51:42 +0000

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Best Careers 2011: Technical Writer – US News and World Report.

It doesn’t amaze me that technical writer is listed in the top 50 careers. Technical writer appeared as a top 50 career in 2006 and 2009 in CNN Money. Each year there’s a lot of controversy about the description, but this year, some things are especially intriguing.

US News and World Report says as a technical writer, “you’d work with computers and electronic publishing software, including graphic design, page layout, and multimedia software.” The writer then says,

Future employment for technical writers looks bright, especially for those with strong Web and multimedia skills, according to estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Compare the emphasis on web, graphic design, and multimedia skills with trends about structured authoring, XML/DITA, content re-use, and single sourcing, which aren’t mentioned. Why the discrepancy? Internal to the tech comm field, you might think the main trends are the latter. External, it’s the former.

There’s also no mention of wikis, community, content curation, or user-generated content, even though “Curator” (as in museum curator) is one of the other top jobs in the “Creative and Service” grouping.

Let’s stop and examine that “Creative and Service” grouping for a minute. The article says,

Our picks in the creative and service category this year:

• Commercial pilot

• Curator

• Film and video editor

• Gaming manager

• Heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration technician

• Interpreter/Translator

• Multimedia artist

• Technical writer

If there were ever a what-the-heck moment, here it is. Why are creative and service jobs lumped together? Ask someone what a pilot, curator, heating/AC technician, translator, and technical writer have in common, and I guarantee that you’ll stump the person.

Here’s another interesting idea. The article about the grouping begins,

Not everyone wants to work behind a desk. Lucky, then, that some of the best opportunities don’t require you to sit in the office all day.

Funny, I find that this statement defines the opposite of my job. The less I move, the more productive I am.

Another interesting section of the article addresses the stress factor. In a previous CNN best careers article, technical writing was named one of the top 5 least stressful jobs in the US. Now we read,

Stress level: Moderate to high. Expect to work early mornings, late nights, and weekends to meet deadlines or coordinate with clients in different time zones. These deadline pressures and work hours can often lead to stress, fatigue, and even burnout. Extended time spent in front of computers can lead to eyestrain and back pain.

How do we jump from one of the least stressful jobs to “moderator to high stress”?

My favorite part of the article appears near the end:

Real advice from real people about landing a job as a technical writer:

Until now, reader, you’ve been reading fake advice from fake people. In this section, you get to hear some real content.

Despite the shortcomings of the article, I like the attention on web, multimedia, and graphics. This reinforces my specialization in web (WordPress and Mediawiki), screencasts, and visual graphics. It’s not that structured authoring isn’t important, but in the eyes of the user, maybe not so much.

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Technical Writing Is More Than “Click This, Select That” [Podcast]

Tom Johnson — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:18:14 +0000

Download MP3
Length: 50 min.

This is a presentation I gave at BYU Idaho last week to students interested in entering professional writing. For the accompanying slides, see this post. For the overall question I was trying to tackle, see Students Contemplate Whether a Technical Writing Career Will Be Fulfilling.

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Substandard Wages for Technical Writers: A Growing Trend?

Tom Johnson — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:00:34 +0000

Substandard wages for senior technical writers

This week’s question comes from Mary in New York:

I am a loyal reader of your blog and have gained more from it than all the seminars and continuing ed courses I’ve taken–which cost me a good chunk of my salary.

Recently, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend which I hope you might consider blogging about. I’m an experienced technical writer currently looking for work, and I’ve been contacted by several recruiters. However, the hourly rate the recruiters want to pay me is far below my expectations for senior technical writing positions.

These recruiters want to pay $28/hr for senior technical writing positions. Many of these positions require advanced knowledge of content management systems, experience with many complex technologies such as XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, and more. I invested close to $10,000 over the past 2 years learning DITA and other XML vocabularies. In my life I have invested close to quarter of a million dollars (counting college, graduate school, conferences, and adult education) to get the necessary knowledge and training for these positions.

The salaries I’m being offered are on par with what I pay non-English speaking cleaning persons (I pay 2 sisters, each $25/hr for several hours of work each week). Clearly the recruiter is taking more than half for him or herself. (BTW: When I say recruiter, I also mean companies that represent the “contractor.” These companies hire the “Contractor,” offer no benefits and pay a sub-standard wage, while they collect twice that from the company.)

A recruiter called me today and offered me the sub-standard wage of $22.00/hr for a job that listed the above requirements AND was located in New York City! Six months ago, the wage that recruiters seemed to agree on was $35/hr. Now it is mid-twenties. Why is this happening?

Is it happening because there are writers out there who agree to those wages? Aren’t they doing the rest of us a disservice by doing so? The more recruiters are able to get writers willing to work for such wages, the greedier they get and the lower the salaries go … sometimes by 2 dollars here and 2 dollars there, but in five months it adds up. $35/hr becomes $25/hr … and now this is the first recruiter who has called me with the insulting offer of $22/hr.

I love my work as a technical writer, but I am beginning to see that I would be better off working as a cleaning person. I wouldn’t need to update my skills every 4 months, and I would get paid around the same.

My overall question is this: Do writers who work for sub-standard wages hurt the tech comm industry? If so, what can we do about it? Thanks for any insights you can provide.

I opened this question up to the professional technical writing community for responses. Some responded in a Google doc and others responded in the comments below this post.

In general, the trend among the answers is that writing is becoming a commodity that can be offshored or outsourced for low wages. Technical writers need to expand their skillsets to go beyond writing to add more value to their company. They need to be problem solvers, analytical thinkers, contributing more than just words, but also contributing to social media, user interfaces, content strategy, business analysis, elearning, information architecture, project planning, and more.

Kristi Leach points out that writing alone isn’t valued because so many feel that “no one reads the manual anyway.” As technical communicators go beyond writing and provide more value to the company, their jobs will become more secure and their salaries higher.

Other responses mentioned more contributing factors to the trend of sub-standard wages — the down economy, the principle of supply and demand, the acceptance of ”good enough” standards.

The trend is cyclical. Sub-standard wages attract inexperienced or desperate technical writers. The deliverables they produce may reflect their inexperience or may be the product of bad working conditions that don’t allow for high quality information products. The result is a general perception that manuals, online help, and other technical writing deliverables aren’t worth much. As a result, employers continue to offer low wages for the work, even to experienced technical writers. Low wages will in turn drive experienced technical writers into other fields, such as interaction design or usability. Those who are left (the outsourced, offshored, inexperienced group of technical writers) continue to reinforce the employers’ misperceptions, and soon it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy moving the field as a whole downward.

This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it explains the growing discontent with the title “technical writer” and the reason more professionals move to other titles such as technical communicator, information developer, information designer, content strategist, and others.

Here are the responses. Thanks to everyone who participated.

_______________________________

There was a similar thing going on in 2002 when I was last going through contracting firms and recruiters. I got quoted salaries of $12.50/hr in this area, which I thought was tremendously insulting (and unlivable). The reality is that there are a number of things that are probably contributing to the situation today: the economy, a glut of displaced technical writers (as writing positions are moved to China and India), and businesses trying to keep their costs down and still provide U.S. workers an opportunity. Those employers tend to offer less to the contracting firms and the firms offer less to the candidates so they can keep their margin. By farming the search out to contracting firms, the businesses get the side benefit of not having to deal with the HR issues (and a smaller HR staff) thereby keeping costs down even more.

Unless the company with the requirement actually wants to take the cost of filling the temporary position, I doubt you’ll see much change. The hiring company may be offering what they think is a reasonable salary, but the contracting company has to take their margin from that offer, thus resulting in what you’re seeing. (Remember, this is all my opinion and I don’t represent any contracting firm by my statements.)

Julio J. Vazquez
_______________________________

I’m afraid that technical writing, as distinct from other forms of technical communication, is fast becoming a commodity. Companies can find writers who are willing to work for low wages and produce work that’s “good enough.” Increasingly, as Julio mentioned, these writers are offshore.

To continue earning a living wage, today’s technical writers need to diversify their skills. We have to market themselves as specialized editors, information architects, content strategists, and the like.

Over the long term, I hope that the people in our profession can educate employers about the bottom-line value of good technical writing. Too many companies settle for “good enough” because no one has shown them that excellent technical writing produces measurable benefits in customer satisfaction, liability avoidance, and so forth. We have a long way to go in this area, but it’s a big point of emphasis for STC.

Larry Kunz
_______________________________

Yes, in recent years we have seen this trend developing. With the advent of collaboration platforms such as oDesk and the like, we are seeing the rate paid to technical writers becoming lower and lower not only on the per-hour basis, but also as a trend towards forcing riders to perform on flimsy per-contract bases also. I am hoping in time to see that we cannot put up with this any further, and that some kind of realistic balance may be later achieved.

[By the way, I wrote this in about 10 seconds with some voice recognition software.]

John Melendez
_______________________________

Sadly, I think this is a result of the bad economy. My husband, an aircraft mechanic responsible for keeping huge jets carrying hundreds of passengers in the air, has been forced into so many concessions, he grumbles that garbage men earn more for tossing Hefty bags into the back of a truck.

(Brief aside to sanitation workers who find my comment insulting: When you compare the knowledge and experience required to haul trash versus maintain the complex systems of a commercial jetliner, is it not reasonable to expect a higher salary for the latter? Failure at only one of these jobs can result in death.)

For many unemployed professionals, a job at any salary is better than no job, so I think the supply/demand principle is a big part of this trend. But I also believe another mitigating factor is the continued insistence that anybody can write. I face it every day. Because of that belief, employers are expecting basic writing ability in all job candidates and are getting it. That perpetuates the myth that anyone can do our jobs. I work with a writer who, after a year of unemployment, accepted a ridiculously low salary that he is now stuck with, and yet after a year of unemployment, I am sure I’d have done the same.

We need to campaign more effectively for the bigger picture, as Mary describes it… DITA, XML, the task analyses we perform, the ability to make the complex not only simple to understand but easy to apply. We design a variety of help systems, and influence interface design decisions. Many call us ‘generalists’, but I believe we are specialists in many related areas and THAT’S what commands higher pay.

Patty Blount
_______________________________

All of this speaks to a simple truth for myself: it’s why I no longer consider myself a technical writer. Here in North Carolina tech writing has taken a real backseat to disciplines like UX and IXD. The demand and the pay for these other disciplines is better, and what you do is more obviously impacting the bottom line. Yes, it requires retraining and retooling (although tech writing formed part of a natural foundation, and the skills remain useful) but it pays to follow the money trail.

I would also add that “Campaigning” for the importance of tech writing is a position of pure weakness (given it is an established profession, not nascent). If that’s what tech writers in general are faced with — and apparently it is given that I first heard people talking about it almost a decade ago — I recommend doing something else. I did, am and thankful for it.

Gary Franceschini
_______________________________

Here in the Silicon Valley, the same problem is happening. What really bothers me is the “cut” that most contract agencies extract for putting together employer and contractor. I call them Pimps, because they provide a service, but they command a much larger percentage of the “take” than their efforts warrant. After being laid off from Cisco in 2003, I worked as a contractor for a year or so, hoping to be hired back. There were only three contract agencies that had been approved to do business with Cisco, so if you wanted to play, you had to pay. They regularly billed Cisco for $100 an hour and kept half! One agency I worked with also made you work for a month, then billed them, and then, only after they got paid (usually 6-8 weeks after start date), they would pay you.

They also regularly ignored the California state laws about what constitutes a contract worker and what constitutes a temp worker. The agency that had been audited (and caught) paid the fines and followed the rules to “hire” us as temp workers, but they paid us even less (“more overhead,” they said) and we were not allowed to work overtime, so if we needed to work extra hours, it was “off the books.” Cisco eventually lost a class-action lawsuit regarding tech writers, so now I believe they are considered hourly workers, which is a drop in status.

Where I now work is a smaller company. When I started contracting for them as an individual, they asked me to join MBO Partners (http://www.mbopartners.com/), a GREAT website for consultants and contractors, and in exchange for providing billing services and timecard, insurance, a web presence, and other things, they billed an extra $3 an hour to my invoices. Employer loved not having to overpay, I loved getting my full $60 an hour, and they got a fair amount. I urge all of you to check out MBO Services and try to work through them. It is free to sign up. Eventually I was hired by the last company, and I am one of the lucky ones to have full pay and benefits. Good luck to you all.

Sandy P.
_______________________________

I am in my second tech writing gig and have only seen my pay increase, although I also moved to an area with a higher standard of living and increased cost to commute. I also lost any guaranteed benefits and have reduced time off. But I am happy with the pay increase (almost as happy as being able to voluntarily leave one job and quickly get another in a different state with a larger company), and I like the flexibility of choosing my own benefits.
_______________________________

This is a classic supply and demand problem. Lots of unemployed writers = lower wage offers. Also, I wouldn’t be so quick to blame the recruiters. I would assume that the employers are also exerting downward pressure on the rates they’re willing to pay. That is, the employer who used to pay $50/hour now wants to pay $40/hour.

The solution to this problem is to have a compelling set of skills that employers are willing to pay a premium for.

Blaming the unemployed writers is a bit harsh. $22/hour is a lot more than you might get from unemployment insurance (assuming it hasn’t run out) and it’s probably enough for shelter and food. If you’re close to losing your house, you don’t have the luxury of turning up your nose at low-ball offers.

Finally, “sub-standard” is in the eye of the beholder. I think we’re in the midst of a painful reset of salary expectation for technical writers. There are a variety of factors at work here, including high unemployment, competition from lower-cost locales, and low expectations for the work product. (That is, you may produce much better content than the $22/hour writer, but if the employer thinks that the less expensive person produces work that’s “good enough,” then your increased quality is irrelevant.)

Sarah O’Keefe, scriptorium.com
_______________________________

I agree with Sarah’s comments. A lot of it is to do with the value the employers perceive they are getting. If they don’t see the value, then they won’t pay. In the past, companies were paying for domain knowledge or specialist technical skills (in Windows Help, for example) in addition to writing skills. A lot of technical writing these days is in Word and in HTML, which are not as mysterious as say HDK or FrameMaker. So the profession has to demonstrate value, accept it offers less value than it thought it did, and/or become mysterious again.

People are motivated greatly by a fear of loss. So if someone offers you a job at a low rate, there’s a fear of losing that opportunity and that another one won’t come along. However, that fear of loss works both ways. If you can demonstrate you can offer something to an organisation (at your price), then they may be motivated by a fear of losing that value. That may mean not waiting for offers from a recruitment agency, but GOYA (getting off your …) to network and prospect. Harder done than said, I know. Of course, they will be motivated by having a problem or pain they want to solve, and that there’s hope that it can be solved.

There is some hope for the future. Finally, with Web-based content, we can measure how many readers we have, if they found it useful, if there is a correlation between how much User Assistance there is and how many Support calls, and so on.

Ellis Pratt, cherryleaf.com
_______________________________

The cheese was moved some time ago.

I’d be happy to talk with anyone who is interested in figuring out their future (nope, I am not a coach, professional therapist, or other such thing). I have reinvented myself a number of times. Most recently, I started a small company based upon my interest in family history and genealogy.

I believe the future of technical communication is in the blogosphere and other social media outlets. Employers don’t see us as having the skills for that and know that they can hire people coming out of college for $12.00 an hour to blog like crazy, whether the content is good, bad, or indifferent. If anyone would like to work on this as a business model for tech pubs, let me know, because there is a great white paper in the topic.

We, technical communicators, can’t possibly control what employers will and won’t do, but we can control what we do. I believe that we have lots of great skills and talents to offer, but it will have to be in other fields doing other types of communication work. Making the choice to move on is the hard part.

Jon Baker
_______________________________

I wanted to make just one comment. I do not believe, honestly, that training in XML and DITA costs around $10,000. I first heard about DITA in 2004. By the end of 2006, I was leading a documentation conversion project for my company, and by the end of 2008, that project has been completed. Between 2004 and 2006, I went to a few conferences, and learned by reading basic technical books and information available online. The basic XML class that I took sometime around the year 2000 had cost me about $200. Each of the conferences, even if I were to pay myself (they were paid by the company) had a price tag of about $1000 including all expenses and travel. The books were for $20 or so each. All other information is free and available online. Nowadays, there is even no need to go to these conferences to learn the same technology as it is widely spread and available for free or nearly for free, through seminars and books.

Julia M.
_______________________________

This is not surprising in the world of commodity writing. However, it’s hardly a trend. I’m interviewing people this morning for several clients who have several tech comm jobs available that pay extremely well, above the annual reported salaries from the STC salary survey. That said, “writing” is not the focus of the jobs, “communication” is, which involves strategy, information architecture, project planning, usability, accessibility, and more. Writing is not a skill that is going to continue to pay high wages. If that is your differentiator, you’re in big trouble.

Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler
_______________________________

Another source of this problem is that anybody can set themselves up as a contract recruiter or agency. When I first started job hunting in Atlanta in 1990, when the job market divebombed after the invasion in Kuwait, there were a limited number of contract agencies in the area. In the next 3 years until hiring rebounded in about 1993, I got to know at least one recruiter at most of the agencies that even occasionally hired technical writers and editors. Since then, most of the local agencies have become part of national organizations, but they and some of the newer local agencies operate in a professional manner. However, in the last few years, the number of new recruiters (mostly single-person operations) that have popped up, who call and badger me to work for them for around $22/hour have become a major aggravation.

As someone else mentioned, most major employers used to work with a few selected, vetted recruiting firms or contract agencies to obtain contract employees. Government agencies, however have to post their openings publicly, and any agency can submit candidates. I have been most often annoyed by these fly-by-night fast-talking individuals when there were open posted positions at the CDC or the GA DOT or DOL. Many speak English with a horrible accent and talk too fast for me to understand them on the phone.

Recruiters at nation-wide professional contract agencies have told me that the typical agency markup over the contract hourly rate is 20-35%, and they wish to maintain good relationships with both their clients and contract employees. Those who are trying to grab 50-75% and offer the writers insulting rates are in it for the money, and because they think they can get away with it.

Techquestioner
_______________________________

I don’t think it’s a position of weakness to know how to articulate the value of your position. We could compare that to the development team or the accounting team, for example, and argue that they don’t seem to need to justify their existence. But don’t they? I see people in many fields who have invested in themselves and bring superior skills to the company having to compete with those who have less skill (and lower wages) or with offshoring.

I do agree that it’s a bit different for tech comm folk, though, mainly for the reasons that Scott Abel mentioned–the hot deliverables like communication strategies and more integrated user assistance are more valued than the help systems and manuals that “no one reads, anyway.” If we can’t connect the dots for management to show that we are the ones that can handle that shift for them, we can get left behind.

I do think that if you are in a market where writers are frantically taking what they can get, it will drag your wages down, and you’ll have to work harder to find the sweet jobs. Can you find new recruiters? Can you find clients directly?

Further, can you help other writers develop better negotiating skills and better prospecting skills? If you’re active in your local STC chapter (or another group), maybe you can organize a panel discussion or present on what works for you. You’ll be investing in the quality of your job market, and accomplishing some networking at the same time.

Kristi Leach
_______________________________

Although current economics have something to do with what you’re seeing, I believe that there will always be a wide range of salaries for the simple fact that if a company searches long enough, they will always find someone who will accept their low paying positions. I once was offered a position with a company for $20,000 LESS than what I wanted. Their HR person even told me that my salary expectation was out of line for the position and that they “hoped I would consider” the amount they were offering because they felt I was, otherwise, a perfect fit for them. (Note: This was during regular economic times.) I declined to accept that horrendous offer knowing full well that the entire company must undervalue technical communicators, otherwise, how could HR say such a thing. Not more than a few weeks later, I found a position that paid exactly what I wanted without even a quibble. Of course, the low-paying position was also filled. As an active STC member, I meet technical communicator all the time; every now and then, I meet the unfortunate people that are employed by that low-paying company. They talk of the stressful work environment, long hours, and lack of respect. Sometimes, even the best of us are subjected to those working conditions, but the difference is that we are better compensated for it. By settling for lower wages, they become part of the problem. They reinforce the company’s lacklustre wages. Instead, we should always stay knowledgeable about current salaries, and if we have access to local salary information, we should go into the interview ready to use it.

(A Calgarian that knows her worth!)
_______________________________

Fortunately, given how available social media tools are now, you don’t have to depend entirely on recruiters. You have more control over your job search options due to social media like TweetMyJob or the search engine in Twitter. If the job is listed on TweetMyJobs or Twitter, my experience has been that it was usually posted in the last hour or day and provides a link to more information. Given your comments, you might want to use those search engines more and recruiters less.

I agree with those who say that you have to have something extra to get a higher rate.
For example, I am currently helping a large proposal team to respond to a very complex proposal. The rate is far higher than anything I made for technical writing. I found the job on Twitter, went through a recruiter, and held out for a higher rate than they said they could offer…and then did offer the higher rate after I refused the lower rate.

And Tom…great technique surveying other tech writers for their experience as well.

Bruce Curley, poetslife.blogspot.com, poetslife@gmail.com

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Changing Your Career to Technical Writing [Guest Responses from Bill Albing and Alyssa Fox]

Tom Johnson — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:52:55 +0000

Recently a reader wrote me asking for advice on changing careers into technical writing. I asked for some colleagues to respond. Bill Albing, an information architect in North Carolina, and Alyssa Fox, a technical communications manager in Texas, responded to the question. With permission from Bill, Alyssa, and “Cedric” (the name I’ve given the reader), I posted the conversation here.

Hello Tom,

I am very interested in making a career change to technical writing and wanted a bit more information on the career field. You seem pretty knowledgeable and passionate about the career by the looks of your blog posts, so I was hoping you wouldn’t mind me bugging you about it.

I have a bachelor’s in business with an information systems concentration and have experience working and writing professionally (training materials, newsletters, things like that). I want to take some courses in technical writing or do a certificate program though to bulk up my writing skill and make me more of an asset. I wanted to know how much which program you attend matters. I live in NYC and there is a really solid looking, affordable online program offered by a local college and was hoping that would be sufficient.

Finally, it would be nice to speak with someone who is a technical writer and find out what the job is really like.

I apologize for the barrage of questions but really am seriously considering this career and would like to know as much about it as possible so that I may make the most informed decision possible. Thank you so much in advance for your time and assistance. I look forward to your reply.

Kind Regards,

Cedric

Response from Bill Albing

Cedric,

I think it’s great that you are considering tech writing as a career. Here are some points to consider.

The best way to find fellow technical writers is to find a local chapter of our biggest professional association — STC (Society for Technical Communication) http://www.stc.org. Or other groups like ACM SIGDOC, UX (user experience) or UI (user interface) groups, or training or editing groups, etc.

Also, find people online — use Twitter and Linked in to connect to others. Start with me and the people who follow me and the people I follow. The STC New York Metro Chapter is one possibility (President: John Posada, +1 (732) 259-2874 jposada99@gmail.com, Web site: www.stcnymetro.org). Find Scott Abel (http://thecontentwrangler.com/) and Anne Gentle (http://justwriteclick.com/).

Every one of us does different work, so you’ll get a different answer from each of us about what tech writers do. But we have a common bond of a commitment to the audience and getting the information to them that they need. I work in software documentation and my background is computers and electronics, but my audience is not mainstream users.

Others work in pharmaceutical/biomed; others work in government or for non-profits. There are different industries and different types of technologies. There are different levels of business, from the factory floor to the CEO, each with different tech writing challenges. Some work online, others publish books. We often start with contract work until we gain an expertise and decide on a career path — some like contracting, some like full-time, some like owning their own business. Here’s a cute little article about breaking into the field.

Your credentials are fine. Your business degree with a concentration in info systems is great. Getting more degrees and more academic training is not necessarily going to help. What they teach in academia (especially if in an English department) is not necessarily useful in the business world. What I mean is that having a Masters in English won’t necessarily make you a better technical writer.

For example, you can’t learn some things from an academic course, such as how to work with limited resources, what are the variables that must be considered, how to get information from experts, how to structure information for multiple audiences — these types of things. Your experience with training materials is valuable; your work on real projects is as much a credential as anything academic. Creating a portfolio of your work is a good idea at any stage of your career.

The field is changing drastically — from big doc departments of writers downsizing and more work moving to lone writers and customer-generated docs. In all honesty, STC has been dropping in membership for the last few years. This may be because traditional tech writing careers are changing and no one does just technical writing anymore. Or it may be because STC as an organization isn’t changing with the times, I don’t know. It could be both. But many of my colleagues have different titles now, wear more than one hat, are working more online than previously, and may or may not have time for STC anymore.

Tech writing is a balance of knowing your technical stuff and being able to write about it (communicate it). Neither skill is more important than the other. If you can’t balance both then you’re either a techno-geek or you’re a writer. For those of us who feel called to do both, and it sounds like you are, then do both! My motto has always been, just do it. There are plenty of opportunities to find work, despite the doom and gloom predictions about the economy. The job market is not shrinking — it’s changing. The traditional jobs are shrinking. Look on Indeed.com for jobs — not just technical writing, but also other titles. See:

Content Strategist
Information Management
Information Architect
Information Developer
Technical Writer
Technical Documentation
Documentation Manger
Content Management
Business Analyst

Here’s an example list.

Hope that helps. Feel free to contact me anytime with questions or if you’d like encouragement.

–Bill Albing
volunteer:
Principal Information Architect, KeyContent.org
bill.albing@keycontent.org

day job:
Senior Information Architect, Paragon Application Systems, Inc.

Response from Alyssa Fox

Cedric,

Bill did a great job summarizing some points to think about below, so I’ll just piggyback off his.

First of all, let me say that your prior experience with training materials and newsletters will be a strength in breaking into this field due to the fact that you know how to communicate information to the audience you’re writing for. Same thing with tech writing — it’s just usually a technical audience. Your business background will also help, no matter which industry you end up in.

As Bill mentioned, you can do tech writing in several fields. I’m based in Houston and in software development, but besides software, the other 2 biggies here in town are oil/gas and medical writing. I love software, and you get the opportunity at some places to contribute to user experience, usability, product design, etc. as well as “just writing doc.”

As a hiring manager, I am much more interested in your ability to take complex information and make it easily understood than I am by any program you’ve completed or certification you might have gotten. Most of what you need to know to be a successful tech writer cannot be taught in a program like that — things such as great communication so you can interview subject matter experts, the ability to present information in a logical organized format, how to work on multiple projects at once and stay sane, etc. The kinds of things you’ve done in your career already usually tell me more about your abilities than a tech writing program.

Finally, I agree with Bill that the industry is changing. We don’t just write documentation. We develop processes, we help design our products, we help code our projects, we create multimedia tutorials, we blog, we improve user experience, we manage projects, we conduct usability testing, we help develop and refine requirements, we create content strategies across functional departments. There really are a world of opportunities in tech writing right now.

Hope this helps, and if you have further questions, I’d be happy to help out. Good luck to you!

Alyssa Fox
Information Development Manager, NetIQ
STC Houston incoming president

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A Refreshing Angle on the Name of our Profession

Tom Johnson — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:30:18 +0000

I enjoyed David Farbey’s post on the name we should call our profession. Aligning our name with the most profitable business model makes sense. If you look at indeed.com for jobs as a “technical communicator,” you won’t find hardly any. Look for “technical writer” and you find a ton. So what is the benefit of calling ourselves technical communicators, when no one is hiring technical communicators?

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Following the NBA Can Make You a Better Technical Writer

Tom Johnson — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:58:32 +0000

Kenyon Martin screens for Carmelo Anthony

Even if you aren’t watching the NBA playoffs (professional basketball), you’ll probably get the point of this post. Watching a pro basketball team, one thing you realize is that each player has a special position and strength, and they play those strengths rather than their weaknesses.

For example, even when Kenyon Martin has an open jump shot 20 feet away, he often doesn’t take the shot but instead passes it to his teammates, such as Smith or Kleiza, who are much better shooters. Likewise, although Billups and Kleiza may grab a rebound now and then, you won’t see them posting up for the rebound like the other larger players, such as Kenyon Martin or Chris Andersen, the “Bird Man.”

Nene and Anthony have incredibly powerful drives from the side and manage to get close to the rim in just a few spins, but they aren’t the point guards dribbling the ball. They leave the ball handling at the top for Billups and Smith. Everyone plays their strengths, not their weaknesses. That’s how the Nuggets win games.

Even teams with MVP players like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, who both manage to score from virtually every place on the court, basically have this same strategy: let Kobe and Lebron shoot or drive while the others rebound, screen, or create opportunities for them. Imagine if Kobe stopped shooting the ball and instead took up rebounding, while 7-foot Pau Gasol started playing point guard? Yes, a disaster.

As a technical writer, unless you’re a one-person show for a small startup, most likely you have others on your team who have strengths you can leverage. You may have audiovisual experts, graphic designers, jQuery experts, database developers, genius marketers, and more. You can try to play all positions, but you’ll ultimately be at a disadvantage if you do. At times you’ll be like Shaq playing point guard, or Kobe trying to box out Yao Ming.

I’ve been trying to play up my strengths more. I’m not a designer, but our organization has a little design shop that we can send projects to. Rather than spending hours trying to design the cover of my manual, only to have it look okay, I asked one of the professional designers to do it.

In branding the online help, I know I could spend all day in Photoshop and Flare, getting the skin to look right. Instead, now that Doc Guy Paul Pehrson joined our team, and knowing that he’s a whiz with Flare, I asked him to set up the online help skin with the same branding as the application. Within a few hours, he was finished.

The same philosophy applies to WordPress. I could spend a weekend learning Python to write a migration script to move content from Expression Engine to WordPress, or I could hire a coder with EE migration experience to do it in a few hours.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from basketball, it’s this: play your strengths, minimize your weaknesses. This isn’t a principle limited to technical writing or basketball; it applies life in general.

In order to play your strengths, you have to first recognize them. What are you good at? What comes easy for you? What’s something you find enjoyable and fulfilling? Once you identify it, look for ways to do more of it.

Similarly, identify your weaknesses. What do you procrastinate? What do you basically suck at? If it’s not something you can easily improve with practice, identify others who are better at it. Then spend more time playing your strengths and less time trying doing what you’re poor at. And with this strategy, you win.

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What To Do When You’re Not Picked to Be America’s Next Top Tech Writer

Tom Johnson — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:10:49 +0000

This is a guest post by Thomas Curnyn, a technical writer in Dublin, Ireland. He currently works for a software company specializing in school administration and scheduling software. He’s been at his job for the last 5 years and has been a writer for 10 years altogether.

Tom wrote quite a while back about writing tests (10 Alternate Tests for Evaluating Technical Writing Job Candidates — A List for Hiring Managers) and he mentioned some things that should set off the alarm bells if you’re evaluating the work of a potential new writer for your team:

The writer doesn’t use numbered steps.
The procedure had 20+ steps without being broken into separate tasks.
The writing is unclear.
The writing is poorly organized.
The formatting is sloppy.
The writer doesn’t structure the content with styles.
The steps are inaccurate.
Field definitions aren’t illuminating.
You can spot misspellings and grammar errors.

I’d have to agree with all these and I think writing tests are a great tool to spot someone who’s maybe done some testing or worked on a support desk and thinks, hey, how hard can it be to do documentation? But what happens when you take one of these tests and you know how to write? What happens if you know what a gerund is and when to use a semicolon? What happens when your writing is clear, well organised, well formatted, when you’ve 10 years’ experience, when you KNOW you’re a good writer, when you’ve taken a writing test, feel that you’ve aced it, and one week later you’re told that you’ve failed?

Well I think you have maybe three basic options. You:

Can accept that you had a bad day and move on
May decide that you don’t cut it and maybe admit that you don’t know how to use a semicolon after all!
Have the good sense to realise that you are a good writer and the reason you failed has nothing to do with you or your writing

I recently failed a writing test set by a multinational software company. Obviously I was a little surprised and upset to fail a writing test – a test that I thought would be a formality. I felt like I was an experienced doctor who’d been asked to perform a routine procedure (to remove an appendix, for example) something I could do in my sleep, and then being told a week later that I’d killed the patient.

After my initial shock I tried to figure out where I went wrong. The test had three parts: two separate grammar tests and a third “Tech Writing” test. Looking back now on the grammar sections of the test, I should have realised that the testers didn’t know what they were doing when I got questions like this:

What is the right word is in the following sentence?

You _____ a moron if you don’t know this.

(a) are

(b) is

This company, being the real morons in this story, wasted 30 minutes of my life by giving me not one but two of these asinine tests. By the way, the example above was probably one of the trickier questions!

The third test was a more typical Tech Writing test: describe how to use a calculator, explain to your grandmother what a computer virus is – that sort of thing. These tests can be challenging – what calculator functions do you describe in 30 minutes? Should I telly grandma the difference between a Trojan and a Worm or is that too much detail? Anyway, unlike the basic grammar tests, I could see the point in this – it allowed me to show that I can write well, organise my thoughts, and work under time pressure. I did pretty well, I thought – certainly well enough to get a passing grade.

So why did I fail?

I believe that tests are a useful tool for evaluating a potential writer but this belief is predicated on the idea that the people setting and marking the test know what to ask in the quiz and what to look for in the answers. In my case I don’t think the people correcting my paper knew what was good or bad writing. In fact, I have a feeling that the people correcting my work weren’t even technical writers.

As a little epilogue to my story, I recently asked my friend who works in this company, and who recommended me for the role in the first place, whether they’d ever hired someone and he told me that they’d not even got to the interview stage because NOBODY had passed the test! Why, you may ask, could there be such an appalling failure rate for what sounds like a pretty simple writing test? Apparently it’s because the test was designed and graded by non-native English speakers based in the company’s HQ in Germany! What exactly they were looking for (and how I and all the other applicants went so horribly wrong) I do not know. They certainly hadn’t read Tom’s post on the subject. For them, and I’m just guessing here, maybe a numbered list looked all wrong. They may have thought, Hey why is this idiot using the active voice? We were always told in school to use the passive voice. What’s all this white space about? Where are the big chunks of text that show this guy can churn out the text?

I have to admit that hearing that I was not the only one to fail this writing test was reassuring but I think it’s important to be confident in your own abilities too and not depend on a test for validation of your skills. I think (at the risk of sounding like Dr. Phil) that it’s important not to automatically assume that you are a failure when you fail. If you ever feel like you’re the doctor who’s just been told he’s killed the patient be sure that the person who’s giving you the bad news is also a doctor and, more importantly, knows how to take a pulse!

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What Doc Managers Look for in a Résumé? | Technical Communication Center

Tom Johnson — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:01:03 +0000

What Doc Managers Look for in a Résumé? | Technical Communication Center.

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Technical Writing Careers — Answering 13 Questions about Technical Writing Jobs

Tom Johnson — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:49:33 +0000

Technical writing careers are often a mystery to those on the outside. What do technical writing jobs involve? What is the industry like? What is the career path of a technical writer, and what challenges do technical writers face?

Carmen, a student in a technical management program, found me by searching for “technical writers” on Yahoo.com. Fulfilling an assignment in a Career Development course to contact someone working in the technical writing field, she asked me 13 questions about technical writing careers. She’s currently a repair technician who has wanted to enter technical writing for years.

Her questions and my answers are below. Please feel free to build on my answers in the comments section below the post.

Job-Related Questions about Technical Writing

What do you like best about your position as a Technical Writer?

I like the combination of writing and technology. I majored in English and love to write, but careers for writers are usually low-paying. I also really like technology — websites, blogs, gadgets, social media, cyber-utopian imaginations, etc. Technical writing combines my two main interests — writing and technology — in almost seamless ways.

What kind of impact has this position had on your lifestyle?

Given that technical writing jobs pay a decent salary, I’ve been able to support a family with three children and an extremely hard-working stay-at-home mother. I couldn’t have done that had I gone into other writing fields. (For example, here’s a blog about a guy who earned a degree in creative writing but couldn’t put his skills to use, so he started delivering pizzas.)

I’ve found that working as a technical writer has sharpened my troubleshooting skills, given me greater patience and technical familiarity, and has deepened my awareness and interest in technology. For example, my wife jokes that computers — when they seem to work against her — are the Antichrist, and sometimes when she can’t get something to work, she’ll actually slam the keyboard or throw the mouse. Well, I’ve learned that broken websites, procedures that don’t work, and confusing code can all be overcome with some patient problem-solving. This is a skill I developed as a technical writer.

Technical writing also gives me time to pursue other hobbies in the evenings and weekends. Sometimes finishing documentation for a project can require you to sacrifice a few evenings, but by and large technical writing is an 8 to 5 job. That’s nice — not a lot of stress, and it’s not as if people die (regularly) because they can’t figure out the software, unlike careers in medicine.

What advice would you give to someone just entering this career track?

I highly recommend pursing technical writing as a career, especially if you majored in English or Writing. I say English or Writing because much of a technical writer’s day is spent writing (or preparing to write or editing what you’ve already written). Granted, instructions aren’t creatively fulfilling, or even interesting, but you’re still shaping complicated information into easy-to-understand, well-organized text. You’re creating something out of nothing. You are, in fact, writing.

But skill with words isn’t enough (and actually, you don’t have to be very skilled to write sentences like “Click this button,” “Select this from the dropdown box,” and so on). You also need technical aptitude. Does your blood pressure shoot up when you can’t figure something out? Or do you patiently find a way to solve the problem? If you’re a problem solver, technical writing is for you. You’ll be solving technical problems a good part of your day, as you experiment and explore and test how software functions, or might function (or is supposed to function).

To sharpen your technical skills, learn at least three types of programs: a graphics tool (such as SnagIt), an online help authoring tool (such as Madcap Flare), and a video capture tool (such as Camtasia Studio). Create some sample documentation so you can show employers your skills. Start a blog about technical communication so you can demonstrate your enthusiasm and knowledge to your employers. Take responsibility for your own learning, rather than relying on others. Also, get involved in your local STC chapter.

You might also see this post I wrote: “How to Break into Technical Writing”

What kinds of tasks do you complete during a typical day or week?

It’s your lucky day. I’ve already written an incredibly detailed post about this here: “Could you please tell me what the job of a technical writer is like?”

What types of advancement opportunities are available for entry-level candidates in this career track?

Interesting question. Here’s a great podcast on the potential career track for technical writers. Traditionally, junior technical writers become senior technical writers. Then they become managers, or often turn freelance, or do consulting. Some transition into business analysts or project managers, or move into other technology-related fields.

There’s some debate as to whether technical writing is a transitional job — something you do as you’re working your way into another role, such as business analyst, usability specialist, information architect, or project manager. Many people see technical writing as a stepping stone into something else.

Company-Related Questions about Technical Writing

What is the corporate culture of your company?

The corporate culture where I work couldn’t be better. I love the team environment, working with other dedicated and talented individuals who are inspiring and helpful (for example, they give access to what I need, answer questions, provide demos, review my documentation, and keep me up to date on changes). There aren’t any political battles or bitter attitudes. It’s really a fun place to work, especially since the entire project team is grouped on the same floor. There’s even a foosball table. And the technological setup is top-notch — see my previous post, “Top 10 Workspace Configurations for Technical Writers.”

One thing to avoid in corporate cultures is an overbearing bureaucracy, where a thousand regulations and procedures prevent you from being efficient. My current work environment is pretty much bureaucracy free.

I’ve worked in other companies where the environment was more challenging. For example, at one place, it took me two weeks before I was given access to the Intranet. In another place, I felt like I had an abundance of unnecessary meetings all day. But despite these challenges, the other environments have also been decent. I’ve always learned a lot in every situation I’ve worked, regardless of the corporate culture.

For alternative experiences, see this comment by Joseph K on a previous post.

Does the company promote or encourage continuing education?

Certainly my company promotes continuing education. They’re sending me to a couple of conferences this year — Doc Train West in Vancouver and the STC Summit in Philadelphia. (Granted, I’m presenting at both conferences.) They also buy me whatever software I need.

What type of training programs does the company offer?

I hinted at this earlier: you’re responsible for your own learning. I have some intelligent, helpful colleagues who teach me a lot — not just about software, but business process and documentation strategies. But I think ultimately, you’re in charge of your own learning.

That said, my company pays tuition if I want to take college credits (in any field). I have access to Safari, an online library with thousands of books and tutorials — I’m still exploring that one. I occasionally view webinars related to the software I use. I can order books as needed, and probably attend workshops or other training up to my allotted training budget.

What are some of the goals of the company of the next few years?

Hmmm, not sure how to answer that one on a public blog. But we definitely want to find technology solutions that help people on a global scale perform the tasks of their role more efficiently and powerfully. We want to leverage the Internet platform to provide helpful resources and information to people everywhere. We want to use technology to further our organization’s mission. The same could probably be said of many companies.

Industry-Related Questions About Technical Writing

What kinds of challenges is the industry currently facing?

Outsourcing is one threat, although I haven’t been following it much lately. I once interviewed an Indian technical writer who said the tech writing industry is exploding in major ways in India. In my experience, I think the technical writer works best when he or she is on-site (rather than remote).

Another threat is a crash in the technology sector. With the first Dotcom crash, many technology companies made dramatic cutbacks to survive. Technical writing is often an easy cut, since you can have the business analyst or subject matter experts (SMEs) write the manuals (or simply ask the existing technical writers to do more work, which is common).

Some leaders feel SMEs have the potential to do our jobs, but the results are often disastrous. (Think about instructions that lack any numbered steps, have a full-size screen print on each page, and are written in confusing jargon that assumes you’re half-engineer.)

Who are some of the major and minor competitors in the industry?

Some people think wikis will reduce the number of technical writing jobs (or transform the role of technical writers). The idea is that project members and users will simply write the documentation in piecemeal fashion. However, this idea is one that only works in unique contexts, like the WordPress Codex, and even there it doesn’t work well.

I agree with Craig on Helpscribe that wikis won’t kill technical writing. I actually once produced a help project entirely on a wiki. I was documenting the new SharePoint 2007 platform and had about 75 wiki topics. Just two people made a couple of brief edits. That was it. And with the wiki, it was a pain to style, it didn’t single source, and it was hard to manipulate and rearrange information. Wikis have been around 10+ years and haven’t replaced much of anything (except Encyclopedia Britannica).

For more on using Web 2.0 technologies in documentation, see DMN’s post on “Web 2.0 and Documentation Don’t Always Play Well Together.”

Another competitor is, as I mentioned above, outsourcing technical writing to places like India. I don’t have much experience with outsourced projects, but Charles Jeter wrote an interesting post on the state of innovation in India. I personally have never lost a job to outsourcing. In part it’s because I wear more hats than just a traditional technical writer.

Are there any likely changes that may affect the industry in the next few years?

Here’s an interesting observation. You’re writing me to ask about careers in technical writing. You’re asking me to provide insight on the technical writing industry as a whole. But I’ve only been a technical writer for less than 5 years (been a writer for much longer, though). The interesting thing is that I’m the one being asked for advice, and am giving it. Hundreds of others will find this post and take direction from it.

We’re seeing the rise of amateur content. If you want advice from someone with more authority and experience, you should have written someone like Neil Perlin or Doug Davis. Instead, because I’m more visible in Google, I become the de facto expert on technical writing. That reversal of roles, where non-leaders become leaders, amateurs become experts, and ordinary people become highly visible, will shape all industries dramatically in the next few years.

Another change is DITA, an XML language that allows you to reuse topic-based content. Over the next few years, DITA will become a standard technology embedded into the most popular help authoring tools. This will facilitate single sourcing and enable technical writers to be more efficient. As we’re more efficient, we’ll play greater roles with training, support, and quality assurance. I already wear each of these hats to some degree.