Five Tips for Finding Work as a
Technical Communicator

by Jack Molisani
President, ProSpring Inc.

I was recently asked to narrow pages and pages of advice into just five tips for finding work as a technical communicator.  Here they are for your jobhunting enjoyment:

1. Join the STC and network, network, network.  So many job openings never make it to the job boards—they are filled by personal referrals.

2. Read the article in the March 2002 issue of Intercom on how to choose and work with an agency, then choose a reputable agency that understands your value and what you do.

3. When presenting yourself to potential employers, maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.  Read The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Looking for Work.

4. Learn the hottest authoring tools. Companies do keyword searches to find writers who already know the authoring tools they use, so learn FrameMaker, Doc-to-Help, and RoboHELP/RoboHTML if you don't already know them and add those keywords to your resume. 

If you don't have those tools, good news:  The book FrameMaker for Dummies has a crippled version of Frame in the back, and you can download a trial version of Doc-to-Help and RoboHELP from their respective companies.

5. This tip is also applicable to people who haven't been laid off: yet take classes in the hottest technologies at your local community college, such as C++, Java, Networking, Databases, etc.  Companies want writers who understand the technology they are writing about.

I love hearing from my readers, so feel free to email me with your questions or comments!

888-378-2333  info@prospring.net
Copyright 2002, ProSpring Inc.