How to Gain Experience in Technical Writing 

This is another one of those questions I'm asked all the time by both students and young professionals starting out. In any industry its hard to break in, but in technical writing much of the hiring process is based around your past experience. After all, technical writing is an applied discipline, so employers have every right to see how you've applied it before working for them.

If someone is looking to eventually get into a full time position somewhere, but will settle for something less permanent for the time being, I usually recommend trying a contracting company, like Manpower or Volt or similar organizations. While the duration of work is typically short--anywhere from 3 months to a year--the experience gained is great. And technical writers can often use contracting experience as a springboard into something full-time.

If you only have a short period of time to get some experience--say you're graduating soon or the like--then you'll want to perform writing jobs (as many as you can) free of charge. Much like attorneys perform pro bono casework when starting out to pad their case history, technical writers can work gratis for many deserving customers to perform real professional writing, get great experience, and start collecting samples for their portfolio.

Who you work for will depend on what type of writing you want to do. If you are looking to be a professional grant writer, then you'll have tons of small non-profit, social service organizations asking for your free help. Finding them is simple enough: cold call from the organizations you find in the phone book. There's nothing to be embarrassed about, after all you're volunteering your time and talents to help them out. Try church organizations, groups that help troubled women or children, the needy and homeless, etc. Not only will they love to have a grant writer, they'll probably also have a lot of other business correspondence as well, so if you're not looking to do grant writing you can still find some good experience in places like this.

If you're thinking about going into the software industry, there's nothing better than getting involved with an open-source software project. These projects are usually chock full of programmers, but thin on the writing staff. Chances are they'd welcome someone to take over their documentation tasks, from user manuals and install guides to API docs and help files. You can search www.sourceforge.net to find projects that need help. Then simply contact the person listed and offer your services. From there, it becomes a real-world learning process that pays off with great examples of work for you.

Generally speaking, once the word gets out that you're doing free work, people will be sending you emails and calling you all the time: you'll probably have to tell a lot of people know. But taking advantage of all the free writing work out there will pay off with a portfolio padded with real examples of real work.

For technical, professional and business communication help in the Las Cruces, NM area, visit Lanier Infomedia. 

Last update: 27-03-2009 13:38