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Writing Your Technical Writing Resume
If anyone in the entire universe ought to have a perfect resume, it's a
technical writer. They're supposed to be expert writers and fanatically obsessed
with technical accuracy and relevance. Does this describe your resume?
A tech writing manager we know developed a 30-column spreadsheet to assess
technical writing candidates. Three of the criteria are about resumes. Let's
talk about them:
- Accurate and organized - as a document, a sample of your writing,
is your resume scrupulously accurate, down to the smallest details, and
organized in a clear and logical way? Is the writing really good, so that it
grabs the reader's attention without relying on empty buzzwords? Did you
format it so that it looks clean and neat? Remember that tech writing managers
know how to look behind the scenes into your document - they can run spell
checks, view nonprinting characters, and even see whether you wrote it on your
home computer or at the office.
- Error-free - is your resume absolutely, without the smallest
exception, free of typos, errors of fact, misspellings, and any other error
that will proclaim to the reader, "I'm not as careful about checking things as
I'd like you to think"?
- Proper tool use - Did you format your document using spaces and
extra carriage returns? Or were you able to use styles and other features of
your authoring tool effectively and efficiently, as a mark of a pro? Does your
document contain evident use of advanced tool use, such as macros or
protection, to show that you really know how to get the most out of the tool?
Note that these are in addition to content. If the content of your resume
shows no experience or aptitude for technical writing, never mind the above. The
days when anyone who could open a Word file could get hired as a tech writer
are, thankfully, gone.
Now, a word about content: remember that your resume is your initial sales
opportunity. So sell! Keeping in mind all of the above - including the
scrupulously accurate part - make your words show what you can do, based on what
you have done. "Updated a manual using Frame" doesn't tell a hiring manager much
at all. Why not instead say what you did to overcome the challenges of that
project to deliver your updates on time, on budget, to user acclaim, or whatever
scrupulously accurate measures of success you can legitimately claim. Remember
that the hiring manager, and even more so the HR person who does the initial
resume screening, may have no idea what Frame is. So don't focus on the tools.
Mention them in their proper context, but focus on what you got done. Show
measurable achievements where you can. Show that you understand the business or
scientific context in which you worked. There's nothing more valuable, because
this is a good indicator that you will understand a new business or scientific
context if you get hired.
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