Posts Tagged ‘Career’
4 Variables to Determine Your Success at a Technical Writing Job Interview
When a reader asked the “best way” to get ready for a technical writing assessment test and job interview I realized how hard it is to give a satisfactory answer. The reason is, the appropriate and really truthful answer depends not on a single but the following four variables: (1) Historically Specific Job Market When…
Read MoreHow to Shift from a Career in Pharmaceutical Sales to Medical Writing
A reader wrote asking what to do and in which direction to go in shifting from a career in pharmaceutical sales to writing. I’m sharing my answer here since it may benefit all my other readers who also find themselves in a similar situation: “The fact that you’re coming from sales should be a positive…
Read More"Sorry, I probably won’t read your cover letter"
(The insider feedback by a straight-shooter recruiter. Excerpts…) Like many recruiters, I rarely read cover letters. Most of us zoom right into the resume for a quick scan of the candidate and avoid the cover letter whenever possible. Why should we read two different documents that are basically trying to say the same thing? When…
Read MoreHow to Become a Technical Writer
(A personal account published at Tom Johnson’s excellent blog) by Sarah Pruitt Deciding to become a technical writer was easy. But finding the experience and the time has proven unforgiving. My job is not based on writing; in fact, writing is rarely needed. Between working full-time at a bank doing account maintenance (which is equivalent…
Read MoreWriters: Searching Through the Job Ads is not Marketing
© Ugur Akinci Generally speaking, we writers are not good at marketing our services. We love what we do and yet expect to be “discovered” and paid well for it too. Think again. This blog entry was prompted by an email from an obviously-very-qualified reader who asked whether she needs to get a technical writing…
Read MoreFinding Your Way Back: Re-Entering the Science Work Force
(Excerpts) By Brianna Blaser In the idealized career path, a scientist goes straight from earning an undergraduate degree to graduate school, and then on to a postdoc and eventual employment, without breaks between positions. For various reasons, however, not all scientists’ career paths are nearly so linear. Although the most common reason scientists might leave…
Read MoreSTC Releases 2008 Annual U.S. Salary Survey of Technical Writers
STC (Society for Technical Communication) has released its 109-page comprehensive 2008 Annual U.S. Salary Survey, available free of charge to STC members. In the email that introduced the survey, STC acknowledged the hits our profession received in 2008. But then, which profession did not suffer during the last year? So we have to place such…
Read MoreHow to estimate a copy writing job
© 2009-2010 Ugur Akinci It’s not easy to estimate how long a copy writing job will take due to the many factors involved in the estimation. Writing commercial copy does not only involve sitting in front of your keyboard and starting to pound away. You need to make research, read all the relevant materials on…
Read More"Online Job Bidding" Sites for Writers…
By Gary Karbon Guest Writer Recently I had the opportunity to study some of the Online Job-Bidding Sites out there catering to copy and technical writers. Some of these sites are very well known. And some others are not. But there are a bunch of them out there and they are all similar in the…
Read More9-Point Checklist for Technical Writers
If you are just starting out on your professional career or thinking to make a career change, you might want to use the below check list to see if technical writing would be a correct choice for you. 1) Are you good with language? Have you been noted since you were a child for your…
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