Tips+to+be+a+Technical+Writer

= Practical Tips for Employment =
 * Here we provide useful information for employment in writing for the web. **

Eight Tips For Finding Freelance Corporate Writing Clients

 * Participate in on-line and face-to-face communities of all types.**
 * Don't hide behind your monitor. Join, join, join.
 * Go to at least one face-to-face meeting per month.
 * Join organizations for writers, your subject area, prospects, and your community.
 * Build a detailed online presense.**
 * Site, blog, and social media.
 * Samples, portfolio, recommendations, methods of working with clients.
 * Sticky stuff about you, the personal and the professional.
 * Write for free, but only for yourself.**
 * Blog
 * Comments on other's blogs.
 * Posts to online discussions.
 * Articles
 * You may work alone, but you'll get more clients if you see yourself as part of a team.**
 * Bring in other writers.
 * Join an existing project team.
 * Form coalitions.
 * Provide recommendations.
 * Create professional bandwidth.
 * Use tools and software to manage projects and enable collaboration.**
 * Recommend software solutions to collaborate challenges.
 * Know how to use software that makes projects work: GoogleDocs, wiki, Basecamp, Textflow.
 * Be the one who schedules regular conference calls, web meetings, and etc.
 * Develop a "tasting menu" for your writing services.**
 * Peel off a small part of a prospective job; get paid for it
 * Offer one-time-only try-on pricing.
 * Get comfortable with the long sales cycle and the short turn-around time.**
 * You never know when you are planting seeds that will grow into work, especially with social media.
 * Many writing projects take months or years to go from one-off to ongoing.
 * With human bandwidth and gnarly project management skills, you can cope with deadline pressure.
 * Be open to doing unusual writing assignments.**
 * It's all work, and work is good.
 * Unusual projects for solid clients lead to more work.
 * Avoid unusual clients.

//Source content: Leslie O'Flahavan "Writing Matters" July 2011//

Getting a Technical Writing Job, Even If You Have No Experience
Technical writing jobs can be hard to get if you have little or no experience. But there are things you can do to improve your chances of getting hired.

First of all, if you have not already done so, join the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the professional organization for technical communicators. While this in itself will not get you a technical writing job, it will bring you into contact with many people who can help you in your career. Networking is a far more effective method for finding work than flooding the marketplace with your résumé.
 * Join the STC**

Many employers never advertise their jobs. Rather, they hire people through word of mouth or they hire agencies to do their recruiting for them. In turn, these agencies often post career opportunities with the online job search engines.
 * Search Jobs Online **

Ensure that your résumé is error-free. Even if you are an excellent speller, for example, do a spell check on your document before you send it to anyone. Also, search for words that are spelled correctly, but that are nevertheless incorrect.
 * Create an Error-Free Résumé**

Just as important as a little writing experience is the ability to use the software. You should know how to use Microsoft Word. If a company requires knowledge of FrameMaker, for example, and you know only Word, do not let this prevent you from applying for the job. If you know how to use Word well--and I mean really well--you will be able to apply that knowledge to the other tool. What do I mean by really well? Well, you should know how to create the following: > Here, white space refers to the space above and below a paragraph, and to the left and right indents. White space is also created with the page-margin settings.
 * Know Thy Software**
 * a chapter whose first page is different from its remaining pages
 * right- and left-hand pages
 * three heading levels
 * running heads
 * numbered lists
 * white space, using the Style dialog
 * tables and captions
 * a graphic surrounded by a border and vertically aligned with the text above and below it
 * page breaks and section breaks
 * headers and footers, some with page numbers in Roman numerals, others with Arabic page numbers
 * cross-references
 * a table of contents showing two to three heading levels
 * an index

For more information: //http://www.docsymmetry.com/technical-writing-jobs.html//