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Tom's situation sounds something like mine about 4 years ago. The
unfortunate difference is that the job market is a lot worse right
now.
I broke into tech writing with an academic background in English, a
year and a half of marketing writing experience, some teaching
experience during grad school, and a handful of anecdotes that showed
I was reasonably technically adept for someone so apparently
non-technical. For instance, when I worked for a small ad/marketing
agency, my company laid off the already-small IS department, and since
I was the only computer-literate person left, they handed me a stack
of Netware manuals and put me in charge of the network. I learned some
basic maintenance and backup procedures, acted as the ad hoc help
desk, and called a consultant for the stuff I couldn't handle on my
own. This experience--turned into a line on my resume and an interview
spiel--helped counteract people's assumption that, as an English
major, I would barely know how to turn the computer on.
I like John's point about knowing why you're interested in tech
writing. When you go into an interview, you need to show that you're
not just interested in a tech writing job because creative writing
doesn't pay the bills; you're interested because you like to teach,
you're a closet computer geek, whatever. Again, develop a good
interview spiel. With no TW experience, that's crucial. I had to sell
myself like mad, and that was in a better job market.
Should you take some technical courses, as Andrew suggests? I didn't.
Haven't needed to. As an end-user software documentation person, I
haven't needed to know programming (and we've argued that one to
death, so let's not rekindle that debate). If somebody had told me to
take a programming class before applying for entry-level TW jobs, I
would've ignored them. Maybe it would be an advantage in today's
tougher job market, or maybe not--I don't know if the advantage would
be significant enough to justify the time and expense. Play to your
strengths. Decide what makes you valuable to a company right now, and
work up a way to sell yourself, in paper and in person. Selling your
potential, or taking the "I want this job in order to gain the skills
I need" approach, isn't likely to work. If you really don't believe
you'd be valuable to a company right this minute, do what you need to
do to rectify that situation.
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