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Anonymous reports: <<I am putting together a writing portfolio for some
upcoming interviews; however, I have been informed that many of the samples
are proprietary, and cannot be shared with other companies. The problem is
this...I'm looking at having an empty portfolio, because virtually all of my
samples would be considered proprietary.>>
This has been discussed many times on techwr-l; have a look at the archives
for details. Briefly, one good solution is to produce fake documents using
formats similar to those you developed for the proprietary documents. At the
interview, you can focus on how you solved problems for that employer by
developing a particular solution, explain that the actual text was
proprietary, but that you've shown how the same solution can be applied to
different situations. (If necessary, borrow text from any of your software
manuals to provide the example, but rewrite the text in your own words and
in support of your own solutions to the problem.)
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"User's advocate" online monthly at
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"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can
think."--Edwin Schlossberg, designer (1945- )
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