Re: Where to start?

[Steve Fouts <sfouts -at- ELLISON -dot- SC -dot- TI -dot- COM>]

Kimberley Lackey asked:
|}
|} I am going to be graduating from college this december with a bachelors
|} degree in english with a technical writing emphasis. The next five months
|} I need to start looking for a job. I am hoping to find a position in
|} the northwest somewhere. I was curious to find out if anyone would have
|} any suggestions as to what kind of positions I should watch for, companies
|} I could apply to, or even suggestions for a starting technical writer.
|}

        I emailed this reply, then thought that there might be other
        students on the list with similar questions. Anybody have any
        additions?

        As an additional explanatory note, I refer to Kimberley's
        school, Washington State University, the way all good
        Washingtonians do, as ``Wazzu.'' I assure you that it is
        a term of affection. Down here in Houston, the ever present
        southern drawl tends to lengthen words. Houston, for example,
        is a three or four syllable word if you say it like a native.
        The Nor'westerner accent tends to shorten things, so that
        the fighting Washington State University Cougars become the
        Wazzu Cougs, and the University of Washington Huskies are
        the U-Dub Dawgs. So there y'go.

I graduated in 1990 from Eastern Washington University with a B.A. in
English and a minor in C.S. My job search consisted of mostly high tech
companies in Seattle, the Hanford area, and, uh, everywhere else. I don't
know the rest of your background, so I don't really know what kind of
technical writing you're looking at doing, but a real good place to start
is in the college placement office.

Even if they don't really know about what a technical writer does, they
can give you the names of companies that like to hire people into entry
level positions with college degrees. Then you can do the legwork to
find out if they have need for writers.

Another thing that proved fruitful for me was to show up at job fairs
where they are looking for people in a field related to my field of
interest. For example, when the Hanford companies had a job fair at
Gonzaga University for software engineers, I showed up and went around
from table to table saying, ``I'm a technical writing student with a
strong background in computer science, electronics, physics, and math.''
I got a lot of people that said, ``We can't help you here, but call this
person,'' or, ``Give us your resume and we'll take it back to the technical
writing department.''

Tell everyone you know that you are looking for a job. You'd be surprised
how many times you end up with an interview because the husband of your
cousin's best friend has an opening where he works. And I have sent resumes
to Kalispell, Montana, Hailey, Idaho, and a couple of other places that you
may never have heard of, for reasons just like that. You'll find jobs in
the oddest places if you look for them.

Write a good resume and as personal a cover letter as you possibly can.
That library there at Wazzu has the resources to give you an edge in the
cover letter department because you can find out a company's business and
history before you send a resume.

In the months that you have left leading up to graduation, get an
internship if you possibly can. Volunteer to write something for a
local charity organization. Volunteer to write a user's guide for an
undocumented or poorly documented bit of University software. Do
what ever you can so that when asked for writing samples, you have
something other than your report on the life of Mark Twain.

    _______________   _____
   /  ___  __/__\  \ /  / _\    Steve Fouts
  /___ \|  |  ___\  |  /  __\   sfouts -at- ellison -dot- sc -dot- ti -dot- com
 /   /  \  |      \   /      \
/_______/__|_______\_/________\ "She understood, as he did, that all writing
was infernally boring and futile, but that it had to be done out of respect
for tradition"                  --Stanislaw Lem