Technical Trainers and Technical Writers

[Robert Heath <rddheath -at- YAHOO -dot- COM>]

Hallo,

I am being interviewed in the coming week for a position as a
technical trainer with a pretty nice, big company. Though my primary
goal is to be an overworked and underpaid tech writer 8^), I do have
some teaching experience and thought that a job like this could help
me break into the tech writing field.

My questions for any of you who are technical trainers are...
1. How similar is designing and writing instructional material to
doing the same for software or hardware documentation (the sort of
thing I'd like to tackle some day)? In other words, would this
position be good preparation for tech writing?

2. If any of you are tech trainers, can you give advice on how to
design instructional materials for a technical audience, specifically
technicians? I'm sorry, but I do not yet know exactly what I'd be
teaching; I hope that omission does not impair your ability to help me.

While I did write material for my classes during my years as a
teacher, I'm not sure how much of the knowledge I gained will carry
over. English grammar and conversational gambits lend themselves
easily to short, photocopied handouts; I suspect my future audiences
will be wanting something a trifle more sophisticated.

I searched the archives with the keywords "technical trainer" but came
up with only one article that came close to answering my question. It
simply stated how the qualifications for a trainer differ from those
of a writer. Any more pertinent advice would be met with gratitude.

Robert Heath




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