How to Choose Samples for Your Technical Writing Portfolio
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Can you land a job in technical writing providing no writing samples at all? I believe so, yes. But this will likely be an entry-level role. Hiring you for something more serious, your potential employers would like to see some of your work. And, today, we are going to be talking about the best practices in developing samples for a technical writer interview.
If this is not just a generic technical writing sample you created but actually part of a real project you’d been working on in the past, you need to contact the client you did the job for before disclosing this piece to anyone. If this is done for a public user manual, there should not be any issues – they will let you use it for your portfolio, most likely, but you should ask first anyway.
The employer is going to evaluate many aspects of your sample like: structure, language, design, visual elements. Being honest about the scope of work you did is the best choice here – if you had nothing to do with structuring the material, it is better to mention this because there will be questions you might not be able to answer. People do different things to land a role, but starting off with some kind of deceit is a really bad choice. And, don’t be shy either, if you created a page layout, do mention this. Technical writers are involved in design to some extent, so such skills are always appreciated.
Revise the samples before going to the interview. You will be asked questions about your samples. Some of the popular ones:
Your main aim is to pick up short but informative pieces of text. Here are some tips on how to choose the best samples to demonstrate your strongest skills:
To make sure your samples are good enough to showcase your value, pay attention to the following aspects:
Having a good portfolio of samples is very important for a tech writer. And, it is hard to develop it over night with projects scattered across years of work. Try being proactive and keep the works you are proud of in one place. When the time comes to go job hunting, you’ll be able to transform them into an impressive collection of samples.
Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices
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