The topic of finding work as a technical writer came up on a mailing list I subscribe to recently, and I want to share some advice here. I have been a job seeker in this market many times, and I was also involved in recruitment for a while some years ago, so I have literally been on both sides of the desk in the recruitment process.

As a result, I have seen dozens of CVs (resumés) from technical writers and my first piece of advice is to make sure that your CV is as near to flawless as you can make it. Not only does it need to be relevant to the job you are applying for, it needs to look good as well. I know some recruiters and agencies use keyword searches to screen candidate CVs and don’t actually read most of them, but if you are lucky enough to get your CV in front of a hiring manager you want your piece of paper to stand out. Don’t be scared to use white space to create a clean, uncluttered layout. It can make a difference. If nothing else, it shows you’re a professional.

Find out which recruiters in your area understand the technical writing profession, and talk to them regularly. Here in the UK, most tech writing jobs are advertised through general IT recruitment agencies who know next to nothing about tech writing. You can find yourself arguing with the recruiter about why you are qualified to write online help even though you can’t write code in Java#.NET or whatever, which can be very disheartening. There are half a dozen specialist agencies, however, which do understand, and help sell you to the employer. I kept in touch with all of these people all the time. You want to be on their radar whenever you’re looking for a job (and of course if you’re self-employed, that means always).

There are two personal qualities that you need to cultivate as well. You need a lot of patience (which is very difficult) because looking for a job can take a long time, even in a booming economy, and you may have noticed that we’re not in a boom right now. You also need a really thick skin (which is even more difficult) because it hurts to get turned down. Even when you can rationalise and say “they must have found another candidate who ticked all of their boxes while I only ticked all-but-one of them”, it still can hurt. Good luck!