The Technical Writer in me

It turns out...

2010-11-30T07:15:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that throwing your career out the window can actually be a good thing, sometimes. I left my job in April with no thought of where the future was or what it looked like. I took something like a leap of faith, the emphasis being on faith! A few months later, when I still meant to continue enjoy being an SAHM (Stay-at-home-mom), one of my closest friends called me regarding an opening for a technical writer position in her company, O. Having nothing to lose I applied, got selected and here I am. It may sound cliched, but many years ago I used to wonder what stuff it took to get here.

There are many differences that I find now, having worked previously for an Indian service giant. Those probably deserves a post of their own.

In other good news, Robert Levy linked to some very cool technical writing blogs in his post here.
And guess what, this little humble thing made it there as well. To say I am surprised is an understatement. Humbled is more like it. And like Robert says, I need to keep this space active and not let it gather dust.

So, how have you been?

Tips and resources: Technical Writer Job - Written Test

2010-08-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

If you are on the lookout for a technical writer job, be aware that some companies might require you to pass their written examination to consider you for an open position - no matter how highly your resume and professional experience speak of you.

Surprisingly, I have heard that some candidates do not turn up for an interview once they hear that a written test is involved (weird, considering we are writers!)! Well, it just got easier to separate the wheat from the chaff for employers!

The questions in the technical writer examination may vary to a great extent, but here are a few guesses:

1) You could be asked to demonstrate your ability to write clear, concise instructions by writing a procedure (could be as simple as withdrawing cash from an ATM machine /baking a cake at home or something a little more complex like Enabling Remote Desktop on your Windows 7 machine).

2) You could be asked your opinion on what changes you would like to make to a piece of in-house documentation. Remember, not to be too critical of their existing documentation but be honest; suggest improvements but also give credit for what the other authors got right!

3) You could be asked to edit a procedure, or part of an existing document. Be on the lookout for improvements to the procedural flow, the spellings, relevant images, image quality, captions, formatting errors, punctuation and language errors.

4) You could be asked questions for the employer to access your vocabulary and domain knowledge (multiple choice questions regarding the domain), knowledge of english grammar (active, passive voice, verbs, nouns etc).

5) You could be asked to restructure and correct sentences: Keep an eye for redundant, ambiguous words and empty language.

6) You could be asked to write a simple essay of 200 words or so on a topic. On of my favorites would be "How did you become a technical writer?" Since there is no spell checker - be careful about spellings. Personally, I am a fan of a good handwriting, but this should not be of the determining factors!

I found a really useful sample technical writer written examination at Klariti.com here:
http://www.klariti.com/Technical-Writing-Tests/Klariti%20Technical%20Writing%20Tests.pdf

Thanks Anthony James and Anna Thomson! I quite enjoyed doing this test, reminded me of my GRE days.

Tip for answering multiple-choice questions: If you are quite clueless about the answer, eliminate choice which don't make logical sense, before taking a guess. It definitely increases your probability of answering the question right!

Words of Appreciation

2010-05-03T02:29:00.000-07:00

I got an award recently. It was special in many ways - first because they actually cared enough to give an award to someone who was going out the next day - second, because I really had a super time working in this project - third - because my favorite manager happened to sign the award certificate - hopefully a good luck charm for my (future) career.

I shall someday post about what this project meant to me - what I learnt and decided not to learn from it :)

Here is a picture of the certificate. (The airbrushing is my attempt to remove sensitive client information :D)

And so, I quit work~!

2010-04-05T13:10:00.001-07:00

Yes, I really did!!!! I sent in my resignation to W two months ago and am now serving the notice period. This weekend, I would be an ex-W(ite). Why, you ask? I'm taking a baby break to be with my son. I plan to join work before an year's time is up, unless an offer for flexible hours comes knocking.

Yes, I have heard of day care and I have preferred not to let my son anywhere near it, for as long as we can. The husband has lent tremendous support, so have the rest of the family. Some friends have expressed disbelief, some are secretly happy :p, some have lent support and some others couldnt care less. I would say most are interested in knowing what happens to people like me who throw their jobs out the window one fine day. If you belong to the latter category, stay tuned to this blog. And also pray that I have something blog worthy to declare :)

There are a couple of things which made the decision to quit easy for me. One, my adorable son. Two, the joke that is my salary. Three, the fact that on my death bed, I'd be not a technical writer or a career woman, but a wife, a mom, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, (you get the drift right...). Four, I have believed that a person's work should speak for themself. That one's work must make them eligible for better things in terms of salary or promotion. But the software industry where I used to work thinks that is hogwash. Or atleast, here you need to beg for things to happen and watch them not happen anyways. I got tired of begging, the ego wouldn't allow to stoop to cheap politics that seem to work for others.

If you think I have it easy sitting at home, try handling a baby who is just about to learn walking and is turning into a mini destructive machine (and a cute one at that). Sitting at a desk and using your brain is easier than running behind an active baby of this generation and taking up responsibility to ensure he has a decently happy infant/toddlerhood. So the son beckons. And here's the mom obliging and hoping that God gives her no reason to regret yet another of her whimsical and atypical decisions.

What you can do if you have read until here, is to wish me luck! And stay in touch!
Thanks!

Edited -to - add: It is AMAZING to hear from so many friends on this post and to receive encouragement! Makes me feel better already and more confident about what I am doing!!! THANKS a lot...

Where would you want to be?

2010-01-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

Consider this...

Company A pampers you like king/queen (no gender bias there!), takes care of your basic needs so you only work towards what you are there in the first place for. Work then becomes an all consuming passion and workaholics are all around you. You don't mind taking work related calls in the wee hours of the night because even in your sleep, you dream about work. Work is such an important part of your identity that you cannot imagine life without it.

Company B treats you like dirt. They do nothing for you until you pester them through innumerable mails. They abuse you for mailing them so many times because you are asking for what seems to be your right. They delay important communication, they don't give you what's yours until you fight for it. Career growth seems like a joke. Higher ups claim you need to wait longer for things to happen because they themselves waited long, you know... and the like. You do not have a clear picture of anything because you are not supposed to have. However, work wise, you are expected to give your best. You even doubt that if time comes to say goodbye, no one will even wonder why (rhyme unintentional).

I ask you where you want to be. I would want to be in a place which is the mix of both places. But where I am now and where I am headed to..... is what God and He alone knows.

Updates, updates!

2010-01-18T12:12:00.000-08:00

It has been a really long time! Been away from this blog close to one year, a year which thankfully was not too long to forget my password to this Blogger account.

Well, here are the updates. I am now back to work after a close to 8 month long maternity leave (one I enjoyed to the maximum). You know what they say right - All good things come to an end :( Or maybe that was just Nelly Furtado and not them saying it.

In any case, I am now working from my client's site on a very exciting project. But working from out of the parent company has a few advantages and disadvantages. And Google promises to let your clients know a lot about you - if they only bothered. So what I have done now is that I have taken my personal blog off air. Not that it had objectionable content - it had irrelevant content, content from when I was naive, single and goofy. Well, again good things end and that's not the picture I want to present to people who Google (or Bing ;)) for me, so that's blog's gone.

I shall miss that blog, because it gave me a lot of friends, made me popular as a blogger in Hyderabad in times when hardly any used to read blogs. But life moves on, I am a mom, a wife and a career woman now. And frivolous is the last thing I want to appear to be.

Sameera.

The Art of Writing Seductively

2009-03-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

The words used in the title are definitely going to increase the traffic on this site but I am not talking of erotica. I am talking here about writing (in absolutely any form) that is so seductive and persuasive that the person writing the piece achieves what he/she wants from the person reading the piece.

How many of us have been able to actually harness the power of a well-written piece? I find that just spending some more time on my written communication, for e.g. on e-mails, putting myself in the reader's shoes and writing what the reader wants to read, (without being dishonest about what I want to say) usually achieves the purpose I have written the piece for.

I would not be able to reveal the strategies I use to compose such pieces of work but the next time you write, put some thought into seducing the reader to do what you want them to do by making them feel THEY want to do it :)

Makes sense? :-s

One of the best places to effectively use this strategy would be on your resume...you should be able to make a prospective employer feel that you are not the one looking for the job, but you are the one they have been missing all these years ;)

That again probably explains why I have been postponing writing my resume for 3.5 years now :( (err........prospective employers, come back, please dont go :p)

Sameera.

Editing makes me happy!

2008-12-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

I have volunteered to edit the monthly magazine published by one of the departments at my company. And they have gladly accepted my services. Let us hope I am able to do a good job.

I love editing! Yipeee!!

TW blog recommendation 1

2008-12-25T07:48:00.000-08:00

Today's post is only a blog recommendation.

Ben Minson blogs at http://www.gryphonmountain.net
I stumbled upon his blog from http://techwriting.alltop.com/

Ben is a technical communicator whose archives I am digging into now.
He is articulate and writes really well. You, as a technical writer, will definitely have something to learn from his blog, so give it a look.

-Sameera.

Engineered Writing

2008-12-18T19:21:00.000-08:00

If you are an engineer and somehow magically also have a flair for the English language and do not mind other people asking you why you are not "coding", "testing" or doing such other wonderful things, you might want to consider documentation for a living.

I work in a Indian services company and we are trying to bag some new projects. And these new projects do not look very easy for a non-technical person to work on. They contain highly technical information and would require an in-depth domain knowledge on the part of the writer.

The tools we are expected to use are also getting complex by the day, though I doubt if one has to be an engineer to want to play around with tools. And Yes Sir, the clients also now insist on engineers to do their documentation.

So, all in all, it is a good time for us. But then again, recession and market slowdown do not warrant the recruitment of new talent. They want to use whoever is available :) and get the job done through them.

I haven't been in the technical writing long enough to say this but I already notice a paradigm shift in the expectations from writers. And I am very glad about it.
We do not want to be just typists with English knowledge, anymore :)

Good day to the one or two people who read this blog :p
Sameera.

I miss....

2008-09-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

I miss having a role model at work. Someone who inspires awe in me and makes me want to grow professionally and aspire to become like them.

S was this person previously. He was sharp, smart and knew what he wanted and better still how to get it. He has left the organization now, creating a void.

I have met a lot of people who set good examples of what or who I do not want to become as I grow professionally. And thank you for the learnings, but it is demotivating not to have a role model.

When I meet people from other fields who seem to have got it all right or sorted out, it is their work-life balance that I am really interested more in. How they have (assuming they have) ensured a decent personal life without letting their success at work become an all encompassing addiction.

Last year, if someone had told me I would also one day become a work addict, I would have laughed in their face and complimented them on their sense of humor. Now, unfortunately not so much. :(

I hope to meet a role model soon. Maybe an online or distant role model is not such a bad idea.

Sameera.

P.S - My next post should be on documentation for large (size) projects.

Empty promises

2008-06-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was promised something. I hadn't asked for it, so it came as a welcome surprise. And an unwelcome shock when they decided not to grant it after all.

It took me sometime to understand what had happened and why. Knowing them well, I should have been surprised if they had gone ahead and granted it after all!

Note-to-self for later on - If something cannot be done for someone and if the power of decision making is in my hands, let me not abuse the power.

If there is a real reason I think it shouldn't (needn't?) be granted, let me make it clear to the person involved. And let me give them hope by asking them to improve in certain areas. To me, that is a win-win situation.

Presentations: Keeping the audience interested

2008-05-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a session, albeit telephonically, on how to keep your audience hooked to the topic you are presenting.

We all know that at any given time during presentations, half the audience is struggling to keep their eyes open. The other half is making notes on why this presenter shouldn't be promoted, in order to share their finding with their boss.

However, almost magically, when the presenter says, "Thank you. Any questions?" the sleeping member(s) are snapped back to reality, fervently hoping no one heard them snore or talk gibberish during their siesta. What they forget, at this crucial time, is that everyone else is also fervently hoping the same to even bother.

This (sleeping) is nothing but a waste of time not only for the presenter but also for the audience (err, i.e. if you are cruel and call stress-busting a waste of time!!) Only when the audience is able to gather something from the session, can a presenter congratulate himself/herself on a job well done!

To get back to the session I attended, we were handed printed hand-outs with the presentation material. The first look blew me away. The presenter guy (PG) had made a fabulous Powerpoint presentation. It was well formatted, neat, contained apt images on each slide (I love images! They make the dead come alive, if you ask me!) and contained sensible headings and matter. We could make out that PG did a great job with the slides.

However, there were a few shortcomings from PG's side:

1) Not pausing to ask the audience if they were at par with him. Equally irritating it is, when the presenter pauses at the end of each slide, to find out if the audience is following him/her.

2) Speaking so fast that it was at times difficult to make out whether PG was speaking in English or in the vernacular.

3) And the most crucial one: Not understanding the importance and duration of the audience attention span. My old manager once told me that 20 mins is the time that a typical audience can grant you to let you impress them with your presentation.

Let's make that 30 mins, if your manager is also sitting in the same room with you. :D. And 35 mins if the appraisal season is close.

Unfortunately, PG rambled on and on, forgetting that we wanted to be enlightened not burdened with excess information. The session went on for 60 mins (20 mins (since my manager wasn't there)* 3). That only meant it was three times as bad.

It was a pity that the images and PG's hardwork on making the slides, came to naught, due to excessive rambling! :(

-Sameera.

How I became a technical writer

2008-05-31T02:26:00.000-07:00

In 2005, I had completed my engineering in Computer Science and Technology from a reputed college. I had also passed out with flying colors and was ranked 5th in my department. Through campus recruitments at this college, I had landed jobs with two IT service companies.

Thus, the plans for a masters degree in Uncle Sam's land was abandoned and I joined what I thought was the better of the two companies.

Life should have been a rosy picture from then on but was anything but! We were assigned development projects in Java for a Finnish telecom client (;)). Life was good because I had an awesome bunch of friends. But, I wasn't fond of my work. I wasn't bad at it either. At the end of the day, the job got done either through google, or with help from friends, managers and sometimes my own brain.

Since I wasn't really happy, I couldn't visualise myself doing the same thing for a long time to come. The more I thought about a future developing software, the more anxiety attacks I got. I knew the last thing I was was 'irreplaceable'. My team members did a much better job than me and with more interest too:)!

Two years passed thus. My mind was pestering me into considering 'writing' for a living. You see, writing had always been a passion. I got the love of literature from my parents, both of whom are masters (M.As) in English literature. Since my childhood, the house was always filled with novels and my nose was always in them. I couldn't decide whether writing should be given the importance of a hobby or more.

Ultimately it reached a stage where I contemplated leaving the industry and teaching English for a living. I was willing to look at schools, colleges, training centres that prepared students for exams like the GRE, GMAT, IELTS etc. The salary would be abysmal compared to what I was drawing as a software engineer but I convinced myself that being content at work was more important than money. I could probably write part-time as well.

And then, God revealed HIS plan for me. I was having lunch with pals one day and a friend (let's call him Pr) pointed out to a group sitting close by and informed me they were "technical writers". I promptly found out more about this role, through a tech writer whom Pr introduced me to.

This writer after a chat with me, informed his boss R that I was keen on writing. R, at the time, was looking out for writers and decided to meet me up for something like an informal interview.

I was able to convince R that I would suit the role. I then took a test, and performed pretty well in it(:)) The decision to absorb me in their team was made on the spot.

Next came the tough job of convincing my manager, at the time, to release me from the development project. Meanwhile, friends opposed the idea. My old manager thought I was chickening out of development and told me that I was not as bad as I had imagined myself to be. My friends were wondering what had gotten into me and why I was so keen on what then was an unknown and nascent field.

But my stubborn mind was made up. I had nothing to lose. Even if I really hated the new work, I convinced myself that it couldn't be worse than what development was for me.I could always get back to development later, if needed.

Let's just say, the hand of God played its part and two months down the line, after a struggle for release from my development project, I became a "technical writer".

It has been 8 months since and probably the 8 most satisfying months at work for me. I know I have a long way to go before I establish myself here, but my heart knows this is what it always desired!

:)
Signing off,
Sameera.

Hello Beautiful World! (Why this blog was born)

2008-05-31T01:45:00.001-07:00

I never thought I'd be doing this, creating my "technical" blog that is. In the past, I had written off people who couldn't seem to keep their work out of their blogs and look where I am now!

So what made the difference? To put it simply, I loathed my earlier job (software developer) and I really enjoy my current one (tech writer) now!

Some other FAQs (I am an optimist, someone, someday is going to find this blog (and read it)!)

Who am I?
Just another technical writer, not so experienced professionally, yet. Currently I work in the IT service industry for a telecom client.

And why a blog?
I love blogging and have a personal one elsewhere. But I'd rather keep my professional and personal lives apart. If you know who I am already, well, please keep that to yourself :) I just need this space to keep track of my professional life, to connect with other technical writers and to keep the writer in me alive!

Why should you be interested in what I write?

I can't say I have anything new, different or highly intellectually stimulating to offer. I am no expert in the field (yet!, notice how 'yet' makes a difference? :)) I probably can't solve any of your work-related queries either.

But you will hear from me on my thoughts and experience!

Bye bye world,
Sameera.