Ten Tips to Grow Your Writing Career: A Manager's Perspective (Part I)

— Francisco Abedrabbo

Your career can succeed or fail depending on how well you perform in interviews, how good a team player you are, how knowledgeable you are about the products you document, and how well you plan before you write. Part I of this article covers 4 of the 10 key tips for growing your career. The rest of the tips will be covered in the next issue of Indus.

You spend a lot of time working and making sure you do not miss any deliverables, but you may tend to forget that your career’s growth is not based only on how well you do your job. There are many other factors, such as teamwork and honesty, that are critical to your career. In my experience, documentation managers are constantly evaluating these factors. However, some writers are not even aware of the performance aspects managers think are critical for a writer to get promoted. This article describes the first 4 of 10 tips that you can use for growing your writing career.

1. Interviewing: The Mystery and Magic

Your ability to find a job depends to a large extent on how well you perform in the interview. You must learn the mystery and magic of interviewing. If you prepare well for the interview, you improve your chances of getting the job. Your goal is to ensure that, at the end of the interview, you leave behind a good impression of yourself. However, do not feel discouraged if you do not do well during the first few interviews you face. It takes practice to master the interview process.

What to do and what to say during an interview can be confusing, because your style will need to vary depending on who is conducting your interview. For example, being interviewed by a manager is not the same as being interviewed by a future peer. The manager is looking for a specific match for the available job and does not have a lot of time. The future peer is looking at whether or not you are a team player and what skills and attributes you bring to the table. Therefore, it is important to prepare for a variety of interview possibilities. In general, you should focus on your strengths and abilities. To practice your responses to common interview scenarios, you should stage a few mock interviews with friends before going though a formal interview.

It can be hard to know what a company is looking for, because you may not have a complete profile of their needs. If you have questions about the specific job requirements, be sure to ask the interviewer to get a better understanding, being mindful not to overwhelm the interviewer. Ensure that your questions are relevant to the company.

The following are some additional interviewing tips:

  • Do some research on the company prior to the interview. Visit the company Web site as well as those of other companies in the industry. Look up information about their product line. Make your questions and comments about the company as specific as possible.
  • Study the questions that managers are most likely to ask, and prepare your responses.
  • Be concise.
  • When interviewing with a manager, be aware that he or she usually knows within the first 2 minutes whether or not the interview is moving forward on a positive note. Be sure to make a good first impression.
  • The manner in which an interview ends is as important as the beginning. Be gracious as you leave.
  • Stay confident throughout the interview.
  • Ensure that you watch your body language. Maintain an open but professional posture.
  • Ensure that you also watch the interviewer’s body language. Is he or she interested or bored?
  • Do not be afraid to ask if your response was clear or if they need more information from you.
  • If you do not know something, say so. Add that you are willing to learn.
  • If you are trying to fake it, the manager will know. Be honest. Honesty is a very important quality that managers look for in candidates and employees. I have hired many people on the basis of their honesty.
  • Identify your strengths and weaknesses. A typical interview question is: “Can you list three of your strengths and three weaknesses?” Be honest and explain what you are doing to fix your weaknesses. For example, you can say: “One of my weaknesses is that I don’t plan too much. However, I have started to be more careful, and if I think I am going to have problems meeting a deadline, I talk to management early to put together a backup plan.”

Ensure that you do not fall into a trap. If you are asked to rate your skill on a specific technology, be prepared for detailed follow-up questions if you rate yourself an expert. Don’t rate yourself higher than you are just to impress the interviewer.

2. Résumés: Ensure That Your Résumé Represents Who You Really Are

Your résumé is a summary of your career on a single sheet of paper. Ensure that it represents who you are. Believe it or not, I have seen many people copy other people’s objectives and even entire paragraphs, along with the same typos and grammar problems.
 
Here are a few tips for making sure your résumé stands out:

  • Never copy from someone else’s résumé, not even the objective.
  • Remember that managers and human resource consultants spend about 30 seconds to a minute reviewing a résumé—and they are the decision makers who will select you for an interview. Make your 30 seconds count.
  • Keep your résumé short; don't create a 6-page résumé that no one would have the time to read.
  • Don't include a lot of personal information.
  • Don't use jargon and specialized terminology that only a select audience would understand.
  • Don’t claim technical knowledge that you don’t have. Many applicants list an impressive array of technologies (languages, operating systems, and protocols) but are not actually proficient in them.
  • Tailor your résumé to the job requirements. Omit experience that is not directly relevant to the job, and present the experience you do have in terms that make the connection to the job clear. For example, if all your experience is in curriculum development and the job requires you to create printed manuals, you can emphasize that you are skilled in learning technical information, organizing it, and presenting it clearly.
  • Identify the parts of your résumé that you can put less emphasis on and the parts that are important. As your career grows, you can become more creative on what to include in your résumé.
  • Don't sign your résumé certifying it to be true to the best of your ability. It is supposed to be true, regardless of whether or not you certify it.
  • If you are applying at a U.S.-based company, use American spelling and style.
  • Avoid big words and long sentences. Keep your language simple and direct.
  • Include a cover letter.
  • Ensure that your résumé and cover letter do not contain typos, spelling errors, grammar errors, and formatting inconsistencies.
  • Ensure that you are easy to contact.

3. Teamwork: It Is Always About Teamwork and Initiative

Teamwork is one of the most important factors in nearly every company. Your success hinges on the success of your team. You may be a great individual contributor, but if you cannot work well with your team members, then you are not helping your career. Successful companies are built on team spirit. A company whose employees work well together is a company where you would want to come to work everyday. In such a company, you actually look forward to sharing your thoughts and collaborating with your team members and managers.

It’s not just about you! Collaborate with team members. Establish good relationships with other writers, developers, and product managers. They are critical to your success and growth. I have seen many good writers’ careers stopped short because they did not have a good relationship with development teams. Life becomes more rewarding when you don’t have to deal with the “I cannot talk to Pravin” or the “I cannot stand Meera’s attitude” problem. Try to work with everyone. Collaboration can also facilitate the discovery of new solutions to problems and innovative ways to present information.

Management places a high value on those who are great team players. Here are some tips toward improving your team skills:

  • Be part of the team, and take the initiative whenever you are required to do so. For example, if you are waiting for a decision from development, arrange a meeting with all the decision makers to communicate your dependencies. This will help them communicate with each other and resolve blocking issues.
  • Try to mix assignments in which you are the sole writer with assignments in which you are working as part of a team. Working collaboratively with other writers is a skill in itself, and there is always something to learn from other writers. Besides your own work, be aware of what is going on in your team. If you see problems in other areas that you can resolve, do so. For example, contribute freely if you find that you can help new people come up to speed or see someone struggling with a task.
  • Don't stay at your desk the entire day. Walk the halls. You cannot imagine how much one learns from just walking around and talking to other team members.
  • Make a point of talking to development managers, product mangers, and technical leads. They can give you valuable perspective on what is going on in the company. Maybe there is some way you can help them. For example, you can help by editing a white paper or contributing to a product specification.

If you are a team player, your manager will see that you can work with others, and that you are proactive and knowledgeable about what is going on in the team. If a project lead or manager position opens up, you may be in the running. If a promotion opportunity to documentation manager arises, the development leads and product manager are often consulted on who should get the position. You may have to interview with them. It helps if they are aware of you and your work. For someone they really respect, they will immediately give the green signal for promotion. For example, "I have worked with Susan over the years, and she always gets things done. She is good. She would be a great manager." is much better than "Hmmm. Susan? What does she do?"

4. Knowledge: With Knowledge Comes Wisdom

Be willing to learn. Become as knowledgeable as possible about areas of your product relevant to your assignments. By gaining a sufficient amount of knowledge about your product, you can gain greater respect from developers and product managers, which would make your life as a writer much more rewarding and dynamic. Here are some tips to follow:

  • Don’t just become a scribe. Feel it! Live it!
  • If you don't know it, learn it.
  • If you don't understand something, don't be afraid to ask.
  • Read books, take classes, do whatever it takes to be able to talk about the subject matter with your subject matter expert (SME) in a knowledgeable way. For example, if your audience is composed of application developers, take a class on programming if you feel that just reading programming material is not helping you. After you have thought about, researched, and tried to write about a topic, if you still don't understand it, go back and ask the SME a second time. Prepare a draft and present it to the SME so that he or she can see what exactly you don't understand.
  • Don't stay in one product area for too long. If you have no choice, ensure that you are doing new and challenging things in that particular product area.
  • Do your homework. Never go to a developer or product manager without having thoroughly researched the issue yourself. Never sit down in front of a developer and ask, "So how does this work?" Tell the developer how you think it works, and he or she can correct you if necessary.
  • Have someone familiar with your topic perform a preliminary review before you submit your documentation for review by a wider audience.
  • Don't rely on information you receive through a specification or write-up authored by someone else. Whenever possible, test and retest a procedure, so that you thoroughly understand what you are writing about from the user's perspective.
  • Keep yourself up to date on new technologies. You could be responsible for introducing and implementing a new technology for your team.

You are the master of your career. You are the sole owner of its success or failure. There are many issues that can easily derail it. However, if implemented correctly, the strategies and tips outlined in this article can help your career succeed. The next issue will cover the remaining tips to grow your career.

About the Author

Francisco Abedrabbo is Senior Director of Documentation in the Server Technologies Division of Oracle Corporation. He has over 20 years of experience working for a variety of high-tech companies in the Bay Area, California. At Oracle, he is responsible for a documentation set of over 500 manuals. He leads a global team of over 210 writers and managers in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada, and India.
Also in This Issue

STC India | Home | Contact Us

Copyright © 2007, India Chapter of STC. All rights reserved.