A Career in Technical Writing: By the time I get to Phoenix

Posted by John Hewitt on 8/17/2008 under Featured, Technical Writing, Writing, Writing Business |

Bullet Points

• The more relaxed you are, the better a job interview tends to go
• Subject knowledge is great, but tools skills help you land jobs
• A service level agreement (SLA) is a document that describes the performance criteria a provider promises to meet while delivering a service.

The Next Interview

I drove to Phoenix to interview for a contract at a company that specialized in providing computer services and training. This company was a major player in the services field, but the place was decidedly less fancy than the one that had flown me into Dallas. The corporate location doubled as a call center. Like most call centers, the walls were covered with motivational sayings and banners pushing sales level contests and company pride. I couldn’t help but think of my experiences with the Help Desk manager at PHPS who wanted me to be a high-energy technical writer with a big smile on my face. The manager at this company, however, was decidedly low-energy. He was overweight and unkempt — exactly the sort of geek I was comfortable working with.

We went over my experience and I showed him my newly improved portfolio. He seemed happy with it. He asked me the standard questions about past experience and work styles. He seemed to like my answers and I felt as if I was a good fit for what they were looking for. At the end of the interview he asked how soon I could be available if they decided they needed me. “Next week,” I told him. He nodded and shook my hand. I wasn’t sure if I had the job, but I felt better about this interview than I did about the interview in Dallas. When I got home, there was a message on my voice mail from the recruiter. She said that the manager had been very impressed. He had one more interview left to do, but I was the front-runner.

A few minutes later, I received a phone call from another Phoenix recruiter. This recruiter wanted to know if I was available for an interview today. I told her that I had just gotten back from Phoenix. I couldn’t handle driving back up there again that day, but I would be happy to come in the next day. She set up a meeting for eight the next morning.

Mega-Corporation

It was another contract position. This interview was with a mega-corporation that had more fingers in more pies than you can imagine. The first two companies I had interviewed with were in the Fortune 500, but this one was in the top ten. It not only had a substantial retail and manufacturing presence, it was also a major military contractor. The location I interviewed at came complete with its own little U.S. Army base.

I interviewed with two people, a manager and a writer. The writer had accepted another position, and they were looking for someone to replace her. Of my three interviews, this was the most relaxed. I was fairly sure that I had the other job and it showed. I sat back in my chair and listened to the two of them pitch the position. They told me that I would be writing supporting documentation for a major SAP (a finance and administration package for large companies) conversion project. Much of my work would be service level agreements and planning documents. It sounded like a dull job to me, but I didn’t say that in the interview. I stayed positive. My interviewers were mainly concerned with my Microsoft Word and FrameMaker skills. I told them I had once been a Microsoft Word trainer, and that everything in my portfolio was created in FrameMaker. That was what they wanted to hear. I walked out of the meeting feeling good.

An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse

That afternoon I got feedback on all three of my interviews. The interview in Dallas had been a bust, just as I suspected. They didn’t like my sample and they didn’t think I was a good fit for the company. The recruiter seemed slightly annoyed with me, and reminded me that my beach time would end with the next check. I was no longer their employee. Both Phoenix interviews, however, resulted in job offers. The computer services company offered me $25 per hour for a six-month contract that could extend “indefinitely”. The megacorporation offered me the same amount, but for a year contract. I told the recruiter and account manager for the megacorporation that I preferred the other contract. The duration was shorter, but the work sounded more interesting to me. I told them I didn’t want to spend the next year of life writing service level agreements and such.

The account manager asked if a higher offer might persuade me. I told her it might, but that I planned to accept the other offer as soon as I got off the phone. She asked me to wait a half hour. Forty-five minutes later, she called back. She upped the offer to $30 an hour plus a $240 a week tax-free mileage allowance for my travel expenses. I still wasn’t too thrilled with the work, but I needed the money (my debts were far from paid off) so I took the offer. Little did I know that I would soon be flirting with disaster…

Further Reading

Technical Writing – Finding Jobs Through Agencies by Ugur Akinci, Ph.D.: Additional information on what to consider when using a consulting agency in your technical writing job search.

Questions

• If you had to choose between a moderate paying job that sounded interesting or a much higher paying job that sounded dull, which would you choose?
• Would your answer change if you were deep in debt or completely out of debt?

Note: This post was originally a part of the last post in the series, Planes, Trainers and Automobiles but was separated because it ran too long. The two posts are really companion pieces.