Not What You Wanted to Read About?
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Read, Read and Re-Read

• Read at least one book and preferably three, cover-to-cover about topics which are both complex and hard to grasp. If you are going into the High Tech sector, read at least one book about how the internet works. Buy your book(s) carefully.

• Chose a book with topics you know very little about and if you buy more then one book, make sure the other books are about different topics. 

The purpose of this purchase is three fold: 

1. learn how the newest books are formatted and 

2. learn enough about the latest discoveries in the field to discuss them for at least 10 minutes

3. discuss these books at all your interviews

While reading, it will be your job to critique how well the book was written. It doesn't matter if you like the book or not. If you like it, you can talk about what you liked about it, if you dislike it, you will be able to discuss it's shortcomings intelligently. 

Look for This While Reading

Here are some questions you'll have to answer all the time about your own writing when you are a Technical Writer so I urge you to begin your first job before you are hired by considering  these things while you read your  books: 

If you are a reader who would like to add to this list, please email me with your suggestions: allwrite@altogether.com

• do the table of contents summarize the key ideas
• do the explanations of the illustrations walk you through the understanding of the illustration
• do the table of contents within each chapter summarize the key ideas
• physically, how does the book look to you:
  *is the white space balanced 
  *does the content frighten you
  *do you like the fonts 
  *are there blank pages for no reason
  *does the page layout make the book easy to read
• what would you change about the book

Tip: you can learn much of what it takes to be a Technical Writer looking at the software and books you already own with new eyes.

Nobody Knows Everything

You don't have to know everything about the product you are going to write about but you do have to know some or all of the software I suggest.  I'll assume you know how to use a Word Processing program like Microsoft Word but that won't be enough. Don't worry, you won't need to learn all these programs at once.

Use What You've Got

If you don't have a strong background, it is perfectly okay to  take your book(s) to the interview in order to show your future Boss that you have already started learning about Technical Writing.  The more organized you are going into your interviews, the better you look to the strangers who are considering what you will really be like to work with.

Other Links

I also recommend keeping this article by Adolfo Rodriguez handy if you are hoping to work in as a High Tech technical writer.