I recently sat on a panel of professionals with English and communications degrees at one of Augusta State University’s Career Spotlight forums. The panel was comprised of a magazine editor, a newspaper reporter turned layout designer, a corporate trainer, and me representing technical writing.

The students who attended our session were most interested in what they could do now so that they would be marketable when they graduated. Since we weren’t focused exclusively on technical writing, the answers we gave were fairly general, but valuable for tech comm students nonetheless:

  • Publish early and often! Take advantage of opportunities to be published while in school (school publications, freelancing with local publications, volunteer documentation for non-profits, etc.) — in short, build a portfolio so that you don’t walk into a job interview with a piece of paper that says someone else deemed you decent enough, but with your own body of work.
  • Consume what you want to produce! If you want to write magazine articles, read magazines. Want to be a reporter? Read newspapers. Want to be a technical writer? Poke through help applications and user manuals. Develop an eye for quality in the industry that you want to work in.
  • Intern! Co-op! Volunteer! Get some sort of job experience by the time you graduate, with references that speak to you as a peer or employee, not as a student.

I was honored to be asked to sit on the panel, and I hope I sparked an interest in technical writing in some of the students.

What advice would you give students considering technical writing as a career?