Interviewing

Question: What do you do when you have spent a great deal of time and effort producing materials that are copyrighted by your company? I have written several manuals on using software owned by my company and I am wary of using these as samples because of copyright and ownership issues. How do you show what you have accomplished without causing problems?

Answer: Real tech writers print out their best writing (proofread, up-to-code) and keep it in the garage. You can only get your next tech writing job by showing sample user guides or online help file. We know, we get the requests for samples from our customers, who need to hire a tech writer. You can change your samples, take out sensitive, secret stuff. But you have to have the pages to show. And they have to look right.