Essay

Building a Technical Writing Portfolio

by Linnea Dodson

Technical writing is one of the few careers in which building a portfolio can be almost impossible. Novice writers have little experience and experienced writers are often muzzled by confidentiality clauses.

Fortunately, employers know this. Unfortunately, you still need a portfolio.

The solution is to show your skills by building writing samples based on common, household items. No example is too small or too silly, not in a field in which a standard interview request is "Describe how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

If you are applying for a job that involves clarifying a lot of industry jargon, start by opening your medicine chest and reaching for the aspirin — not to cure the headaches of job hunting, but to read the label. Warning labels and the legal fine print attached to drug or sweepstakes advertisements are fertile ground on which to practise jargon-busting. You'll impress any employer if you can reduce the word count while raising the comprehensibility of all that miniscule print.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a job that involves how-to writing, walk through your home and pick three things that needed to be assembled and three things that plug into the wall. Without looking at the original instructions, write new assembly or installation guides. If at all possible, add appropriate bonus features: recipes for the microwave, instructions on the best way to position stereo speakers, and so on. Definitely include directions on how to program the VCR.

Training guides are excellent samples to have in a portfolio. Describing any skill you have, from teaching dog obedience to game strategizing, can be the basis of a training guide. Keep in mind that "Juggling in 10 Easy Steps" may not fit every company to which you apply. Provide one or two software manuals by downloading inexpensive shareware and writing instructions for them.

Not only should you write several software training guides, try writing as many different documents as you can for each program. A reasonably complex program could be the basis for a user's manual, an installation guide, a quick-start brochure, on-line help, a training guide, and perhaps even an outline for computer-based training.

A technical writing portfolio is not limited by your experience, but by your imagination. And a good imagination is one of the things employers like to see in a technical writer.

Linnea Dodson is a freelance writer with five years of technical writing experience. She is currently writing for a government contractor and earning a Masters in writing.