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Resume

Prepare a detailed resume. Remember everything starts and stops at your resume. The first step towards getting a job is ensuring that your resume gets short listed. Do mention all the projects you have worked on and your role and responsibility in that project. Mention project name in full (strictly no abbreviation), duration for what you have worked on and team size for the project.

Ensure you can justify all what you have written in it. Prepare introduction for all of your projects because interviewer will ask you to start with describing your projects.

Expectations

For a technical writer with 2 plus years of experience, interviewer expect that the writer should have exposure in the following:
 Authoring
 Structuring of the document
 Change request
 Online help
 Played a role of lead or POC in at least one project
But out of these five points, if you ask me which one is the most important and integral part then the reply would be AUTHORING.

As a technical writer authoring is the core job, so even in case if you have not written any complete manuals then you might have worked on feature changes. So present your feature updation work as an authoring project. Although it is not a 100% replacement but somehow it shows that you have done authoring and if needed you can write manuals as well.

Structuring of the document is one key area where you can impress anyone by your knowledge, you can always talk about DITA or MTBI (it’s derived from DITA but it shows that you have deep understanding of DITA).

Change request , at some point of our career we all have done CR or CQ, so use it and highlight it that you have resolved CR/CQ and do not forget to mention the tool you used for it. For example, Clarify (oracle product) or Clearquest (IBM product). Always remember that interviewers have this tendency of asking which tool you are using for what? So be ready for that and remember version number is very critical because it shows that you are a detail oriented writer. For example, if you are using FrameMaker then say Framemaker x.x (here x is the version number).

• Do you use any version control system in your current organization?
Version control system is nothing but the content management system; some people call it repository as well.

• What do you like about being a technical writer?
You can answer this the way you feel

• What is that one thing which you don’t like being a technical writer?
Get cautious because this is a dangerous question!!!!!!!!!!!
Say there is nothing which I don’t like being a technical writer even if given an opportunity to start my carrier all over again I will still choose to be a technical writer because it gives me an endless opportunity to learn so many new things on a daily basis.

Whenever you get a chance show that you have a technical bend and ready to take on technical and complex projects……optional because if you showcase it then you have to back it up as well . For example: you can say you have been troubleshooting tools for your team.

Written test

Almost all the test papers include writing a procedure to:
• Withdraw money from ATM
• Accessing your email account (gmail/yahoo)

So ensure you prepare well on these two.

Rest of the paper is general grammar.

Few favorite questions:

• Tell me about yourself.
• Give a brief about all the projects you have worked on.
• What was the most challenging project and why?
• Explain how you have resolved one conflict in your current organization?
• How you deal with SME’s?
• What is your manager opinion about you?
• Explain DDLC as followed in your organization
• Why peer review is important?
• If editorial team sends some comments and you don’t think that they are valid, what will you do?
• Is working overtime or stretching a problem for you?
• Why you want to change your job?
• How many page you can author in a day?

Technical questions

• What is router and switch and on which layers they work?
• What is static and dynamic routing?
• What do you mean by stackable switch?
• What are the different layers of TCP/IP and OSI reference model?
• What is hub, gateway?
• Full form of GSM and CDMA
• Difference between TCP/IP and OSI
• Different protocols used in telecom. For ex: SIP, H.323, SNMP etc