What I Wish I Had Known

By John Hedtke | Fellow

My first official job as a technical communicator was in 1984, when men were men and women were women and cars were cars and 640K and dual floppy disk drives were good enough for anybody. I did well and I’ve generally had a great time. But being a good technical communicator entails a lot more than knowing how to write a good sentence and use a word processor. I would have benefitted strongly from having someone sit me down and say, “Here are things you should know that will save you time, money, and pain if you learn them now.”

I’d like to pass on these things to you. All of them are true and all of them apply to you, personally, right where you’re sitting now.

Who Are You?

These things are important for knowing yourself and growing.

Figure out what you want.

Do homework to identify what you want with a life coach, a mentor, or even a therapist. Knowing yourself lets you grow into the person you want to become, instead of just another stuffed shirt. Also figure out what matters to you in a job: not the big, profound things, but the little stuff. Are you a morning or a night person? Do you mind a long commute? Paying for your own parking? Are you willing to work extra hours or odd schedules? Do you need good coffee there? Is telecommuting important? I know these things sound trivial, but everyone has little preferences like these that make a big difference to overall job satisfaction.

Tip: As part of this, figure out if you prefer working captive, freelance, or both. Each has advantages, but people who like freelancing aren’t usually as comfortable with captivity, and vice versa. If you are doing one or the other because you think that you “should,” you’ll only make yourself unhappy. Try both to see how each feels, then go with what you like.

If you like something, do it.

The saying “Do what you love and the money will follow” is true. Don’t be afraid to take some risks. If you’ve never tried something that sounds interesting, do it! You may love it, you may hate it, but at least you’ll know. For example, I became an author because it sounded exciting. (Look at tradebookauthor.com if you’re interested in trying this for yourself.) I’ve published 26 books and almost none of them ever paid off directly, but the money I’ve made off of my books indirectly is another story. A recent contract (doing disaster recovery consulting) is a direct result of my last book (on disaster preparedness). Although the book only made me about $3,000, I’ve made $150,000 on this job so far.

Tip: Don’t be afraid to fail. The person who has never failed nor gotten fired is not stretching themselves enough.

Career Development

These things are important for getting the most out of the job you have.

Network!

STC has done wonders for me. I’ve made lifelong friends, I’ve had epic times, and I’ve made a million dollars I’d not have made otherwise. It’s all from participating in STC at the local and Society levels.

Tip: You can belong to more than one professional organization.

Getting exposure.

Never forget that you are usually working somewhere because of the money you’re being paid. When someone asks you to do a job for less than the going rate, consider if you’ll benefit from the experience. If you don’t have much experience or are completely new to a field, you may be willing to work for less money. But don’t sign up for a long-term assignment at a cheap rate just because you don’t have the experience; at least build in the idea of getting more money as soon as you’ve proven yourself.

Tip: If someone offers you a cut rate and says “it’ll be good exposure for you,” they’re being cheap and they hope you’re too dumb to notice. You’re definitely going to have problems with people like that, so negotiate hard and don’t be afraid to walk away.

Sometimes you just have to do what’s available.

Not every job is noble, fun, or good work. You sometimes have to take an awful job because it’s the only job out there. I’ve had a few. They’re unpleasant, but they’re what’s available. Be professional and keep your ears open for something better. Freelancers, take note: no one ever hires a contractor because they’re having a nice day and they want to share it. Clients are hiring you to solve a problem, which usually has an underlying cause that can occasionally be very unpleasant.

Tip: Grit your teeth and remember that the client isn’t hiring you to be their therapist. You’re hired to do a job with a specific scope and purpose. Do it as best you can and be ready to go elsewhere when a better job appears.

Always be looking for your next job.

Start looking for your next job the day you start your current job. Sure, you need to understand the basics of technical communication and have a good grounding in fundamentals, but after that, you can branch out. You shouldn’t leap out the door at a moment’s notice, but be open to possibilities.

Think about what you’d like to do next. If you’re a writer, consider being a trainer, project lead, technical publications manager, business analyst, usability specialist, or dozens of other things. Your skill set as a technical communicator is 95% of the skills for most other writing, analysis, and consulting jobs; the only difference is how you package these skills.

Tip: Cultivate agencies and recruiters. I’ve known some recruiters for over 30 years. I can always phone them up and ask if they know of a job for me or someone else.

Keep a day log.

Keep a day log, rather like a job diary. This is really private; don’t even volunteer that you’re doing this. Write the things that happen and what you do. Most importantly, write down how you feel about things that happen. When you start this, you’ll write things about how you feel tense or distrustful at a meeting but have no idea why, but three weeks later, you discover that something was going on. Your tummy was warning you based on nonverbal cues.

Keeping a day log lets you build a vocabulary of emotional concepts that you can use to analyze your feelings in later job situations so you can be alert for things coming at you.

Tip: Make note of everything you complete, too. That’s excellent material during salary reviews. (Write it all down, no matter how trivial it seems at the time.)

Save copies of everything.

Whenever you create something, keep copies. Get three copies of printed documents. One copy is for your portfolio and online samples; the others are backup copies that get sealed in separate Ziploc bags that go into a black plastic garbage bag, which then goes into a box on a high shelf somewhere. For online docs, burn three CDs or DVDs and store them the same way. You always want to keep multiple copies because you’ll never be able to get copies five years later and a single CD might have a read error or get scratched.

Also keep a list of everything you’ve done: every project or job you had, person you worked for, article you published, conference you attended, and presentation you made. This is very helpful when customizing your résumé for a particular job, as well as for many self-marketing efforts.

Tip: You use your copies and history for building portfolios, résumés, online sample files, and personal websites.

Read!

Read books and magazine articles in the profession! If you read one book and one or two magazines a month for a year, you’ll (a) be doing more than 95% of your peers, and (b) you might be ready for a promotion or new job. The most successful technical communicators are learning new tools, skills, and disciplines continually.

Tip: Read things completely outside your skill set and career focus. Not only is cross-disciplinary information valuable for solving problems, you may discover something new that you want to pursue fulltime.

People Skills

These things make your dealings with other people better.

Dress for success.

Dressing well can get you a lot of extra status (and more money, too). At many contracts, I’ve been deferred to as if I’m an executive simply because I wear starched dress shirts and have a good collection of ties.

Tip: It’s okay to dress casually when working at home, but dressing up for your client or employer validates that you’re worth whatever they’re paying you, particularly if it’s a casual office.

Learn to be an extrovert.

Technical communication is a field that goes very well with introversion: being alone and not interacting with people for hours and all sorts of other things. Unfortunately, being an introvert is not optimal for marketing yourself. You need to develop the ability to act like an extrovert. This is not something that comes naturally to most introverts, but it’s good to be able to schmooze people. One of my favorite people is an introvert who’s developed an extroverted personality she uses at conferences and with clients … but she recharges like other introverts, by being alone and not interacting with people.

As part of this, learn your communication style. Consider a Myers-Briggs test. If you’re a bounding extrovert like me, you’ll discover that some people feel threatened by your mere presence and there’s nothing you can do but sit in the corner and be quiet. (Yes, it’ll drive you crazy.) If you’re an introvert, you need to learn to present your ideas effectively and not get overridden by the noise from the bounding extroverts.

Tip: Knowing your strengths and weaknesses helps you communicate better with other people.

You really are going to have bribe people for information.

You’ve heard about having to take chocolate chip cookies in to get information out of developers and SMEs? That’s true more often than we like. I know you’re a professional, you’ve got a Masters degree, you deserve respect, blah blah blah … but this is the way things sometimes are.

Tip: You may have great skills, but technical communication is not a field that usually pays you in respect. I talk about why this is in a presentation called “Seeding the Clouds,” available at www.hedtke.com/downloads/Seeding_the_Clouds.mov.

Some people cheat.

There aren’t “two kinds” of people in the world, there are three:

• People who play fair.
• People who don’t.
• People who cheat.

The third class of people is the bad one. They get you to trust them and you’ll then discover you’ve been shafted. You have to go through the mill a few times before you develop radar for this type of person and it won’t be fun. Trust your tummy; if it feels tight for any reason, believe it! You may not know why at first, but your tummy’s going to be right, even if you don’t want to believe what it’s telling you.

Tip: Your day log can help you identify what’s happening in this kind of situation.

The Important Stuff

These are the things that will matter to you for the rest of your life.

Protect your hearing.

Computers and printers all have cooling fans that make a surprising amount of noise. It’s white noise, so you don’t usually notice it, but your ears are getting battered daily. The result of working next to all this gear is that you’re going to suffer high-end hearing loss after 10, 20 years. Try wearing noise-cancelling headphones, ear plugs, or move the equipment with the fans as far away from you as possible and put it under a noise hood.

Tip: Try turning off all the gear in your office or cube area sometime and see how quiet it really is by comparison. We tune out the noise, but it’s overwhelming.

Don’t overwork.

When you’re young and immortal, the temptation to work all night or pull down an extra contract in addition to your regular job is great. After all, you can sleep on the weekends, make mountains of money, and rack up experience faster than anyone you know. I did this for a decade and I had a terrific time! I won a couple dozen awards, published my first 15 books, wrote articles, worked impressive contracts and jobs, and garnered fame and some fortune. And, as a result of being chronically sleep-deprived and stressed, I also developed Type II Diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart problem. No matter what the accomplishments, being diabetic with a reduced life expectancy is simply not worth it.

Tip: Get eight hours sleep a night. Eat reasonably well. Exercise, even if it’s just taking a 20-minute walk every day. Watch your weight. Don’t smoke. You’ll feel much better and you’ll have a much longer life expectancy.

Keep in touch with everyone you’ve liked.

Life is best when you have lots of old friends. Keep in touch with everyone you’ve liked and bring them forward. (Social media makes this a lot easier than it used to be.) You’ll end up with a huge fan base, too.

Tip: Be prepared to lose some people along the way. You won’t be able to hold on to everyone and you may even outgrow some people. But don’t eliminate someone just because they’re “kind of inconvenient” at that moment. You’ll regret it.

Be optimistic.

I’m an optimist of the “Wow, my glass is 1/32 full!” type. I find opportunities where other people don’t. Most of this is simply asking the right question. For example, when you say “I need to buy a new car, but I don’t have enough money,” you’ve painted a complete picture of a reality that has no opportunity to change. Change the “but” to “and” like this: “I need to buy a new car, and I don’t have enough money.” All of a sudden, you’ve changed the script to include both premises, letting you bring other ideas into the mix. Look for the serendipity in your life and give magic a chance to happen.

Tip: Don’t be right; be happy. If you’re busy being “right,” you’re going to alienate people and usually be gloriously wrong. Being happy is always much better.

All these tips boil down to one basic idea:

It’s always about fun and bucks.

No matter what you do in life, it’s always some combination of fun and bucks. If you’re having a tough time, figure out if what you’re doing can be expressed as fun or bucks. If there’s none of either, you’re in the wrong place doing the wrong thing. Get out of there!

Tip: Start saving for retirement. Get a copy of The Richest Man in Babylon, read it, and do exactly what it says. (No talking back!) Also buy a long-term disability income policy—they’re not too expensive when you’re young.

All these ideas will make your life more prosperous, healthier, and much more fun. I would’ve had a hard time believing some of them when I was a wee sprat, but each idea has improved my life immeasurably for the knowing of it. They’ll make yours better, too. I promise.

John Hedtke owns and operates JVH Communications, which provides writing, consulting, and training services to private and government clients. He is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication and a past Board member. John can be reached through his website, www.hedtke.com. He has all kinds of stories he can’t tell in print, so look him up at STC conferences. John lives in Eugene, OR.