Demonstrate How Your Skills Fit Employers' Needs

by Lew
(Independence, WV)

I may be the only person I know who got a job because of what I didn’t know, rather than what I did know. I successfully became a technical writer for a university computing department with absolutely no technical writing experience.

The department wanted someone to write user manuals in terms non-computer users could understand instead of complicated technical jargon programmers typically used.

While I had a background in computer use, I was not a technical writer. However, I had written numerous papers in my undergraduate years and in graduate school.

Thinking my lack of technical writing training might be a problem, I took several of the papers to the interview and produced them when my formal writing experience – or lack thereof – was questioned. Several involved technical Russian language issues. The interviewer had no trouble understanding the documents, and I was hired.

The moral to my story is to always consider how talents you may have can fit the needs of an employer and be prepared to demonstrate those talents. As I advanced to a manager and later director of the same department, I interviewed many applicants. Few were an exact match to the open position, but the successful ones were able to demonstrate how their skills could fit our needs.