Heard It Through the Grapevine

Technical writers make good friends. Maybe that's because so many of us work as freelancers, moving from company to company. You need to make friends fast, get along with a variety of people, and quickly recognize who makes a good contact and who doesn't.

Whatever the reason, technical writers often pick up friends and contacts at each place they work, or at whatever publication they do an assignment for. Pretty soon, you find out that a good source of new job leads is the group of technical writers you've come to know.

For instance, I used to work at BYTE Magazine, and I'm still in touch with a half a dozen folks from there, many of them freelancers like myself. Then there are the people I've worked with at EMC, Baltimore Technologies, Intel, and other contract positions. Plus editors I've worked with at Information Security, Government Computer News, and other publications. Not to mention friends from high school and college who also work as technical writers.

So, I keep a little mailing list of these tech writer buddies. When I hear about a job possibility, I let them know about it. Yes: even the jobs I myself am interested in. Why not? What goes around comes around, and I'd rather have thirty people sharing their leads with me than hogging one possibility to myself.

There are more formal networking groups also. For example, if you live in New England, there is NinaNet, started by a technical writer named Nina Eppes. NinaNet is an association of technical writers who have mostly never met each other. When we hear about jobs, we forward them to NinaNet (ninanet-writers@yahoogroups.com), which automatically forwards them to everyone in the group.

There may be a similar group near you. Ask your technical writer buddies. Or maybe it's time for you to start one yourself.