Hiring junior technical writers who can contribute successfully to your team

Catherine Heath | May 17, 2018

At Write the Docs Portland 2018, Technical Writer at Pivotal Sarah Day gave a talk about how to hire junior documentation writers.

Similar to interns, junior technical writers are inexperienced new hires who can learn a lot from working with your more experienced staff.

In every documentation team, there is too much work, and not enough writers. For some, the answer is hiring junior writers.

As Sarah says, “We hire junior writers but we don’t want to lower our hiring standards.”

At Pivotal, their team is made up of 15 members based in six locations around the world. They launched an internship program for junior writers to join their team.

Quality and cost-effectiveness

So where is the compromise between cost-effectiveness and quality?

The key is to employ brand new writers looking to gain some great experience in exchange for a more modest wage than you would normally need to pay more established technical writers.

“We’re picky and we don’t compromise,” says Sarah of her documentation team. “Everyone on the team has to agree on the new hire.”

And what does this hiring process actually look like? Well, it needs to be a little different.

Hiring is normally based on matching the skills required in a specific job, but to hire someone with no experience we will have to instead look at transferable skills. Don’t intimidate candidates before they even apply

Everyone gets their first job somewhere and this is the perfect opportunity to give someone the career springboard they need.

Tips for hiring junior technical writers

Sarah shares some great insights into inclusive hiring practices – for a start, ditch the jargon.

• Make your job pitch more accessible to attract the right level of candidate

• You don’t need a degree or 3-5 years of experience

• You don’t need any employment history whatsoever

• Waive all the qualifications

• Don’t ask about specific technologies – get a broad idea of their level of confidence, willingness to learn and proficiency

• Be prepared for candidates to have never even heard of your favorite technologies like Github

The writing portfolio is normally a key part of hiring any technical writer. Junior writers don’t have the robust writing portfolios of more experienced writers and you must be prepared to see some unusual results.

Consider accepting alternative writing samples such as academic essays, internal memos or screenplays.

The hiring process also starts with your team. Present your team as people with complex and unique backgrounds, which will help encourage diverse applicants and put interviewees at ease.

Let everyone in the future team meet your candidates – Sarah’s company policy is for everyone to agree on the new hire before it can go through.

Sarah shared an example of being inclusive in a job advert by showing how you will treat new hires:

This is so lovely to see in a job posting. I love how @pivotalcf does hiring 😍 - @scribblingfox #WriteTheDocs pic.twitter.com/pjfYZFIr9c

— Naomi 👩‍💻💡 (@naomi_pen) May 8, 2018

Image source

Discussing salary during interviews

Salary is also an issue when hiring for junior positions, as some of these types of jobs may be internships.

Unfortunately, many internships are unpaid so you can’t leave the question of salary open until shortlisting your candidates. It’s important to pay your interns or junior writers a fair wage from the beginning.

Say something upfront about pay during the interview. Many people will not be able to commit themselves to a position without knowing whether it pays a salary. It’s not typical practice to talk about salary in an interview but make an exception here.

Final remarks

When hiring junior documentation writers, it’s really important to make your job adverts as inclusive as possible, and to streamline the hiring process so it’s optimized for this particular type of candidate.

Remember you’re recruiting for potential, willingness to learn and culture fit, so don’t get hung up on proficiencies with the latest technologies. Make sure everyone on the team agrees with your new hire and showcase the work environment to attract the right candidates.

Listen to Sarah’s full talk on YouTube, and check out our write-up of another Write the Docs talk on the art of documentation triage. 

Images by Kay Smoljak. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

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