Hi Harry,

Great topics. Could you give some idea as to what the interview for a lead tech writer involves? Are the questions related more to tools and technologies, or on planning and overall approach to projects?

It depends a lot on the group you're interviewing with, and also the specific job. For example, the group I'm with has programmer writers, because we write code examples with the developer docs. So during the interview loop we have someone from the product team check for knowledge of programming technology (especially Visual Studio) and also code-writing ability.

When I interview writers, I usually give them some object and ask them to sketch out a documentation plan--I'm checking to see how they plan the scope, and whether they consider background information and also task-oriented topics. What usually trips people up is that they don't ask questions, even though I tell them they can ask me anything about the object.

The managers definitely ask about planning, and like to get lots of details about steps in the process--things that show real experience.

I don't think I've ever heard a question about tech writing tools, but I always hear questions about the technology to be documented (or similar technology that you could transfer knowledge from).

Excellent. Thank you.