Got a couple of questions to answer for my business tech class, and was wondering if anyone here knew. Does anyone know what a Technical Writer does and for a cover letter to a resume, if the employeer's name cannot be found, what do you replace it with?

[ 08-31-2004, 10:35 PM: Message edited by: Gangrell ]

A technical writer, in my experience, generally writes technical manuals... user guides, documentation, training materials, and the like.

For your second question, I assume you mean the name of the particular person you're trying to send the letter to. I've heard that you can send it to Human Resources (Dear sir or madam), but honestly, if I were in that boat, I'd find out the name one way or another... even by simply calling up and asking who in Human Resources you should send resumes to. Or, more likely to succeed, who the director of HR is. They can always send the resume downlevels, and whoever sees it down there may think you have a connection higher up [img]smile.gif[/img]

Call the company and find out the employeer's name from the secretary or someone else working there. Don't ever use " to whom it may concern "

A Technical Writer reads manuals and edit's them to make sure it's final copy is such that it is free of mistakes and is understandable for it's target readers.You said this is for class so I'd say if the info just simply couldn't be obtained to replace it with the purpose of the resume, ie to be considered for position XXXXXXXXXX with your firm, or to be considered for a position related to job field YYYYYYYYYY.

I have a technical ASI (Additional Skill Identifier) and a chessy certificate within my chosen field. As those above have pointed out, you write about the item. Level dependent, you will write down to the target user. As one can imagine, this type of literature is formed in the sense of "how to". Or you can write up to the manufacturer pointing out 'points of interest' that you have incurred during your product review. If you are skilled enough to land in R&D, you get to experiment with the product, then write full blown reviews, either for your company, a magizine, or to the engineers that designed the product, fun stuff.

I'm in the window to start my transition and have just received a military to civilian seminar. The main line of one's resume is to root down and find the actual person's name in HR department. As 'B' pointed out, make the call, stop in, do whatever. But make sure you have the name, correct spelling, and title for the person it needs to get to first. If this is for class work only, use the name and title of the proc and use his department for the job field.

M$ Word will become your bread, and typically Excell will become your butter. Furthermore, you must become a Powerpoint Ranger to make your presentation look good at the final briefing.

Good Luck.

Alright, thanks for the replies all, it really helped me out.

I have to get back though, I'm in my tech class atm and I need to go ahead and finish my work.

Thanks

[ 09-01-2004, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: Gangrell ]