Techtalk

After I completed my post graduation in Mass Communication, all I wanted to be was the next cropped hair Barkha Dutt spending stormy nights in Jammu Kashmir war camps or interviewing Shahrukh Khan in glossy airconditioned comfort! But as fate would have it, Peter Grainge overpowered Barkha Dutt in the long run!

After a few years of my short stint in freelancing, copywriting and content writing, I finally ended up as a Technical Writer. Well before this job, I really had no clue about technical writing, nor I had the slightest idea that where this would lead to. But as they say, Capricorns (goats) have a tremendous sense of belief in their career decisions.

During my content writing days, I received a job offer as a technical writer from a reputed multinational. The job offer came with a huge role description (people were really sure of my knowledge in this area!). The role description was almost Hebrew at that point.

With my limited knowledge, the day before the interview, I tried to do a small research on tech writing over the Internet. I really did not know where to start. There were a number of sites which had loads of information related to tech writing. But as luck would have it, I ended up reading a blog named “Tina the technical writer”. I was so interested in Tina that I did not waste my time in reading anything else. Alas! Tina was of no help!

The next day I went for the interview all dressed up. There was a round of security checks, which made me look like the next Osama in town. After waiting for sometime, I heard someone calling my name.

After all these years, I can hardly recollect the questions or the answers, but I still remember that someone had asked, “Do you know how to make Table of Contents?” I was feeling almost blank at that point but that did not stop me. There was a quick reply from my side: “Well of course I know. You have to write the content and then you arrange it in a table!”

Well I will not blabber any more about my profound knowledge in this area but creating a TOC was the most memorable lesson in my tech writing career!