Shanghai Tech Writer

As mentioned before, I saw the technical writer job posting on ChinaSplash website in April, however, I don’t think I applied for the job from the website. I think I might have applied for the job directly from NI website’s employment section. In any case, I had a nicely polished resume on Microsoft Word document and PDF, but the online job application form did not allow file attachments. It was strictly copy/paste and ASCII only, thus I remember having to take out all the fancy formatting I did on the resume and replace it with ugly * and simple formatting.

This was the first and only job posting that caught my eyes. The prospect of a career in technical writing sounded very interesting, but also, googling showed that the Shanghai office was located just blocks from where I lived! Nothing beats a 5 minutes commute which I have been used to for the past 6 years. In addition, the company sounded like a really good place to work for (Fortune’s Top 100 Best Companies to Work For), so I gave it a shot and totally wasn’t expecting to hear back from them, but I did!

Two weeks after I sent the resume, I received an email from the company requesting college transcript as well as writing samples. It has been six years since I graduated from Berkeley so I didn’t have any copies of my college transcripts with me. Also, it would be expensive to order one from China (all international addresses are DHL only) and I wasn’t sure how important a transcript was considering I’m not a fresh graduate and I have several years of working experience. The recruiter said I could wait until later stages of interview, so I just sent them some writing samples. Actually, I wasn’t sure what kind of writing samples they were looking for either and I didn’t exactly have a writing portfolio. My extent of writing is limited to, um, blogging and sending out bunches of instructional emails at school. Sounds funny but I didn’t have anything else on hand, so I sent them two samples — a Christmas newsletter I wrote last year and a school technology initiative letter that was sent to parents. Even though the two samples weren’t exactly “professional” writings, I chose them for several reasons:

1. The newletter demonstrated my desktop publishing skills. It looked like I used fancy software like Adobe Pagemaker or the likes to create the newsletter, but actually, I used just Microsoft Word and converted to PDF format.
2. The newsletter was about my (and my husband’s) life in Shanghai. It was meant for our family and friends to read, but I thought it might be a good introduction about myself to the hiring team. Afterall, we (my husband and I) are here in China for the long haul and committed to being a part of the exciting development of the country.
3. The letter to parents was regarding a technology intiative that I was hoping the school (where I was teaching at the time) would adopt. I was the director of technology and wanted to follow Concorcodia International School’s footsteps and introduce the one laptop-per-student program to my school. The letter was an introduction to the project and though the project later fail through (too costly), it demonstrated my leadership and take on technology-integrated academic curriculum.

I don’t know what kind of writing samples other technical writers (at NI) have submitted in the past, but I am guessing mine was pretty unique. I don’t really know what the hiring team thought of my submission but I got a call from them 2 weeks later for an on-site interview.

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