By Jerry Grohovsky
Copyright 2016. JPG & Associates, Inc.

A freelancer (or independent technical communicator) today will find that it is more likely that opportunities will come from companies who have the following characteristics:

  • Are either startups, or are small to mid-size.
  • Product volume is not sufficient enough to support a fulltime writer or department staff.
  • Receptive to using off-the-shelf authoring software tools such as Adobe InDesign or FrameMaker.
  • Are not dependent on a content management system.
  • Develop and market hardware or software products which can easily be researched by the writer remotely, or can be easily transported to the writer’s offsite location.
  • Have corporate environments which do not require day-to-day in-person interaction with other employees or stake-holders.
  • Have corporate environments which do not require a high-level of confidentiality and/or security.
  • Companies who do not have adequate office space and/or the tools for documentation projects–for one-offs or spikes in activity.
  • Companies who have very “production focused” projects which are more easily out-sourced (versus those which are more complex and require more internal communication and monitoring).