Senior Technical Writer Resume Profile, IL - Hire IT People

Work Experience

Self-employed

Confidential

Freelance contract technical writing through oDesk, Elance, and Creative Circle.

Mobile Unit Assistant

Confidential

Drive a variety of vehicles to transport required supplies, equipment, blood products and samples, as well as staff when needed, to and from mobile sites. Load and unload trucks and other vehicles. Manage temporary storage and packing of whole blood and sample tubes at collection site.

Enumerator

Confidential

I interviewed people who had not completed their census form or had not mailed it. This involved door to door contact and interviews with people in the community. I also assisted our team lead gathering completed forms and delivering new forms to team members.

English as a Second Language Instructor Confidential

I taught English as a Second Language to adult learners from around the world with varying degrees of English literacy. I facilitated learning sessions focusing on reading and writing abilities as well as speaking and listening conversation skills.

Senior Technical Writer

Confidential

I was a technical writer for the Network and Security division of the company. I was responsible for reviewing and editing documents such as Requests for Proposal, Security Assessments, Executive Proposals, and Statements of Work written by the technical consultants for clients.
I was also in charge of providing structure for a database shared by the Network and Security consultants which never had any type of information architecture.

Confidential

LACD Warranty Analyst

I was the Webmaster of the LACD Web site which contained comprehensive warranty information, bulletins, and statements for all Caterpillar equipment in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
I assisted in processing claims for customers and dealers throughout Latin America. Many exchange rates fluctuate daily in countries throughout Latin America and I was responsible for entering these changes in the corporate main systems and Web sites.
For an annual warranty seminar, I was in charge of coordinating hotel reservations and registering all the students traveling to Miami, FL from Latin America.

Online Help Developer

Confidential

Responsibilities included audience analysis, developing online and Web-based Help for applications, job aids/quick reference cards user assistance, i.e., tutorials, brochures, reference cards , system documentation, user manuals, procedure/standards documentation, and training materials.
I coordinated the development of user assistance, training, and technical support materials for individual projects based on project schedules. As corporations moved to a paperless environment, most of this material was delivered via websites.

Consultant/Technical Communicator

Confidential

Consulted at Confidential. in the Information Services' Usability Group. Responsibilities included designing and creating documentation, training, support for improved human performance, and usability testing of engineering documentation and applications.
Delivery methods include printed paper, electronic transfer, and both intranet and internet mediums.

English as a Second Language Instructor

Confidential

Two years teaching English as a second language. The position required daily lesson plans and activities, weekly testing, and quarterly evaluations of each student's speaking and listening abilities. I still tutor individuals in my free time.

Project Summaries

Company:	Confidential	2004 to 2005
Role:	Latin American Commercial Division LACD Warranty Analyst
Responsibilities:	Web master for the LACD Web site which housed all requirements and parameters for submitting claims from South America in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Published Transportation and Importation factors as well as Labor Rates as they changed every three months. Coordinated travel arrangements, lodging/reservations, and registration for Latin American sales personnel to attend the annual warranty seminar.
Company:	Confidential	2000 to 2003
Role:	Online Help Developer
Responsibilities:	User Assistance Lead for all Automobile applications produced. Acted as the liaison between the help developer, the tutorial developer, and the troubleshooting developer and the project team. Responsibilities included weekly updates to the planner and project manager, review of content for accuracy and clarity, and ensuring deadlines were met. Published six successful Help systems within the Commercial Automobile portion of the Auto projects. Created a website for the Online Help Developer role to inform other employees within the systems department to educate and inform them about this newer role and included overviews of communications, help development, training materials, and change management. Collaborated with developers on an HTML-based system which used an application program interface API page to direct agents to information that pertains to their state's laws when writing a policy. That way all the information is displayed in one place without having to write 50 separate Help systems as new states were added to the system as well as a single source to be updated as laws are changed regarding automobile insurance. Assisted the Usability team test new software and interviewed end-users for feedback to take back to the project team.
Client:	Confidential	1997 to 2000
Role:	Technical Writer
Responsibilities	Managed technical documentation, Getting Started manual, and Help for an Issue and Tracking system, a new intranet-based tracking system which enables authorized engineers to add comments, attachments, and collaborate to resolve production and performance issues. Produced a large manual for an application that allowed customers to select the options/attachments they wanted before the product was built. This included over 200 graphics and screen shots which were omitted from the Help to increase performance. Worked with translators to create a multi-lingual tutorial, help system, and job aid for travel reporting software which allowed travel expenses to download via the intranet and eliminate the need for time-consuming paper-based forms. Created job aids, marketing materials, and advertisements for employees for education within Corporate Information Services. Employed change management strategies when creating a slogan with posters and post-it notes prior to implementing a new calendaring system in anticipation of employees' resistance to the impact on their daily working lives. I also created a quick reference to be placed on each employee's desk the day they were switched to this new system to help make the transition easier.

Key Knowledge and Skills

Skill	Years of Experience	Expertise
Technical/creative/journalistic writing	15	Heavy
Publication development	15	Medium
Editing/proofreading	15	Heavy
Developing training materials	15	Medium
Creating visual materials	15	Medium
Print and online layout/design	15	Heavy
Desktop publishing	15	Medium
Job aids	15	Heavy
Reference materials	15	Medium
Interviewing experience	10	Heavy
Usability evaluations	9	Medium
Process documentation	15	Heavy
System documentation	15	Heavy
Communication plans	13	Medium
Marketing materials	12	Medium
Web page development	15	Heavy
Web page evaluation	15	Heavy
Online documentation	15	Heavy
WinHelp writing/development	12	Heavy
HTML-based help writing/development	15	Heavy

Computer Skills

Microsoft Windows, 3.1, 95, 98, NT, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 Microsoft Word
Microsoft PowerPoint/Visio Microsoft Excel
Lotus Notes 4.0, 5.0 Lotus Word Pro
Lotus FreeLance Lotus Notes Calendar
Lotus Notes E-Mail Adobe PageMaker 6.5
Micrographix Flowcharter Adobe PhotoShop 5.0
Dreamweaver HTML Assistant Pro
RoboHelp 9.0 Doc To Help 3.0, 4.0, 2000
SharePoint 2010 NewsGator

Additional Courses and Seminars

Doc to Help Workshop, Wextech Technologies
Elements of Design and Human Factors Seminar, JoAnn Hackos
Suzanne Weitzman Art of Online Visual Interface Design, Influent Technologies
Help Online 2000 Conference, Influent Technologies
Society for Technical Communication 48th Annual Conference
RoboHelp HTML ed. Workshop, Wordsmith, Ltd.
Intelligent Interface Design, Weinschenk Consulting Group
WinWriters WebHelp Jump Start Conference

Selected Highlights

Created a successful tutorial, user manual, and Help for a Global Travel Reporting system for an international audience which was translated into Portuguese and French at Caterpillar.
Published a user manual and Help using single source technology for Feature Based Configurator software for Caterpillar.
Designed and redesigned many Web sites and content based on Usability testing and design standards.
Worked with developers to design and HTML-based Help system for Mutual Insurance Company agents that would allow state exceptions to be recognized depending on the location of the user accessing the system.
Created a Getting Started guide based on user needs for the introduction of Lotus Notes Calendar at Caterpillar.

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Senior Technical Writer Resume Profile

IL

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