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Job search prioritization matrix

· 4 min read
Liz Argall
Liz Argall
Technical Writer and Program Manager

Searching for work in 2025​

This blog post covers two topics:

  • The state of things
    • What it's like to be a technical writer right now and how we can carve out better spaces for ourselves.
  • Prioritization matrix
    • Skip straight down to this to get going with a tool that can make it easier to pursue your job search or career change dreams.

illustration of a spiky haired character called Little Liz, she says "How do we get seen? And see ourselves more clearly?

The state of things​

It would be an understatement to say that the lives of technical writers have been destabilized by the advent of generative AI. LLMs have made it clear that many people don’t understand what we do and how much technical writers create process and maintain structures. We are more than content creators!

Technical writers can be powerful facilitators and diplomats, bridging gaps between teams, helping more of an organization see each other more clearly. People might see our large doc sites and think “too many words!” When what they don’t see is how our docs are much more succinct and equitably distributed than half remembered conversations that happen over and over, with less validation and more disruptions to SMEs' time.

Our docs are not perfect, but too often the cry of “too many notes!” can be a reflection of a) it is not the quantity, but the structure needs work, b) documentation is most needed when a person is new and the curse of knowledge can make some content seem redundant or c) it can be upsetting to see your systems more clearly. We bear witness to what is and give voice to what is quietly understood, and that can be an uncomfortable thing.

At the recent Write the Docs conference in Portland, Yanjie Niu’s talk, “The Power of Two: How Support and Documentation Teams Transform Technical Content Quality,” was an inspiring example of how the roles of technical writers should evolve. It is important for us, and our employers, to see more examples like these. If you are a technical writer with similar positive experiences, I encourage you to share them, as talks or blogs. This will help us build our case and help more of us have career trajectories.

Short term, however, many of us are doing soul searching around what to do next. This is especially true when our superpower, writing great resumes and cover letters, gets drowned out by resumes created by generative AI. There are still opportunities for our voices to punch through, but there are volume issues to contend with.

Enter the Prioritization Matrix​

The Prioritization Matrix, developed by Jessica Abel as part of her Creative Focus course, has served me well when choosing what creative project to do and works for me again as I look for the next (paid) opportunity. Jessica has even used this matrix to decide what fridge to buy.

With Jessica’s permission, I’ve created a version of the matrix tailored towards job search activities. Using this matrix comes in about a quarter of the way through the course, so I’ve created some instructions tailored towards job search to help you get to a basic decision criteria.

We are impatient humans, so you may want to jump straight into playing with the template, but you’ll get even more out of it if you try out some of the instructions!

Further reading​

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