Over the years I’ve been working in the biotech industry, I’ve had several opportunities to be on career panels for high school or college students and to mentor a few interns. Without fail, the question I’m always asked is “what skill did you learn in school that has most helped you in your career?” Most people expect to hear something along the lines of “programming in Unicorn” or “basic chromatography theory” or simply “how to use Excel amazingly well,” but the answer that I give usually surprises most people in the room.
Technical writing and communication has been the most important skill in my career.
I was fortunate enough to take a technical writing course one semester in college, and it covered multiple types of communication including presentations, written instructions, and how to convey complex topics to an average reader. The skills I learned in that course were instantly applicable to my other courses in chemical engineering, and were applied within days of beginning my first job in biotech after graduation. I’ve spent my career working to refine and improve my skills, and have done my best to teach them to anyone who is interested in learning them. I feel so strongly about this that I recommend anyone still in school take a technical writing course if it’s available to them, because it will be a critical skill throughout their career.
Technical writing is not just a dry abstract for a published paper in academia, it encompasses many daily tasks in biotech no matter what specific department you are working in. Examples include…
- Writing a clear standard operating procedure (SOP) that is easy to follow for a new research associate, has the right spaces for recording data and performing calculations, and yet is short and easy to follow. Bonus points for being scaled in such a way to be easily printed for a paper lab notebook or binder, with spaces for signatures.
- Summarizing data from a series of experiments to guide the audience along the story of the work, from the original question, to the work performed, to the results obtained, and finally to the conclusions drawn. Presentations also have the added challenge of designing clear graphics to show data to best effect, not just tables of numbers but visually demonstrating the point that the conclusions are drawing.
- Updating your supervisor or director on a daily or weekly basis, whether that’s just to report that everything is going well or to ask for assistance with a challenge. Knowing the right tone and words to use for your audience can be critical for ensuring that you are viewed positively in your organization and receive the support you need for success.
- Technical writing for projects including writing protocols for experiments, risk assessments for later-stage projects, various types of reports for entire projects or for specific studies, deviation responses to support manufacturing, and more. This is the type of writing that is then later expanded and used to write sections of regulatory documents, and to provide the framework and support for responding to regulatory questions during filing or audits.
- Developing a poster collaboratively with coworkers and vendors to present at a conference, which requires brevity, clear graphics, and often multiple revisions to meet company legal guidelines for public presentations. And don’t underestimate the talent and tact needed to get everyone to agree on the final style and wording of the poster, especially if there are more than a few authors working together!
Who needs to use technical writing in biotech?
The short answer is simply, everyone! From an associate writing their first experiment reports in a lab notebook, to a scientist presenting development options to the decision-makers, to a director writing justifications for budget and headcount expansion, to the site head presenting to prospective clients, nearly everyone benefits from great technical communication skills. There are even some companies with full scientific communication departments, and nearly every company has at least some guidelines on how to write reports for internal use as well as presentation templates for external use. Poor technical writing can result in slow or incorrect decision-making, losing prospective clients, increased deviations due to confusing SOP’s, and even regulatory impacts due to badly written filing documents or responses. It pays to ensure you have great technical communication skills, and may even set you apart from others in a positive light when the time comes for external presentation opportunities or even internal promotions. And don’t forget – being able to communicate about your projects successfully will translate into being able to describe your skills clearly and succinctly when you are interviewing for a new position!
How do you improve your skills in technical writing?
Initially, the easiest way to improve your skills in technical writing is to go through the SOP’s, batch records, reports, and other documents you use on a daily basis and figure out what is clear and what is not clear. Once you start noticing patterns of what isn’t easily understood, then you can start working on how to better write those pieces so that they are clear and easy to use. Or if you happen to come across a beautifully written protocol that is easy to read and understand on the first pass, keep a copy of that as an example for reference in the future.
Next up is of course to simply practice your writing, and get feedback from a trusted advisor. Is there someone you work with whose presentation style you admire? Or is the scientist who wrote a couple reports you’re using as reference material still at the company and could give you tips on making effective graphs to present your data? Let your supervisor know that you want to build these skills, and ask for opportunities to write reports, protocols, and to present your work as often as possible. Like any other skill, repetition and revision is the way to improve technical communications over time.
A more subtle skill is learning how to differentiate your writing for different audiences, in order to ensure that the story you are telling is what the audience reads. A presentation to scientists in your own department will look different to the same data presented to a client or to the senior leadership team, because each of these audiences has different levels of familiarity with the subject matter and also has different goals for their consumption of the data. Understanding the audience and what they expect to learn from the poster, email, or presentation is key to writing it so that they get the story and message that you intend them to receive.
Finally, don’t be afraid to develop your own voice within the constraints of the technical writing itself. Some documents don’t allow for anything other than the most precise and dry writing, such as SOP’s or regulatory documents, but creating posters ore presentations with a bit of flair in the writing will help them be more engaging and memorable to a varied audience that is not simply scientists from your own specialty. Always keep it technical and professional, but the word choice and how you arrange the story can sometimes make just as much of an impression as the data and results themselves.
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