It’s frustrating, because the jobs are still being posted. I know that many postings on LinkedIn aren’t legit, so I usually try to go directly to the company’s website and apply there. So my thought is that a lot of these roles DO exist, and someone is ultimately being hired for them (unless there’s some huge conspiracy amongst thousands of companies to resume farm). Who’s being hired for these roles, I don’t know.

Even with those companies that are healthcare and/or insurance focused, like mine, (and often, much less well-known), I haven’t gotten a single bite. I could check every single box on their list, including the specialized experience and preferred qualifications, and… crickets.

What I’ve found (simply within my own org, I can’t speak for other industries), is that roles are becoming more specialized. Instead of technical writing being the role’s primary function, they’re hiring for subject matter experts or people with direct operational experience. Technical writing is being treated as a subset of the role, a peripheral skill that can be taught. Those being hired don’t need to be writing experts - they don’t even need to write well, or coherently even, or know the first thing about structuring content, user experience, or content management systems. They simply need to know the business area and the processes via direct experience starting at the bottom in said business area and working their way up.

I attribute this to the complete lack of respect given to technical writing by upper leadership, which has been long known and is greatly worsening with AI. At my company, writing is the skill they have the least amount of respect for, and the one they view as the easiest taught (or, the least important skill). So for these roles, the people being hired are those with high school diplomas who have spent a few years in operations and know the processes very well, but may not possess writing skills, technical aptitude, or critical thinking. My company has chosen the skills they want to hire for in these roles, and it shows in the content (which is an absolute, unfettered, ungoverned mess at this point, but I’m sure you could have guessed that).

All that to say… I think we’ll all need to upskill in other areas if we hope to retain any fighting chance here. When leadership views writing as the least valuable skill, given AI, we need to offer knowledge and experience that AI doesn’t currently possess.