RE: Why they don't ask for candidates by technology skills.

[John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com>]

You need to balance it against what you see in the portfolio.

If there is an entry on the resume from a short gig, ask to see something
that was created at that gig and so this for a few of them.

Go down the resume and for each entry, ask to see something created and
finished. Granted, s/he may not have something for each of them, but that
should be the exception rather than the rule.

As far as knowing if the deliverable is theirs and not done by someone else,
I know I can pick certain characteristics that are common across multiple
deliverables, sort of like a fingerprint, and when there is a variance, ask
why the writer chose one way versus the other.

For instance, I have a specific way of placing images in a
deliverable...I'll almost never wrap text around an image, I make it margin
to margin, and I always place the caption for figure and tables on top, even
though I know the rule is usually table caption on top and figure caption on
bottom. I also always use Arial, Times Roman, and Courier, except for one
gig that used a different body font, and I can explain why.

If you are a writer, you can make your odds better than 50/50, and that's
all you can hope for.

John Posada

-----Original Message-----
From: Logan Jackman [mailto:techscrivener -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 11:29 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Why they don't ask for candidates by technology skills.



John Posada says:

"Look at the person's portfolio and the resume. If the
resume is full of relatively short gigs of 6 months to
a year, and the portfolio covers a wide range of
subjects that aren't related to each other, yet
require technical understanding, then chances are the
person can pick stuff up at a decent speed."
----------

What John says can be true. On the other hand, a
resume of relatively short gigs can also hide a lot of
incompetence. If you live somewhere where lots of good
companies are located, you can build a good resume
quickly by hopping from one company to another. At
large companies, it is often much easier to let a poor
contractor stay to the end of a short contract rather
than give them the axe. 

So, a resume showing lots of relatively short gigs can
show that a writer is good. But it can also be good
camouflage for a not-so-competent writer.

Also, sometimes you can determine during interviews
whether or not the portfolios are a genuine
representation of the writers work; other times not.

After years of hiring writers, I have come to believe
that even after analyzing resumes and carefully
interviewing prospects, hiring new writers is still
often hit or miss--regardless of whether or not the
writer has worked at many companies or just one or
two.

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