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RE: Why they don't ask for candidates by technology skills.
Subject:RE: Why they don't ask for candidates by technology skills. From:Samuel -dot- Beard -at- tdcj -dot- state -dot- tx -dot- us To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:03:05 -0600
Hey John,
One thing about asking for samples that I have always had a problem with
providing is the sort of work that I've done, for most of relatively short
career. I'm talking about work for the Federal government that is all
classified. Without breaking laws and causing myself inordinate amounts of
heartache, I can not provide samples from most of my career. The couple of
times that my work didn't involve classified government information, it was
deemed proprietary by the company, which pretty much amounts to the same
thing. I would imagine that this has hurt my chances for some positions,
but I also haven't really seen any way around this.
Sam Beard
John Posada
<JPosada -at- book -dot- com> To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent by: cc:
bounce-techwr-l-117504 -at- lists -dot- Subject: RE: Why they don't ask for candidates by technology skills.
raycomm.com
02/19/03 10:50 AM
Please respond to John Posada
ID Number:
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.
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