RE: Why are companies now requiring techical writer candidates to be SMEs?

[Watson Laughton <WLaughton -at- orphan -dot- com>]

>>A SME is nothing more than its unabbreviated 
>>form: Subject Matter Expert.  Tech writers can 
>>be and *should* be a SME for whatever they are documenting. 

That doesn't seem to be a universally accepted description of SME, as I have
seen more posts than I can even count, on this very board, discussing TW's
gathering information from SME's, TW's being able to (or not) interact
successfully with SME's, TW's acting as interfaces between SME's and the end
users, ad infinitum.

In any case, it appears that the job ad referenced in the previous post was
nothing more than a request for someone who had experience DOCUMENTING (not
creating) the application in question.

That would not seem to fall beyond the pale of a perfectly acceptable
posting for an experienced TW, and an explanation of it would not appear to
require invoking surreptitious attempts to circumvent an open bidding
process by tailoring the requirements to only fit the candidate that the
hiring manager already has in mind.




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