Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question - Why discuss certification?

Subject: Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question - Why discuss certification?
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 10:10:15 -0700


Most technical writers I have interviewed have been remarkably candid about what specific technical, authoring or tool related skills they didn't have, even in these recent tough times, and in my conversations with non-writing hiring managers who have had bad results from writers they hired I have not encountered many who hired writers who turned out not to have the skills they claimed to have. The bad experiences are almost always the result of a disconnect between the skills the non-writing hiring managers thought the writers they wanted to hire should have and the skills the
writer really needed to succeed in the project or environment. For example, hiring a writer with no background or understanding of
their products or technology because writers with specific technical backgrounds were "too expensive" and saying, "we can feed the writer the content" (which, of course, they never do).

So from my point of view, the real need is not to certify that writers
really do have specific levels of skill, but to educate those who hire
writers as to what levels of skill their writers really need to have.
Gene Kim-Eng



----- Original Message ----- From: "John Posada" <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>

Actually, my motivation is "keep people *they* see as "unqualified"
out of the market", but not what "I" see as unqualified, but what
employers see as unqualified.
Gene...you hire people. Now, you may be in the minority and have
always hired people who can do what they say they can do, but
probably because you are a technical writer. How often are technical
writers hired by non-writers to be part of their staff, only to find
out that what they thought the person could so, they couldn't.



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Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question - Why discuss certification?: From: John Posada

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