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Congratulations on your impending promotion! You've got a lot to think
about .
First you need to figure out what kind of writer you want to hire and what
budget you'll have -- can you get a senior writer or are you constrained to
hiring a junior because of money? Then, assess your own skills and the
kinds of work that you and the new writer will perform. While it isn't necessarily
hiring to do the dirty work <g>, you do want to find someone who is very
much NOT like you - who complements your skillset. In many cases, this
does mean hiring someone who likes what you don't (like indexing?),
but not always.
Many products lend themselves to a logical division, but not all do. When
you think about dividing up responsibilities, try to arrange it so that you and
the newbie are not tripping over each other's work. (I'll do the reference,
you do the user guide - or - I'll do the first 3 chapters, you do the last 3, ...)
But divvying up the workload is only the tip of the iceberg - you've lots more
to consider. I recommend buying a good book on the subject:
Starting a Documentation Group: A Hands-On Guide by Peter J Hartman
ISBN 0-967417B-0-2
Best of luck!
-Sue Gallagher
---- Stephanie Erickson <serickson -at- infinitecampus -dot- com> wrote:
> I have convinced my supervisor and CEO that after 4 years of having a
> documentation department of one, we need to hire someone else. With
> that, the newly hired person will be doing more writing and I will be
> doing more supervisory things, which is great!! For those of you that
> have experienced this, how did you go about breaking your one job into
> multiple jobs? Was there an agreed upon division or was it more like
> "the new person can do the things I don't like to do", which is
> currently where I'm going. Any help you could offer would be greatly
> appreciated.
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