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Re: Disagreeing with house styles

Subject: Re: Disagreeing with house styles
From: Lisa G Wright <lisawright -at- mail -dot- utexas -dot- edu>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:29:19 -0600

If I saw such an inappropriate disclaimer in a document that someone was using as a portfolio piece, that person's resume would go in the reject pile. That's someone's ego showing up. If one were really concerned that the hiring manager would penalize style choices, one could perhaps include a cover sheet with the work samples that includes metadata like "followed X Corp in-house style guide."

My assumption is that a document follows a style guide (unless review reveals inconsistency), which would be a discussion point in the interview. Hiring managers have to recognize that writers have to follow guides that may not line up with the hiring manager's own preferences. Penalizing applicants because they follow the "pick one and be consistent" rule (which oddly enough hasn't come up in this conversation, I don't think) is kinda dumb.

Lisa

On 1/5/2012 10:11 AM, McLauchlan, Kevin wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: Julie Stickler On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 5:27 AM, Sion Lane <slane -at- ubq -dot- thrupoint -dot- net> wrote: HOWEVER... maybe you could put something into the metadata of your documents, to the effect that "Certain choices of terminology, spelling and usage in this document are the result of adherence to a mandated style guide, and do not necessarily reflect the sensibilities or competence of the writer(s)." For customers or others, it's just another of many, many disclaimer-things they'll ignore - probably won't even see, especially if you don't let it transfer from the source to the PDF format. But at future employment interviews, when you hand over your samples for examination by a potential employer, you can point out that hidden disclaimer to indicate that you did indeed already know that certain aspects of your docs are... er... quaint, but were beyond your control. It beats back-pedalling and making excuses after somebody calls you on the peculiarities. And it beats being silently discarded as a contender, never knowing that that's what lost you your shot and never having a chance to reply.

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References:
Disagreeing with house styles: From: Sion Lane
Re: Disagreeing with house styles: From: Julie Stickler
RE: Disagreeing with house styles: From: McLauchlan, Kevin

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