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Re: What do you call policy/process/procedure structure?

Subject: Re: What do you call policy/process/procedure structure?
From: "Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:40:26 -0400

My wife has chimed in on this discussion. She says, "The first paragraph must be an abstract that tells how you were the principle writer who organized a set of documents. Write it as though you were talking to a ten-year-old. That may help it get through HR."

Her experience in this area is that she has occasionally had to go to the HR staff and demand that they show her the entire set of resumes that came in, especially the ones they (HR) rejected. She's quite correct, of course. When I was writing at Prime Computer decades ago we had a need for tech writers, but none seemed available. As I've related before, we told HR, "Give us the resume for anyone who applies who has a PhD in ANYTHING, even if you think it is not a match." HR complained, "But they don't have writing experience." We had to impress upon them that writing a thesis counts as tech writing. We had PhDs in Physics, Mathematics, English, French, Drama, Chemistry and Ancient History. Most of them were superb writers.

On Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:14:56 -0400, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net> wrote:

Bingo, Gene!

Bear in mind that your resume will be read at most ONCE to see if it matches what the HR staff at hiring company think they need. They will will have their own way of treating your words that refer, for instance, to the User Interference Portability Subescalation Standards Plan, and it won't be good. Instead try to show how you helped your employer out of a difficulty.

One of the standard pieces of advice, which rarely applies to tech writers, is to show in numbers how much money your work made for the company, or at least saved. We writers almost never see those figures, but if we do it's because things have gone from bad to dreadful, for reasons beyond our control but not beyond our blame. "The product failed to sell because the tech writing was late, and it cost us $10,000,000." With luck the entire TW staff have jumped ship before the sinking. As one tech illustrator said, upon being introduced to a piece of scary and crazy software, "Oh, now I understand it. It DOESN'T WORK!"

In the advertising business, where I have occasionally hung my hat, the key phrase seems to be, "You hurt, we help." To get into that frame of mind you need to understand the potential client's pain, and it's often not what you initially think it is. You have to live inside his head.

On Tue, 21 Apr 2020 15:18:36 -0400, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:

Be as generic as you can and describe the documents by their function. Industry sectors tend to have their own names for document types, and using those names can slot you.

Gene Kim-Eng


On 4/21/2020 9:47 AM, Shari Punyon wrote:
I'm now updating my resume, and am not sure how to describe the fact that I set up the structure of polices, processes and procedures for their "Enterprise Technology" area.
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References:
What do you call policy/process/procedure structure?: From: Shari Punyon
Re: What do you call policy/process/procedure structure?: From: Gene Kim-Eng
Re: What do you call policy/process/procedure structure?: From: Peter Neilson

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