Re: Certification/Degrees

[John Posada <jposada -at- NOTES -dot- CC -dot- BELLCORE -dot- COM>]

What we have here is looking for something as a substitution for old-fashioned
selling.

Prior to doing what I do now, which is write proposals, I was a sales
professional working the street.

We didn't have "certifications" that the customers cared about, unless you
include things like CNE .

We sold by discussing our services with the customer face-to-face, submitting
tests and samples, supplying references, and mostly, making the customer
understand through these face-to-face sessions, that we understood his business
by asking intelligent questions, offering intelligent advice, guidance, input,
etc.

I certificate would have shown that we could get a certificate...not that we
could do his job, let alone be the best one to do his job.

>distinguishes my company's services.  Maybe something like . . . . . . .
>. a certificate!

Not if you interview for me.  Howabout something like.....
references, quality samples, intelligent discussion, questions to me that shows
that you know MY business, not just your business where you can get a piece of
paper from people that haven't seen you in action, under pressure.

It's a poor situation where we need a certificate to prove to someone that we
are better than someone without that piece of paper.

John Posada
- Central New Jersey Employment Manager
Society for Technical Communication
http://stc.org/region2/njc/

- Technical Proposal Writer
Bell Communications Research
(908) 699-5839 (W)
jposada -at- notes -dot- cc -dot- bellcore -dot- com

"Its wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago"
        - Vice President Dan Quayle, 4/30/91
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At 12:43 PM 12/13/96 -0600, Mike Wing wrote:

>Let's pursue another angle to this discussion.  Let's suppose that I
>worked for, managed,  or even owned a technical documentation consulting
>and services company.  To create an edge over much of my competition and
>to convince companies with a writing staff that they should contract my
>group (instead of using their own staff), I would need something that



Here we have the crux of the matter. Degrees/certification cannot guarantee
competence, but they can be used as criteria for "competitive advantage,"
whatever that means. As shameless floggers of our own abilities, we will use
anything we can find to climb over the competition and get what we want.

That's the kind of thinking that made America what it is today.

--Wayne Douglass
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 Verity, Inc.             Email: wayned -at- verity -dot- com
 894 Ross Drive           Telephone:  408-542-2139
 Sunnyvale, CA 94089      Facsimile:  408-542-2040
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