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In this age, when flashy WWW pages have highest priority, I don't think
it's unbelievable that managers are ignoring skills and
content-production. I have limited corporate experience and very poor
social skills, but I would think the tactful way to go about bettering
the hiring procedures would be to come up with a list of questions to
ask the applicants, that would expose poor writing experience or no
writing experience. Like, describe your past technical communications
projects. Who was your audience? What were their skills and weaknesses
and how did you go about researching and addressing those issues? How
did you organize documentation reviews? How did you measure document
success?
If you need to educate your co-workers, I think that you should keep
around good reference books and books you used for tech writing classes.
Recommend them in small talk to your co-workers. Loan them out for the
weekend.
-xine
>-----Original Message-----
>From: rossa [SMTP:rossa -at- FLASH -dot- NET]
>Sent: Saturday, September 27, 1997 11:40 PM
>To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
>Subject: HELP! Software Jockeys vs. Real Tech Writers
>
>[snipped]
>We have problems. It seems that the
>managers in IS don't understand what technical writers do but they seem
>to think they need them. They think technical writing is word processing
>and consequently end up hiring people who know a lot about software
>packages and cool PC tools and toys but don't know how to do research and
>writing. I seem to be the only one who is serious about producing good
>documentation. Does anyone out there have suggestions for educating these
>people? We don't have a chance of establishing a professional department
>if the IS managers don't know how to hire professional writers.
>
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