RE: Resumes and such

["Giordano, Connie" <Connie -dot- Giordano -at- FMR -dot- COM>]

John,

Not necessarily!  I don't know Framemaker, but I had three companies waging
war over who got to hire me just a few weeks ago. OTOH, I know enough
Oracle, Crystal Reports, OOD, and a dozen other tools that usually show my
ability to keep up with the "toys". The resume can get you in the door, but
it's your ability to present yourself well in person is what wins you the
job.  As one of the other posters mentioned, temperament and personality fit
are as much a factor as toys and talent.

BTW, if I have a well presented resume in two pages and one in four pages,
I'm more likely to look more seriously at the two-pager, but that's just me.
I read them all, because you never know when you're going to discover
potential.  Then again, I've never had more than about 20 to review at a
time.

Here are some other ways to get some serious hits on great tech comm
opportunities: try keywords like "research", "interview", "process
modeling", "usability", "project management", "consensus building", and
"strategic planning".  These worked well for me in obtaining lots of
interest for senior-level positions.  

Connie

-----Original Message-----
From: John Posada [mailto:jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 9:31 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Resumes and such


However, a good technical writer with knowledge of the
specific tool(s) will get hired before (just) a good
technical writer.

My point? Just because you are a good tech writer,
don't expect that to be an automatic advantage,
because you may be disappointed. You must keep up with
the "toys"

BTW...my resume is 4 pages long and it has NEVER been
an issue. One of the things being overlooked is that
in today's environment, page count becomes obsolete
because the majority of them are scanned, OCR'd, and
dumped into a database for searching for keywords
(yes, tools, I'm sorry to say, along with other
descriptors).