Whaddaya know? (long)

[Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>]

In my current position, I manage a mini-department (just three of us)
that provides communications services to other departments in the
company. Software documentation is managed by a group of tech writers
(ably led by John Garison) within the development department. I get to
deal with all the other stuff--proposals, marketing collateral, policies
and procedures, customer support guidelines, you name it. And our
corporate webmaster reports to me. We need to turn out a wide variety of
things in a wide variety of media--good, fast, AND cheap. This calls for
an inordinate amount of flexibility and a huge armamentarium of skills.

Now I have an opening and am in the process of screening candidates on
the phone. Thereby hang both a lesson and a tale.

First the lesson:

We recently brought in a contractor to help with some of the Web site
development, as the webmaster was getting behinder and behinder. Our
developers had brought in a number of contractors and worked with them
successfully, but I had no experience doing this. So I asked one of the
development managers to give me a hand.

I sat in as he screened the candidate put forward by the agency. He had
a list of questions, seven or eight groups of about five questions each,
each group focusing on one aspect of technology. He shared with me that
he didn't expect anyone to know all the answers cold, but that he was
listening for how people reacted when they were unsure.

I thought, hey, this is a great technique.

So when it came time to screen candidates for my permanent opening, I
adopted the same idea. In my case, the topics I covered were:
copyediting, grammar, print production, PageMaker, PhotoShop, HTML,
scripting, and databases. These are the right topics for my department
but you would certainly choose a different list for a tech writing
job--including topics covering the guts of the technology you need
someone to write about, especially if your name is Andrew Plato.

Each section has from four to six questions, and the questions are quite
specific and quite elementary. If you claim on your résumé to have three
years of experience with PageMaker, you should have no trouble answering
my PageMaker questions. If you claim to have run Web sites, you should
have no trouble answering my HTML questions. If you claim to be working
as a copyeditor, you should have no trouble answering my copyediting
questions.

I must emphasize that this is not a test. I do not assign a numeric
score. Instead I write down the answers they give. It is really just a
screening technique. (I use it on the phone, after explaining that I am
just doing a skills survey; we can find out if we like each other and
want to work together when it comes time for the real interview.)

I have no expectation that anyone will demonstrate mastery of all the
areas. I'm just trying to get an idea, for any individual, of how their
skills would complement those already in place in the department. I'm
also interested in how much puffery is included in the résumé.

This has worked out well as a way to decide which candidates to bring in
for face-to-face interviews, and I recommend it to anyone who is at a
loss when it comes to interviewing people about their skills. You can
learn a lot not just about what they do and do not know but also about
how they react to the stress of not knowing.

Second, the tale:

Having used this instrument to screen seven or eight people so far,
<rant> it is time to launch a class action suit against the Whole
Language movement on behalf of every student who has ever been
victimized by it!

A couple of the candidates are, judging from the length of experience
shown on their résumés, of my approximate generation (older than the
Rockies, but not so old as the Appalachians). These two had not the
slightest bit of difficulty with any of the copyediting or grammar
questions. ALL of the other (apparently younger) candidates so far are 0
for 9 on those two groups of questions.

Now, mind you, these individuals all have significant work experience as
editors of various types of publications or Web sites, were able to give
usage examples that demonstrated their ability to write clearly and
coherently and to punctuate fairly well. But not one of them could
define any part of speech or recite any actual usage rule for common
punctuation marks. So they passed the norma loquendi test and would
probably be perfectly adequate writers.

However, they were sent into the world, with diplomas and college
degrees, simply incapable of doing the one basic thing any editor must
be able to do: explain to the author WHY you moved the friggin' comma.

These are not sales or marketing people, who spent their high school
careers hitting on the person in the next seat. No, these are the people
who WERE paying attention in class. But their teachers were under the
misguided apprehension that offering guidance on punctuation and
sentence structure will quash the creativity of their charges' fragile
egos. Gimme a break!

We'll muddle through. If I can't hire someone who knows this stuff, I'll
teach it. But criminy! Will someone buy the educational community a clue
on this already!</rant> (By the way, so far my inclination is to go with
someone who knows grammar and teach the software skills rather than
t'other way 'round. I think it will be easier. Age is definitely not a
factor.)

Dick

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