TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Raising levels of awareness among managers and HR personnel is just a matter
of money.
I belong to the CPA society in Australia. The society spends thousands of
dollars vigorously advertising and promoting its CPA designation (it
competes with a rival organization) to ensure maximum exposure and
recognition within its target market, the wider business community.
Assuming the STC went ahead and instituted a certification process, then
given sufficient resources and effort, it could readily establish its brand
as the de facto standard in the tech comms field. If, for example, the STC
flooded IT trade magazines with ads asserting the superior quality of
documentation produced by its members, 'awareness' among technology
professionals would shoot up.
Of course, awareness is one thing, respect another. As many people have
already mentioned, the certification effort would only succeed if, over
time, hiring managers found certified writers consistently performed better
than their non-affiliated peers.
>>But as someone pointed out, many if not most managers aren't even aware of
the STC, so a designation such as "certified technical writer" will have
little meaning to them and probably to most technical professionals as well.
You have to really look at all the factors surrounding the effort that goes
into any certification (including college degrees) to render a determination
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
