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Typing requirement in a tech writing ad - how to respond?
Subject:Typing requirement in a tech writing ad - how to respond? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"Techwr-L (E-mail)" <TECHWR-L -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>, "'Rose -dot- Wilcox -at- pinnaclewest -dot- com'" <Rose -dot- Wilcox -at- pinnaclewest -dot- com> Date:Thu, 11 Sep 2003 08:49:17 -0400
Rose Wilcox wonders: <<Today I saw an ad for technical writing that
requested 50 wpm... I decided they must have some good reason to require
that.>>
A very good reason. As a writer, your productivity should be limited
primarily by your thought process (figuring out what to say and how to say
it), not by waiting for your fingers to catch up with your brain. Of course,
most of us still think considerably faster than we type, but the smaller the
drag imposed by slow typing, the better, and 50 wpm isn't unreasonable for a
good writer.
<<I wrote a cover letter and amidst a lot of other things, I mentioned, "I
am sure my typing is more than adequate for the job", and one of my staff
of volunteer cover letter editors pointed out that I sound cocky.>>
Your friend has a good point. You can easily come up with a hard numeric
estimate of your typing speed (which is what they want, if only to confirm
that you're past the magic 50 wpm threshold) simply by picking any text
that's close at hand and retyping it while timing yourself. Do a word count
after one page, divide into the number of minutes it took to get there, and
you've got a crude estimate of your typing speed. (Pick a speed that you can
maintain with a relatively low error level; you may actually be tested to
confirm your claims, and there's no point typing 200 wpm with a 50% error
rate.)
<<Would you just ignore that requirement and hope you got an interview based
on your other sterling qualities?>>
Never ignore a requirement. It's a fairly competitive job market these days,
and you don't want to give an ignorant H.R. reviewer the slightest reason to
trash your resume without reading any further.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it
is."--Terry Pratchett
