RE: Texas Tech U/ tech writer experience....

["Goldstein, Dan" <DGoldstein -at- DeusTech -dot- com>]

Are we speaking about tech writing??? During a number of interviews in the
spring of 2001 and then again in 2002, no one even asked if I had a degree.
There was one guy who asked for my SAT scores from 1979, but he was just
really competitive about that sort of thing.

Here in the DC area, there are many government contractors who require a
degree, but they hardly define the industry as a whole, even locally, and
certainly not nationally.

In short, Isaac, it depends. I think it's inaccurate to state that, "without
the paper, you better be very good." Some companies care about the paper,
and many don't. Doesn't hurt to have one, right?

Of course, *every* company prefers to hire a "very good" tech writer, but
only the smart companies know to look for them on TECHWR-L. :-)

Dan Goldstein

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Isaac Rabinovitch 
> Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 11:55 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: Texas Tech U/ tech writer experience....
> 
> ... I can name companies that simply won't look at a job 
> applicant who doesn't have a 4-year 
> degree. And even one or two where everybody who isn't a peon 
> has a graduate degree. Even 
> in companies where the policies are more flexible, a hiring 
> manager has to use up a lot of 
> chips with the corporate bureaucracy to hire somebody who 
> doesn't have a lot of paper 
> qualifications.
> I'm not saying that you can't get by without the paper. But 
> you better be *very* good. If 
> you're up for a job and don't have the formal credentials, 
> you better come across as a 
> *lot* more qualified than the other candidates. That wasn't 
> so hard to do 5 years ago, 
> when there were more jobs than candidates to fill them. But 
> now the streets swarm with 
> well-qualified people who can't rent a job -- and you're up 
> against all of them. Under 
> these circumstances, you need every advantage you can muster.