Certification--a new concept. Discuss.

[Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>]

Dinner conversation. My wife is NOT bothering to study for her ten-year 
recertification exam that she has to take on Monday, in her field, which 
has only had certification for twenty-odd years and which most hiring 
managers have still not heard of but she has to take the exam to keep 
using the letters after her name. I brought up the quandary we 
perennially encounter in discussing tech writing certification. Here's 
her insight:

The way we want a hiring manager to see a tech writing certificate is as 
an indicator that this applicant not only has the specialized knowledge 
evidenced by his or her résumé but also possesses some broader exposure 
to other disciplines that tech writers sometimes encounter.

We should not, in other words, aim for a certificate that says the 
person who possesses it is a _master_ of every related discipline. The 
certificate should be evidence that the individual takes the 
craft/discipline/profession/whatever-you-want-to-call-it seriously. But 
it should not be taken as proof that the person knows everything there 
is to know about this particular job opening. That information should 
come from the education and experience the person lists or from the 
responses to interview questions.

I think this is a key insight. It greatly simplifies the endless debate 
about what level of knowledge of which technical areas we should 
consider sufficient. Instead, we can list a fairly broad swath in terms 
of areas of knowledge but require only a basic understanding of each of 
those areas, rather than expert-level detailed knowledge.

Here's an example: Suppose I want to hire someone for SDLC documentation 
on a hugely complex project in a regulated industry. My main need is for 
someone who has lots of experience writing SDLC documentation and who 
has worked in at least one regulated industry before, preferably mine. 
Those are the qualifications I'm going to look for on the résumé. If I 
find two candidates who are similarly qualified in those regards and one 
of them also has one of these newfangled tech writing certificates, 
that's the one I'm more likely to hire, all else being equal, because 
that person might be better able to roll with the punches and take on 
other kinds of assignments when this project is done.

That's very different from saying that I need a certified tech writer 
and it would be nice if the person also had a little experience.

In the first place, I think this approach conforms better to the reality 
that it will be decades before a tech writing certificate actually means 
anything to the average hiring manager. In the second, I think it's an 
attainable goal. We're a long way from even the PMI level of 
credibility. So why not start with something doable?

Whaddaya think?

Dick

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