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Subject:Question for people with tech writing businesses? From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net> Date:Sat, 22 Apr 2006 10:06:48 -0400
Dick Margulis wondered: <<I'm working on a proposal to do a large
documentation project for a local organization--more than I care to do
by myself, as I have other, non-TW projects competing for my time.
However, I'm not sure the best approach to take to staff such a
project. I suppose I could advertise for a contractor, but given the
time of year, I'm thinking of looking for an intern. I realize I'd have
to supervise closely and do a lot of teaching, but that's fine with
me.>>
If you're willing to look for and supervise an intern, talk to your
local university to see whether they have an internship program for
their technical writing students. Some schools require a practical
(i.e., real world) project as part of the graduation requirements, and
working with their students acccomplishes several very good things: you
help a student acquire real-world experience they can put on their
resume while getting a summer job that actually relates to their
career, and build some ties between the academy and the industry (never
a bad thing imho). Good kharma! Even if they don't have a formal
program, it can't hurt to ask to talk to their students.
Advantages for you include the fact that you get someone with at least
a certain minimal level of training, and that you have their professor
as both a carrot and a stick you can wield if there are any problems.
The fact that they need to submit satisfactory work to pass their
course is a strong motivator to work hard. If it's a post-grad program,
the prof may even take on some of the burden of teaching and
supervision--that's part of the job description for a thesis
supervisor.
It's also worth noting that you can probably pay an intern less money
than you'd pay an experienced pro, while still paying them more than
they'd likely be able to earn at any other summer job. I say this not
because I'm encouraging you to exploit slave labor <g>--quite the
contrary, actually--but rather because it lets you quote a lower price
than might otherwise the case and you mentioned "local" organization.
That could mean a non-profit, or simply a smaller company with a
correspondingly small budget, so you'd be doing them a kindness by
lowballing on the price. You might even find them a future employee
(the intern).
In any event, working with an intern gives you a larger margin to cover
your own time costs; if they turn out to require more supervision and
rework time than you expected, you won't sacrifice as much of your
potential profits on the project.
<<Any strong cautions, one way or the other (contractor vs. intern)?>>
Just the usual ones: Ask for a sample of their work and spend enough
time talking to them to find out what problems they encountered in
preparing that work, and the approach they took to solving them. Find
out a bit about their previous real-world experience so you know what
kind of work environment they're able to survive--focus on what
problems they typically encounter on the job and how they deal with
them. This is a strong clue as to where you'll need to intervene or
monitor more closely.
If you go the intern route, talk to their teachers to get a feel for
things about the intern that became apparent only over the course of an
8-month school year--there are many things you might miss in a 1-hour
interview. Particularly in a graduate program, the profs are likely to
have a good feel for the strengths and weaknesses of the students who
apply, and they may be able to guide you to the best candidates for a
specific job or reveal areas where you'll need to spend additional time
coaching or correcting. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.
Always supervise most intensively right at the start. Any mistakes or
misunderstandings you can correct on page one are things you won't have
to correct for every page submitted thereafter. Do the "plan thrice,
write once" thing more rigorously than you might do by yourself,
because the intern will be following the plan and won't have the
benefit of knowing what you were thinking when you wrote the plan.
Better still, write your own plan and compare it with the intern's plan
to see which of you missed something. Working with keen young students
is often an exercise in humility because they're sometimes smarter than
we are. <g>
If you decide to go with a contractor instead, talk to your local
community of techwhirlers (both inside and outside STC) to ask for
referrals--and warnings. I've used this approach with considerable
success in the past to fill jobs.
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