RE: STC certification: what's in it for tech writers?
Mark Baker, looking at the basket of KSAs we're evaluating for the
certification program, suggests that we've gone about things backward
by creating the base certification first instead of more targeted
sub-certifications.
No, I suggested that you had created a certification based on common skills (meaning frequently occurring, not shared by all), not base skills (absolute prerequisites for doing the job at all in any environment).
I further suggested that while the items in your basket of common skills might all be common when measured individually, it would be less common for a particular technical writer to be exercising every skill in the basket on a particular job. (That's just what happens when you bundle probabilities: the probability of the set is always lower than the probability of the individual items.)
This, I suggested, reduces the degree of correlation between what the certification tests for and what a hiring manager is looking for. Whether hiring managers will find sufficient correlation between what the certification covers and what they need, only time will tell.
All I can tell you is that, at the times in my career when I have been a hiring manager, certification in this particular basket of skills would not have interested me, and would perhaps have made me question whether the candidate was willing and able to adapt to my vision of what a tech writer should be.
I don't represent the whole market, and I don't claim to. Time will tell if there is a segment of the market that will value this certification, and how large that segment will be.
Mark
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