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Subject:Re: Tech Writing 101 - How to tie a shoe From:Lisa Hodge <techpubs -at- MAILCITY -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 12 Jan 1999 21:31:35 -0000
Robert Clark wrote:
<While it is valuable to have the employer learn about your skills in descriptive narrative, if I can't convince them with samples and the stuff on my website, I bail out of the interview, that is unless, the company actually makes shoelaces and needs a user manual. :)>
As a candidate for a position, I'd like to agree...I should be able to come in to the interview and sell (using intelligent discussion of the audience, user needs, objectives of each piece, etc.) my samples as evidence of my work.
However, as a hiring manager, I sometimes feel as though I have no proof that the candidate sitting before me actually authored the material. Perhaps they authored it as part of a team or maybe they helped with the design layout. I hired a guy once who, after a lengthy discussion about his samples, convinced me that they were true reflections of his work. It didn't take long for me to figure out that he didn't know a noun from a verb. As we were discussing his shortcomings a few weeks later, he admitted that his previous position as a tech writer had been overstated, and that he was really a desktop publishing expert.
For the record, my company does not do writing tests as part of the interviewing process, but I'm working to change that!
