Employers' mistaken job requirements?

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Elizabeth Vollbach wondered <<How can we convince employers who are
looking to hire a tech writer that their primary concern should not
be with the software programs a tech writer has experience using?
that a technical writer is not, primarily, a typist?>>

I guess the same way we convince people to have safe sex, not drink
excessive amounts of alcohol before driving, save some percentage of
their income for retirement, and stop smoking: a combination of
education and blind luck. People (myself included <g>) tend to have a
great deal of resistance to common sense, and you can generally
expect that they won't change just because it makes sense for them to
do so. As the old joke goes, "it only takes one psychiatrist to
change a light bulb, but the light bulb has to want to change."

Since I enjoy playing devil's advocate >@8^{)}, I'll turn your
question on its head: _should_ we try to change this attitude?
Strictly speaking, if I were a manager and I had a choice between a
candidate who could drop right into my work environment with no
training and an equally talented candidate who I'd have to train for
weeks or months, I know which one I'd choose. If I'm in an area where
there are tons of technical writers looking for relatively few jobs,
I'd certainly use tool knowledge as one way to cut down on the number
of people I'd have to interview. That's not fair, but then again, I'd
be hired to actually produce documentation for a living, not read
resumes and conduct interviews.

Returning to non-devil mode @8^{)}, I certainly concede validity of
your point, with one reservation: if I were sitting on the hiring
side of the desk, I'd be very skeptical of technical writers in
general, simply because there are so many incredibly bad ones out
there. Like the bozo who wrote the installation guide for a DOS
program (from a large, well-respected company) that I unsuccessfully
tried to install over the weekend. It contained gems such as (paraphrase):
"Add the following line to your config.sys file: [the path to your
mouse driver goes here... me, I wouldn't recognize a mouse driver if
it bit me, but since you're _not_ a techie, you undoubtedly know
better than I do where it is, and if not, you can always return the
software]" I kid you not... and the manual was printed in 7-point
Helvetica with inadequate leading, was organized seemingly randomly,
and had no troubleshooting section to speak of, which made reading it
an absolute joy, I can assure you.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Patience comes to those who wait."--Anon.


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