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Subject:Selling to Reluctant Hiring Managers From:Sheldon and Irina Kohn <s -dot- ikohn -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET> Date:Thu, 8 Apr 1999 20:46:19 -0400
Hello All,
Recently, I have been interviewing a good bit, and I have found
consistently that things go well until we come to the subject of money.
When I mention an amount that I think is appropriate for someone with my
education and experience, I have seen expressions of disbelief cross the
hiring managers' faces. They seem to be thinking in terms that would
have been appropriate several years ago.
Their perspective is somewhat understandable in that a lot of these
managers, at least here in Atlanta, are only now being forced to address
documentation seriously, however much they might prefer not to do so.
Perhaps there is a bit of "sticker shock" in dealing with senior
technical communications professionals for the first time. I have been
in the business long enough to remember developers saying that there was
no need for documentation because their software was intuitive.
There is also a bias in that a lot of these hiring managers are (or
were) developers themselves. I suspect that they often value the skill
set they have higher than the skill set that other people have. In the
same position, we might do the same thing.
What I wonder is if there is a strategy to make such hiring managers
come around and recognize the value of technical communications with
dollars, not with lip-service. I know that a lot of these companies have
a need for the services of a senior-level person, and I also know that I
can add value in ways they cannot imagine.
Have other people on this list managed to sell the value of technical
communications to skeptical hiring managers? The easy answer, of course,
is simply not to deal with such people, but I somehow feel that there
are untapped opportunities with such companies. The question is, how do
we make the sale in these situations?
TIA, and I look forward to learning a lot from you all on this.
