Re: ADMIN: FYI

["Stephen D. Martin" <stpats -at- storm -dot- ca>]

David:

I have to agree with Mike, but there's more to the story.

Right now I'm working with a very junior fellow (just a few
months out of school, let's call him Bob), and he's a regular
Clark Kent, but he's just plain lousy as a technical writer (may
community colleges rot in hell for eternity).

Now Bob has an excellent resume.  He owned his own business for
many years. He's got a teacher's certificate and actually worked
as a Science and Language teacher.  He's a member of the STC et
al.

                                BUT

He doesn't know how to write, and he's so meek and mild that he
lets the engineers walk all over him (i.e. here's my copy, just
put it into the document, it doesn't need to be edited or
anything).  Sometime's Bob makes the engineers feel sorry for him
("Oh, I've got 300 emails to go through to find what you want")
so that they do all the work for him, but eventual the act wears
thin and they just turn nasty and take it out on the whole
department.

On the otherhand, I came along and took firm charge of matters. 
I was able to get down and dirty, gruff (not rude, but perhaps
crude), when it was required, and I got both the attention, and
the respect of the engineers.  And by that, I mean that I
actually received fan-mail, like "This is just between you and
me, but I think you're doing a great job.  Keep at it."

Meek and mild may be all well and good for your clients, but this
mailing list is like a private clubhouse; the Tech Writer Locker
Room, if you will.  When people post here they don't always worry
about what a potential recruiter might think, they're just
concentrating on getting a point across, and/or unwinding from
whatever has them stressed, and/or not concentrating at all.

If you want to be able to provide your clients with someone who
is going to deliver a quality product, then you need to worry
less about the personality *you* perceive from their posts here,
and concentrate on finding someone who:

1) has the right technical skills and background, and
2) has the people skills to connect with both the bosses, and the
SMEs.

That means that you actually have to make the effort to
communicate with these people to discover whether your perception
is faulty, they were just having a bad hair day, or they actually
are assholes.

In the end, your job as a recruiter is to serve your clients, not
worry about what Ms. Manner's thinks about your prospective
hires.

Mike Stockman wrote:

On 11/15/00 10:59 PM, David Demyan (dbdemyan -at- worldnet -dot- att -dot- net)
wrote:

>As a recruiter, I **always** check postings and archives when hiring.
>On the assumption that the rude ones would give my clients a hard time,
>I don't consider them.

Ruling out candidates because they're rude is like keeping an
excellent 
doctor away from your tumor because of his lousy bedside manner.

---
I woke up in a Nortel cubicle, a manager knew my name
He said, "You can sleep under your desk tonight,
since you coded the night away."
I looked back and I hiccupped and thought of my busy day
Eleven hours on the server baby, there's got to be a better way.

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