Re: FW: Other handshakes?

["Sharon Burton-Hardin" <sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com>]

But, at least for my company, these are unsolicited resumes from the people
who wrote them, usually called Resume.doc, sent asking if we would be
interested in hiring them. These do not come from agencies, the writer can
attach any format they choose. They can explain anything they wish. They
have all the choices to let me know and see their resume. I didn't ask, they
sent. I think my statement that your resume is the first piece I see that
shows what you can do is accurate.

Why do some of you think that a typo means death to the writer but not using
your tool in a reasonable manner is being picky? I have seen excellent and
impressive resumes that used the tool well and had a small comma fault. I
did not throw these out. We all have weaknesses as writers - I confuse that
and which.

My favorite example: I am teaching FrameMaker. All the 15 students are
current tech writers. Some use only Word, others work in WP or PageMaker.
One man simply COULD NOT get Formats. Neither the concept or the utility.
Finally I asked what he would do in Word when his boss comes in the day
before he ships and says all the body fonts must change to Helvetica. Dead
serious, he looks at me and say "I have an extensive library of custom VBA
scripts I wrote that I would run to change the fonts. It would take about 2
days." He never got the utility of Formats, Master pages, none of it. Could
not see the utility of the similar features in Word. Not a bad writer,
totally useless to my company.

We cannot afford to have this man work for us - Why would I be interested in
paying him to develop these custom VBA scripts to solve non-problems, if he
simply was able to learn to use his tool properly? imagine the time he
wasted that he should have spent writing/researching/etc?

In our experience, if you don't currently know how to use your tools
properly, the fight to get you to learn that is simply too much, assuming
you are an experienced writer. Junior writers are a completely different
animal.

sharon

Sharon Burton-Hardin
Anthrobytes Consulting
909-369-8590
www.anthrobytes.com
Vice-president, Programs of the Inland Empire chapter of the STC
www.iestc.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Cc: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Wednesday, 30 January, 2002 6:43 AM
Subject: Re: FW: Other handshakes?



| I'll grant that a resume written from scratch in
| Word should use styles etc., but there are a lot
| of valid reasons that a resume in Word format
| would not.
|
| IMHO, as expressed in most job ads, Word
| format sounds like a "so we can open it" file
| format requirement--not a "so we can examine your
| work" requirement. That's comparable to telling
| someone to bring a driver's license to an
| interview, then expecting that the presence
| of a driver's license means that they
| drove to the interview.
|
| Eric



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Attention ForeHelp and Doc-to-Help Users! Upgrade your existing product to
RoboHelp for only $299, through January 31st. RoboHelp can import your
existing Help projects! Learn how else RoboHelp can benefit you. www.ehelp.com/techwr

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.