Re: Technical Writing Tests

[Eugene Kim-Eng <gene -at- genek -dot- com>]

If I believe candidates have the necessary experience and ability
(based on interviews, samples of past work and checking their
professional references), but also feel the need to "test" them, my
preferred method is a 30-day contract-to-perm offer.  Unless you're
writing the user guides to small home appliances like electric
toothbrushes, nobody can write a complicated technical document
in a the amount of time you'd probably allot for a "test" without either
(a) some learning curve time in advance, (b) you doing the real work
of identifying the end user and sorting through the extraneous data to
determine actual content in advance for them (the rest is just editing
and formatting, not writing), or (c) you exploiting them by demanding
that they do free tech writing consulting in order to get the job.

Gene Kim-Eng
Technical Publications Manager
Half Moon Bay, CA


At 02:41 PM 2/10/2003 -0500, Laurie Kittle wrote: