Re: Examining proficiency of job applicants in FrameMaker

["Catherine Arthur" <carthur000 -at- sympatico -dot- ca>]

Hi All,

I have seen an unfortunate situation where a technical writer come into a
company, and the writer did not have FrameMaker experience. It was not
required as the team felt, as many of you do, that it can be picked up quite
easily. After a few months, the person was let go and another writer took
over the document. The template was largely unused, text was formatted
without styles, numbering was all hardcoded, as were all cross references.
This took some time to clean up, with the document to be sent to the printer
the next day.

Since then, management wants proof that the writers can use the tools. I
don't blame them. To assess FrameMaker, we've sent a manual out for review
in pdf format and asked the candidate to write the comments in FrameMaker.
The candidate can use one of the FrameMaker templates or their own. This
will work only if the candidate has access to FrameMaker, so I think it is
potentially unfair.

Similarly, we have used ForeHelp in the past for creating online help.
Frequently, these were edited or created by interns, so lots of writers were
trained on the tool. Curiously, out of maybe ten individuals, two had real
problems understanding how to make ForeHelp work. I'm inclined to think that
some peoples minds just don't wrap around some software applications.

YMMV

C.