RE: The STC and me

[Mailing List <mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

T.W. Smith blurted:
> 
> Still, were I a hiring manager (have been, am not now), most other
> things being equal, I'd prefer STC members over non-STC-members,
> because the former are demonstrating an interest in the profession,
> rather than just being truck drivers or lawn-care guys who fell into
> the profession by accident when their previous gig ran out.

Hmm?

Funny notion, that. I thought I demonstrated (every day) my 
interest in the "profession" (though I think of it more as 
my trade or craft) by working at it five days a week (plus a 
little extra when crunches come along) and getting paid, year 
after year, by a well-pleased employer.  Who'da thunk I 
coulda just been doing any old thing these past decades 
and merely kept an STC membership going, and I'd be golden 
in the resumé heap?

I fell into this gig (and my previous ones) by asking for 
it. I originally fell into the trade from my "gigs" as 
production technician and then third-line tech-support guy 
(the one the first-line and second-line people looked to 
when things got sticky and customers got huffy). I found 
that I was doing a lot of tech-ish writing anyway, and 
that I enjoyed that part of the job. So when an opening 
appeared, down the hall, to do it as a full-time job 
without the irate customers and fix-it-yesterday-I'm-losing-
tens-of-thousands-of-dollars-a-day pressure... I grabbed. 

I've been doing mostly techy-writing stuff since the 
mid-1980s.  Yet, if you were hiring, some green kid with 
a current STC membership would trump me, outa the gate?

What!!??!  Not even my ingratiating nature and winning smile 
would get me a nod?   Oh... wait... I wouldn't get called 
for an interview, due to my lack of credentials.

Kevin (who was an STC member for about 10 of the past 20 
       years, but not for the last five)

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