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RE: Evaluating Candidates Using Tests, Logic Questions, and Similar
Subject:RE: Evaluating Candidates Using Tests, Logic Questions, and Similar From:John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:Malcolm Mclean <mclean -at- syndesis -dot- com>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:15:04 -0800 (PST)
> Did you have any specific thoughts on the idea of
> letting the candidate have the opportunity for a candid
> talk to a senior writer without the manager in the room?
> I've wondered a couple of times if candidates
> really believe that the writer will not tell me what
> they talked about.
> I wonder if *I* would believe it (;=). Writers I've
> hired have said that they liked the idea.
I don't know that it makes that much difference to me. The only
impact may be that when experienced technical writers talk to each
other, they may use conventions and concepts that would be foreign to
the manager. The manager needs to listen but not intrude. Nothing
could kill the conversation faster than the manager, out of nowhere,
interjecting a question about a fundimental concept "What is
conditional text?". The train of thought is lost, the thought process
is lost, and it reverts to the lowest denominator.
As far as the grilling of the samples, every document of every type
is created as part of a process. While the facts of the sample are
unique, specific, and possibly forgotten, the process that I use to
get to the end of each project is similar.
Dicuss that with the prospective writer. Me knowing the telecom
subject because of a sample may not be of use to you in a CRM
situation, but SPECIFIC process techniques may be. Ask something
like:
- "What is the process you employ to get document signoff?"
- "What is the process you employ to create multiplatform
documentation delivered for a specific platform and all you have is
unstructured FM and what are the traps or gotchas?"
- "How do you work with a team of established writers when one of the
writers is out to destroy you?"
- "It's Friday afternoon, your four 200-page document PDFs are on the
FinalPDF server to be picked up by the build server, the build is
Saturday morning, and you heard that Linux is now not supported. Tell
me what you do in the first 15 minutes."
Knowing that the writer is up to speed on these techniques should be
more important than what she remembers about Optical Transport Manager.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
"I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
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