TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I think too much is made of the idea that companies are looking for "reasons" to
not hire or to terminate in order to trim staff. The hardest part of hiring is
to pick out someone attractive from a sea of undesirable applicants, and when it
becomes necessary to trim staff, most companies just trim staff for "reasons
related to business conditions." Who needs any more excuse to not hire or to
terminate?
The human-nature tendency to make decisions based on visceral reactions is
another matter altogether, because sometimes this can happen without the decider
even being aware of it. I think the Google/Facebook searching will become
commonplace, and for a time some people will lose out on opportunities because
of someone's visceral reaction to something that turns up on them; it'll be the
virtual equivalent of walking into a job interview and announcing your positions
on all the hot button issues of the day. But in time it will become evident
that just about *everyone* says or does *something* that will elicit a negative
visceral response from *someone,* except for those who go out of their way to
ensure that nothing about them can ever be found in an online search, and the
choice will be between people with different things you tend not to like about
them vs. those who make themselves into human ciphers, and about whom you know
nothing except what they will tell you. The devil you know is almost always the
better choice.
Gene Kim-Eng
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hood" <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>
Dinna be too certain o' tha', as my Scottish ancestors might have said. I
believe that using things like Google and Facebook searches will become more
common in the future. I think negative criteria hiring calculations will become
the norm. Companies are doing everything they can to trim the work force to
reduce personnel budgets, and I see no reason to believe that trend will not
continue. There will be even more offshoring and hiring of H1B visa workers in
the future, because for a few years yet that will be, in a lot of cases, less
expensive than hiring an American. This gives companies a lot of incentive to
find something about you they dislike enough to say it's reason to not hire you.
Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-
