Re: job-hunt weirdness

Subject: Re: job-hunt weirdness
From: Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 11:21:09 -0700

Actually, whether I get a call or not is beside the point. In this
economy, no software tech writer job posting in the SF Bay Area will
fail to attract a pool of at least half a dozen qualified applicants.
In fact, there's a good chance you'll get an applicant from a direct
competitor who's been documenting the exact same kind of products for
ten years. So when a job is relisted within a month or six weeks,
something screwy is going on.

Maybe they're indulging in the classic fantasy that they're going to
find a programmer who can write and is willing to take a 40% cut in
salary to work as a tech writer. Maybe they're rejecting qualified
candidates for ridiculous reasons, such as a lack of experience with
some obscure version-control system that a qualified applicant could
get up to speed on in five minutes. There are lots of possibilities,
but a dearth of qualified applicants is not, here and now, one of
them.

Unfortunately, the hiring manger doesn't necessarily see all the
resumes of qualified applicants. They may be screened out by a badly
configured screening application or culled by mistake by an
incompetent HR person. That's why when hiring I prefer to post on STC
lists using my own email address.

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Dana Worley<dana -at- campbellsci -dot- com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 08, 2009, Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare, consultRE: job-hunt
> weirdness wrote:
>
> ... If you are not called in for an interview, the major cause is likely that *you did not fit the
> description of what the organization was looking for*! ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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-

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info.

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat


Follow-Ups:

References:
Re: job-hunt weirdness: From: Erik Hare
Re: job-hunt weirdness: From: jlshaeffer
RE: job-hunt weirdness: From: Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare, consultant)
RE: job-hunt weirdness: From: Dana Worley

Previous by Author: Re: job-hunt weirdness
Next by Author: Re: job-hunt weirdness
Previous by Thread: Re: job-hunt weirdness
Next by Thread: Re: job-hunt weirdness


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads