Re: Job title for tech writer who does QA testing

[Andrea Shanahan <amshanahan -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Hi Nina,

Congratulations on your new role! And it's great that you have outlined the
responsibilities of the new position so well. It adds some nice color and
clarity for a writer looking to broaden their skills in the areas of QA and
Customer Support. However, I don't think a new title is necessary. A good
tech writer will already be prepared to do product testing (formally or
informally) in the course of their work, and, after gaining considerable
product knowledge, can often be counted upon to contribute in some customer
support capacity. Highlighting these aspects of the role in the job
description should make the requirements clear enough. Also, QA and Support
professionals often have very specialized skills such as automation or
knowledge base systems, for example, that aren't necessarily required from
what you describe. But since you asked for suggestions, maybe something
like "Content, Quality, and Support Writer" â put it right out there.
Interested in seeing other ideas.

Best wishes in your new job!

Regards,
-Andrea


On Fri, May 25, 2018, 10:32 AM Nina Rogers <janina -dot- rogers -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

> Hello from rainy Georgia!
>
> I'm moving into a new content-management position at work (yay! I think ...
> ), and my company is looking to hire someone to take over the brunt of my
> tech writing and software QA testing roles. Although my job title has been
> "technical writer," the company discovered last year that I'm good at QA,
> so they added me to their QA team for 2-3 weeks of each development cycle.
> (Development cycles are 8-12 weeks each, so it's a relatively significant
> chunk of my time.)
>
> For the new hire, they want to find someone who is also good at both
> software documentation/KB management and QA testing (and who can answer the
> occasional support ticket when the support team is overloaded), and they're
> thinking that the "technical writer" job title doesn't quite cover it.
>
> So, I'm looking for suggestions for a job title, maybe something a little
> more elegant than Technical Writer/QA Tester (though that is accurate and
> would work). The job will be roughly 25% QA, 10% support, and 65% software
> doc/KB management.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Nina
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