Background

[Don Sargent <sargent -at- OTTER -dot- TEMPLATE -dot- COM>]

I am currently trying to fill two Senior Technical Writer positions to
work on the documentation for an object-oriented software development
environment.  The development environment provides a proprietary object-
oriented language, predefined class libraries, and editors that give you
a simple, visual way to create portions of an application. The technical
complexity of the product ranges from moderately complex for
the editors to very complex for the language.

One of our minimum qualifications for the Sr. Technical Writer position
is coursework in a programming language such as PASCAL, C, or C++.  Extra
programming experience or a Computer Science degree really grabs our attention.

As you might expect, nearly all the resumes and candidates we interview
fall into these categories:

     o Technically strong, weak technical writing
     o Strong technical writing, technically weak in programming concepts

We've passed on some candidates who appeared to have the skills
to write very good documentation.  However, by our estimates and their's,
there would be an extremely large learning curve--if they caught on at
all.

Do you have any suggestions that might help us judge candidates?  Are
we being too stringent?  Both writers in the group have English/Journalism
degree with Computer Science minors and the learning curve for new features
is still very steep.

--
Don Sargent                     ---
Product Documentation Group    |   | "I might only get three strikes in
Template Software, Inc.        |   |  life, but I can hit foul indefinitely."
Herndon, Virginia              \   /                 -- me
(703)318-1266                   | |
sargent -at- template -dot- com            | |
                                (_)