Re: HR versus Tech writing

["Hutchings, Christa" <cwhutchings -at- HOMEWIRELESS -dot- COM>]

Marie McHarry wrote:

> A friend of mine who has been a lawyer for a
>large corporation for many years does not even allow HR to screen
applicants,
>except to find out if they have a law degree. I think the same is true
for
>most professions; the only persons truly competent to judge the
abilities of
>professionals are practicing members of the same profession.

As I have mentioned before on this list, I was once saddled with a TW
who had a BSEE and MA - English. The Director of Engineering thought
this guy was the best TW candidate to come down the pike, based simply
on educational credentials. I was skeptical, because the guy had very
little experience as a TW, knew nothing about the telephony industry,
had never seen a DTP app, and didn't know the slightest thing about
document design, audience analysis, etc. Despite my misgivings, he was
hired and lasted about 7 months. His writing style was very "literary",
and pretty sloppy to boot, he couldn't (wouldn't) follow standards, and
he was totally disinterested in learning more than the mere basics of
our DTP app. (My fresh-out-of-college English-major junior writer cut
her teeth as a TW cleaning up everything this guy did after he left.)
The really sad thing was that he was making quite a bit more money than
I was - simply because he had an engineering degree!

>A manager once, when I told him what my rates were, said "For that
amount of
>money, I can hire an engineer." I pointed out that he had lots of
engineers on
>staff, so maybe he should have them do the manual.

Been there, done that! It always does seem to shock them when you say
something like that, though! ;~D

Chris Welch-Hutchings
Senior Technical Writer
Home Wireless Networks, Inc.
mailto:cwhutchings -at- homewireless -dot- com

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=