Re: Interviews and Portfolios

["Bell, John" <JBell -at- PARAGREN -dot- COM>]

A few folks wrote that they don't provide writing samples to potential
employers. After an experience I had a few years ago, I have come
to an almost opposite conclusion: I won't work for a company that
isn't sophisticated enough to ask for writing samples.

When I examined my worst job in my career, I realized that it was
a bad place to work because the company didn't really know what
it wanted from a tech writing staff, or how to support what we did.
Not one interviewer wanted to see my samples, they were more
interested in how I would "control" the existing set of contract
writers various groups had hired. After I was hired, I talked with
each writer and discovered that most had been hired based on
nothing more than a resume sent by their contracting agencies.
No phone interviews, no face to face interviews, and no samples.

On the other side of the fence, I like to see writing samples when
I hire writers. Although no one can guarantee that the sample I
get was actually written by the candidate, probing questioning
usually reveals all the but the most skilled liars. It also shows me
one more important piece of information: this is a sample that the
candidate considers to be good writing. If I get a sample that is
poorly written and has spelling and grammatical errors, I know
the candidate's idea of good writing and mine are different.

I work near Washington D.C. and many writers here do classified
work for the government that they cannot show as samples. The
solution here is quite simple: pick any commercial application
(such as FrameMaker, FileMaker Pro, or Netscape Navigator)
that you use daily and write a chapter as if you were writing its
user's guide or  third-party book. Who knows, it may turn out so
well that you end up writing an entire third-party book and it winds
up on the shelf of your local book store! As an interviewer, this tells
me several things: 1) you're interested enough in your career that
you will take a few evenings to put together a chapter sample
(some feel that creating such a chapter is an excessive effort, I
think they're lazy.) and 2) it shows me how well they know an
application they claim to use daily.

Programmers rarely can show the applications they did at previous
employers, but many develop their own programs at home and
show these (and the code) to prospective employers. Almost
every programmer here has shown me, at one time or another, a
program written at home that she or he brought to the interview and
discussed with our development manager.

We're fortunate enough to be in a profession where we have
samples of our work. Other professions (such as accountant, human
resources, and mechanic) have a harder time proving competence in
an interview.

--- John Bell
    jbell -at- paragren -dot- com

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