RE: Employee experience dilemma....

["Rock, Megan" <Megan -dot- Rock -at- fanucrobotics -dot- com>]

I think Jeff Hanvey did a great job of helping us to understand what Lisa's
point of view might be in the midst of all of this.  I've been in the work
force as a technical writer for three years now, but I have worked for three
or four different managers and in three very different aspects of technical
writing during these three years.  Just as soon as I would start to feel
confident in my role, I would find myself working on a completely different
project or for a different manager, and I'd be back to square one: spending
a lot of time figuring things out myself through trial and error and feeling
pretty clueless and unproductive in the process.  I never really did have a
mentor per se to help me even though our documentation department was twelve
members strong and everyone was more than willing to answer my questions if
I could manage to figure out what to ask.  If Lisa already understands your
products and your company's processes, she's ahead of the game even if she
isn't a top-notch writer.

I, too, was relatively young (21) when I graduated and started working as a
technical writer, and my youth and youthful appearance have never been an
advantage in this line of work!  Fortunately my previous manager was quite
approachable, and I learned a great deal from him because he answered even
my silliest questions without making me feel foolish, helped me to come up
with strategies for working on my projects, and let me know that he
appreciated my efforts and felt I was more than capable of handling my
assignments.  That boosted my confidence and was the closest I came to
having a mentor even though that manager was a senior product engineer who
admitted he didn't know the next thing about technical writing.  But he
wanted me to succeed and took the time to help me grow as a professional and
that was what I needed most at that point.

Atticus Fisher said that Lisa was hired to work in the technical support
group but has been bumped into the technical documentation group.  Does Lisa
even WANT to be a technical writer?  If she's a new hire, chances are she
didn't have much say when they decided to move her to a different group, and
she may have had no intentions of being a technical writer when she was
hired by your company.  If she isn't interested in technical writing,
perhaps it's time to rethink whether her current position is a good fit for
her skills and career goals.

But if she IS interested in learning how to be a technical writer and she is
as bright as you perceive her to be, sit down with her and figure out a plan
for training her.  Maybe bring your manager in on the plan and get his/her
input.  Give Lisa books to read.  Give her a copy of your style guide.
Perhaps she could rewrite the manual for her VCR using your style guide and
templates as a way of practicing on something that she knows you won't need
to rewrite for her.  And maybe the user guide and reference manual she is
currently working on are too big of a "first project" for her to do for you
by herself.  Perhaps you could assign her a section of one of those manuals
instead.  That way she's still getting some real experience, but you're
still in charge of writing most of the manual and won't need to spend your
time rewriting the entire thing.  As she sees herself learning and
succeeding in small ways, she'll be more confident that she's truly
contributing something to your group.  Eventually she'll be able to handle
doing an entire manual start-to-finish by herself.


-----------------
Megan E. Rock
Technical Writer, Product Information Department