Re: Stories of arrogant dot.com-era job applicants

Subject: Re: Stories of arrogant dot.com-era job applicants
From: "Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 04:03:02 -0700 (PDT)


Andrew Plato wrote:
> Ummm, I think the person made it clear it was a staff job.
> Considering a salary was posted and benefits.

Well, I told you I was reading between the lines, based on my
experiences at that time. We don't have the original advertisement but
in '99 an awful lot of these job postings were shotgun posts to all
available categories on the board - CON_W2/IND/1099/PERM, etc,
basically just "Anybody, please help!"

Even then it was obvious that many of those jobs were project-based and
transient, so anybody who posted them as PERM wasn't fooling anybody.

Don't apply today's standards to '99. Back then, employers were happy
to talk to anybody who seemed to have the right experience. They didn't
consider it a waste of time to meet with a good candidate and discuss
whether the job should be FT or contract.

In '99 I got a gig with a dot-com. They were trying to fill it as perm,
but I was able to convince them a contract was better. I didn't fill
out the job application, either.

Nowadays of course it is totally reversed. I know a few people (not all
TWs) who took contract jobs because they needed the work, but weren't
really prepared to be contractors.

> This guy was pretty clearly a dipstick.
Entirely possible. We don't know his side of the story, though.

Or at least the guy was a bad salesman; sounds like he might have had
the right experience but didn't know how to close the deal. Maybe based
on what he saw he decided *not* to close the deal.

> Some people outside of technical writing think a person with the
> word "technical" in their job/profession title should actually have
> technical skills.

And people with the word "manager" in their titles should actually have
management skills. I mean besides knowing how to fire people and file
bankruptcy petitions.

We all know what the TW labor pool is like. When you advertise for a
technical writer you should know what to expect. You should also know
enough about technical writing to read the resumes and understand which
ones have the skills you need. If you want a developer or sysadmin or
engineer, you should advertise for one and be prepared to pay the
freight.

> You're off the deep end on this one, Mike.
Always a possibility. I need to learn line wrapping, too :-)


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Robohelp X3, from eHelp, lets you quickly and easily create
professional Help systems for all your Windows and Web-based
applications, including Net.

Order RoboHelp X3 in May and receive a $100 mail-in rebate, PLUS
free RoboScreenCapture and WebHelp Merge Module.

Order RoboHelp today: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.



References:
Re: Stories of arrogant dot.com-era job applicants: From: Andrew Plato

Previous by Author: Re: Stories of arrogant dot.com-era job applicants
Next by Author: Re: Convert text to text
Previous by Thread: RE: Stories of arrogant dot.com-era job applicants
Next by Thread: Native Lotus Notes help files


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads