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Subject:Re: The Results (Long) From:Michele Davis <michele -at- krautgrrl -dot- com> To:Tamara Reyes-Muralles <trm -at- telusplanet -dot- net> Date:Mon, 18 Aug 2003 17:25:32 -0500
Hi Tamara, et al:
I want to stress that membership in STC does not a good writer make and
you may be losing some ground if you ONLY interview people that are part
of STC or a writing organization. I was a 12 year STC member who is an
independent, with my own company, that become disgusted with STC because
of the total bias towards captive employment and the disgusting
cliqueish-ness of the Minnesota (Twin Cities) Chapter. I went so far as
to complain to STC HQ because of the cliqueish-ness (do I want to
re-live high school, sure, but not the cliquey part of it). I have been
a National Writer's Union (NWU) member, but if they dropped certain
bene's I wouldn't be a member at all. And I am someone who has an
advanced writing degree. From your post it sounds as if I would be the
type of person to not even get an interview.
My personal experience in hiring competent designers and writers has
been to offer internships at smaller, private colleges to students with
a major in English and usually something else. Several younger women I
hired to do layout that had double majors of Spanish and English
actually ended up getting design jobs out of college. They were
reliable, smart, could take instruction, paid attention to detail and
were genuinely appreciative of the higher rate I could pay them, better
than nannying, work study or a waitressing job is what they said.
Michele
Tamara Reyes-Muralles wrote:
I may have become biased, or just smarter, but I decided I will only
interview people with writing courses and who are members of STC or a
writing association. I interviewed two people that just graduated from a
professional writing degree program, and I could see a huge positive
difference in their writing samples. They were great writing samples.
Thanks for listening. If anyone wants to be a volunteer coach and help me
along my journey of starting a writing company, I would really appreciate
it.
