Re: Examining proficiency of job applicants in FrameMaker

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Quoting Catherine Arthur <carthur000 -at- sympatico -dot- ca>:

> 
> I have seen an unfortunate situation where a technical writer come into a
> company, and the writer did not have FrameMaker experience. It was not
> required as the team felt, as many of you do, that it can be picked up quite
> easily. After a few months, the person was let go and another writer took
> over the document. The template was largely unused, text was formatted
> without styles, numbering was all hardcoded, as were all cross references.
> This took some time to clean up, with the document to be sent to the printer
> the next day.

From your description, the problem wasn't that the writer didn't have 
FrameMaker experience. Rather, the writer didn't have professional knowledge of 
word processing. If someone isn't using styles and is doing numbers manually 
(which I suppose is what you mean by "hardcoded"), then he or she is going to 
do just as badly in MS Word or WordPerfect.

Someone who could do professional word processing might not know exactly how 
styles were set up or numbering was automated in FrameMaker. However, he or she 
would have an idea that these tools were available and look for them.

-- 
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604-421.7177