Re: Examining proficiency of job applicants in FrameMaker

["Bonnie Granat" <bgranat -at- granatedit -dot- com>]

Bruce Byfield wrote:
> 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.

It's odd that it took months to find out what a supervisor should have
found out within a day or two.
And to find out the day before it was due at the printer? There's more
wrong here than the poor technical writer, it would seem.

Bonnie Granat
www.granatedit.com