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Subject:Re: Certification -- what's in it for writers From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sat, 29 Oct 2011 10:51:56 -0700
I'm neither inherently for or against certification. I just want it to
provide the best bang for the buck, not just for individual writers but for
the profession at large.
It's been my experience that most hiring managers don't seem to have much
difficulty at all making hiring decisions when their candidates have 10+
years of senior level experience in multiple tech sectors and a list of past
managers and clients willing to sing their praises, but go into a panic when
their budgets can only support the compensation for an under-five-years
junior level contributor or a new grad. And I don't hear many horror
stories from experienced writers who were passed over for a plum job or
promotion that went to someone less qualified because the hiring manager
couldn't recognize the value of experience, but see repeated inquires right
here in this forum from people asking what courses they should take and what
experience they should pursue to break into or succeed in technical
communications.
All of which led me to the conclusion that the best certification scheme, at
least in the beginning, would have been for those of us who, as Steve has
said, are far enough along in our careers that certification probably won't
have much of an impact on our job searches compared to our 20+ years of
writing and/or technical experience, to develop ways to evaluate and verify
the potential of the less experienced (or, for that matter, the
inexperienced) to help them get their careers in motion and develop criteria
for more experienced professional levels that the less experieced can use as
targets for their future development.
That doesn't seem to be the way the process has developed. IMO, what's been
presented is going to be largely irrelevant for most highly experienced
professionals and pretty much useless for less experienced ones with no
existing body of work, but by the time we know for sure whether or not I'm
right the only thing I'll probably be doing with words is trying to improve
my Scrabble.
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