Re: Lying applicants

["Michele Cottingham (BCS)" <cottingh -at- GROUCHO -dot- BSN -dot- USF -dot- EDU>]

Andrew,

I believe that liars should bear the consequences of their actions. How
can put your trust in a person's word if you know them to lie to you,
blatantly in your face? I do agree that firing that young woman was best
for you and your company.

I know that sometimes my honesty of my skills or lack of skills have kept
me from attaining certain jobs even though I had the majority of skills
that the employer needed. However, because of one certain task that had to
be done with a certain software, I am not eligible to obtain the position.
I would rather be upfront with the person and let them know so there are
no suprises on either side. I can lie and say I have the skills, even get
away with it by fussing around. Someday, it will come back to bite me and
I look foolish as a professional writer in this field.

I am caught in a situatin of lack of employment or training.

I tell them that I am a quick study since I do have the basics as well as
expertise of the others, but they don't want to train me for that certain
task. I guess they are willing to sift through all the others who say yes,
but really lack the skills or those who are genuine but require more
money.

Michele
Aspiring writer


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                 Michele Cottingham
                            Technical Writer/Graphic Artist
                           email:cottingh -at- groucho -dot- bsn -dot- usf -dot- edu
                           url:http://www.bsn.usf.edu/~cottingh

                                  Follow the Golden Rule
          Treat each other's email as you would like yours to be treated.


















On Mon, 21 Sep 1998, Andrew Plato wrote:

> What the hell is wrong with technical writers these days?  I want to share
> this little story with you because it is driving me nuts.
>
> In the past three months I have had five applicants lie through their teeth
> to me about their skills.  They sat there in my office and blatant lied to
> me about their skills.  For example, I hired a person (not from this list)
> who claimed extensive knowledge of Windows NT and relational databases.  At
> my company, a tech writer with good SQL skills is like a hunk of gold.  My
> clients are so desperate for writers with database experience that
> naturally, when anyone comes in the door with claims such knowledge, I am
> inclined to overlook some deficiencies to get them on site right away.
>
> Nevertheless, when this person got on-site, she quickly demonstrated her
> incompetence with Windows and databases.  She could not handle basic stuff
> like using a web browser, unzipping archive files, and changing network
> settings.  She did not know what "relational integrity" or a "primary key"
> was.  Worse yet, she spent most of her first few days chatting with a fellow
> consultant about absolutely nothing.  At one point I came on site and found
> her babbling away irritating another consultant.  I asked her to return to
> her desk and that she needed to get up to speed on the application we were
> documenting.  A hour later, she still had not run through the installation
> and was back chatting and gossiping.
>
> The client pulled me aside at the end of the week and said they had serious
> concerns about this writer.  That was it for me.  When the client says they
> are worried, it's serious.  So I yanked her off the job immediately .
> Thankfully, this person elected to subcontract so I was able to term her
> contract.
>
> Naturally, this person was angry with me.  I told her that the client saw
> her incompetence and became very, very worried (which they did).  At the
> rates I charge the client was not willing to pay for an incompetent writer.
> They had already cycled through six worthless writers before we showed up.
> In fact, they hired us because we have a reputation for fast, solid
> documentation work.
>
> This person was adamant that she had all these "extensive" skills.  Yet, in
> a week on site she managed to A) do nothing B) demonstrate her complete lack
> of knowledge of Windows, SQL, databases, etc.  C) embarrass other
> consultants with her unprofessional gossiping and chatter.
>
> All this lead me to an interesting discovery.  People believe their lies.
> This person I hired honestly believed she was a Windows NT and SQL expert.
> She was just appalled that people could not see that.  How do your respond
> to that?
>
> "Well, not only are you incompetent, but you have an extremely overinflated
> opinion of yourself."
>
> Sheesh, our own damn President thinks it is okay to lie.
>
> Well, I don't want to get into the current political scandals, but I am
> bothered about this.  I am seeing more and more writers who are just
> blatantly lying to me about their skills.  I remember I asked a long time
> ago what others here did when they had a non-technical tech writer.  Well,
> now I have a new question.  What do you do with liars?
>
> So, I am curious to hear your thoughts.  Liars and cheats? How do we ferret
> them out?  And when you do catch them, what do you do with them?  Fire 'em,
> whack them with a 2x4, let the ice weasels nibble their eyeballs out?
>
> Respond off list.  I'll post a blatantly one-sided summary in a few years.
> :-)
>
> ------------------------------------------------
> Andrew Plato
> President / Principal Liar
> Anitian Consulting, Inc.
>
>
> From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000==
>
>
>


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=