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It’s really an HR department’s dream to hire a person with more than one skill set – two employees for the price of one.

But when you’re ready to hire a technical writer, are there certain skills they should have in order to be most effective?

What Should Technical Writers Be Doing?

Technical writers are meant to be performing a certain set of tasks, mainly the construction of informational documents, courses and instructional guides.  Now, this doesn’t mean their skills can’t branch out to other writing tasks, but since many businesses now have websites to address, it makes sense that if the technical writer is handling copy for the website, that they might be able to handle the website as well.

Is this really the case?  For many businesses, the website was created by an outside company, who then launched the site and maintains it.  This is an arrangement that allows you to keep the web management separate from the daily routine of work – and it’s an arrangement that should stay in place.  Having an outside firm is much more efficient than simply putting an hourly employee on the task.

The Skills the Technical Writer Needs

However, this doesn’t mean the technical writer should be completely without the skills to understand a website.  Having some basic HTML knowledge as well as CSS will help them to better understand how their text will look on a website.  When they understand this, it will help them to layout the text in a certain style that will show up best.

And in a pinch, they can help the IT department with their text placement on the website.

That said, if you find a technical writer with web design skills, HIRE THEM.  Hire them quickly.   That is a person who can be more valuable to the company than most people who are assigned the writing you need.

What are your thoughts? What skills make a technical writer more valuable?

Related topics
Technical Writer: Which Skill Sets are Important?
Considerations When Hiring a Technical Writer

Over the past few years, blogger Cammy Bean has conducted an open survey of her instructional designer readers asking whether they have a degree in instructional design.

The latest survey results indicate:

• 61.45% responded that they do not have a degree in Instructional Design
• 36.92% indicated they have a graduate degreein Instructional Design
• 1.64% indicate that they have a non-graduate degree in Instructional Design

The results may suggest that employers typically do not make having a degree in Instructional Design a top priority for learning professionals they hire. Those that do have a degree requirement are more likely to stress a graduate degree in the field than a Bachelor’s degree.

Connie Malamed, of The eLearning Coach, has compiled a top 10 list of what she believes are the qualities, knowledge and skills the ideal instructional designer should possess or develop. Her list focuses on instructional design for eLearning.

10 Qualities of the Ideal Instructional Designer

What do you think are the most important skills an instructional designer should have to be an effective in an elearning position? Leave a comment.

Find an Instructional Designer through WAI

Editor’s Note: This was the feature article in this month’s TechCom Manager newsletter, reprinted here with permission. Click the previous link to subscribe to the newsletter.

by Kerri Barber

For years we have complained about having to sit through boring meetings full of inept presenters with their nicely prepared slide presentations, where meaningful information is buried in copious amounts of text. We’ve rolled our eyes, entertained ourselves with Meeting Bingo, and even took bets on who would fall asleep during staff meetings. We were not really listening anyway. How could we when the presenter made it nearly impossible to do so? For all our angst, we have often been just as guilty as those horrible presenters we are so loathe to endure.

Any repentant presenters can find thousands of good resources to help improve their skills and help them craft award-winning slides. Still, the problem persists and is even becoming ubiquitous in every company and across every industry. Why do we continue to torture ourselves and others? The problem may be simpler than you think. The two deadliest communication killers for presenters are Fear and Apathy.

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In his blog, Many Ways to Learn, Mike Petersell asks, “Learning vs. Recruiting: Who Would Win a Social Media War?“

In the post, Mike gives examples that helped him reach his conclusion that:

“If learning people faced recruiting people in a social media war, the learning people would lose.”

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Probably the most telling example was that his local ASTD chapter hosted an excellent and informative meeting on social media usage. The guest speaker? A recruiter.

We think Mike (a proponent of using social media for internal training purposes) has a valid point. We’ve learned this from actual experience, in fact. Trying to find professional trainers and instructional designers/developers in social media is no easy task, while it seems recruiters are everywhere you look.

But it’s not just learning professionals who have been slow to join the social media bandwagon. We’ve also brought up the point with our recent post, How Technical Documentation Professionals Can Use Twitter.

We’re not entirely sure of the reasoning behind this, but it could be partially due to the fact that recruiting firms are all about marketing: marketing jobs to candidates and candidates to employers. Because social media has taken such a stronghold as a new marketing tool, it would only make sense that recruiters would be among the early adopters.

Admittedly, even as professional specialty recruiters, WAI has only recently joined the wonderworld of social media. It is indeed a strong marketing tool, but we also find that it helps us stay in touch with what’s going on with both candidates and potential employers.

Social media certainly holds considerable promise for learning professionals, technical communicators and a myriad of others. It just seems that those uses have not yet been fleshed out to the point where they’ve reached adoption by the masses in these professions. What do you think?

Source: Learning vs. Recruiting: Who Would Win a Social Media War?
Related: How Technical Documentation Professionals Can Use Twitter

This post on Tech Tav talks about how new technical writers can stand out in a crowded field of job applicants.

While the advice is geared toward technical writers in Israel, it certainly applies to the U.S. and Canada, too.

The other aspect of this that seems important is that it not only applies to new technical writing graduates, but to those who are unemployed and competing in today’s tough job market. For that matter, it also seems to apply to those who are comfortably situated in a technical writing who think they are secure in their jobs.

The advice?

The advice given in the article includes these five ideas:

• Learn a New Skill
• Get Creative
• Find an Internship
• Do Some Volunteer Work
• Get Involved with Social Media

Lets’ face it: There’s just very little job security anymore. If and when the time comes for your company to cut staff, what are you doing/have you done that might give even the slightest advantage when it comes time to decide who gets let go? Sure, the internship part of the advice doesn’t apply to everyone. But in today’s economy, it seems that you need to be mindful of your qualifications and what differentiates you from the competition every day.

Independent, self-employed and contract technical writers already know that’s true. They need to bring value to the table. And the more they can differentiate themselves from their competition (in a good way), the better.

When’s the last time you learned a new skill? When’s the last time you did something really creative, like a video resume or a demo on using Camtasia, Captivate or Flash? Are you thinking about how you can stand out in the crowd and what are you doing to prevent getting trapped in a career dead end?

What are your thoughts? In today’s marketplace, what are some of the things technical writers can do to stand out in the crowd and get noticed?

Editor’s Note: This was the feature article in this month’s TechCom Manager newsletter, reprinted here with permission. Click the previous link to subscribe to the newsletter.

As documentation managers, technical communicators, and training specialists, we understand the importance of clear, concise communication. Or at least we are supposed to. As it turns out, many of us don’t. This article explores the new realities of a global information marketplace, the impact of the world wide web on communication professionals, and the importance of saying exactly what we mean.

Often, documentation managers are tasked with all sorts of chores — an increasing list of meetings, reports, updates, and other business minutiae heaped upon plates already full with responsibility. Ironically, many of these tasks are about managing the people, processes, and projects in their department, and not so much about managing the content itself.

Often, documentation managers are tasked with all sorts of chores — an increasing list of meetings, reports, updates, and other business minutiae heaped upon plates already full with responsibility. Ironically, many of these tasks are about managing the people, processes, and projects in their department, and not so much about managing the content itself.

This, however, is changing as more and more organizations begin to understand one business-critical fact: Content is a business asset worthy of being managed efficiently and effectively, just like the inventory of parts in a manufacturing plant or the dollars and cents in a group retirement fund. What’s needed is a coherent, repeatable set of processes designed to control the production, delivery, retirement, and archiving of content, supported by standards, and implemented using software tools designed to enforce rules and automate manual tasks.

This refrain is nothing new. Technical communication literature is packed with case studies, lessons learned and best practices detailing the need for adopting XML component content management, structured authoring, content reuse, automation…you get the picture.

But as many organizations start to see the importance of controlling their content, they usually take the path they have traveled most often before — the wrong path — one that leads to a less successful project. Instead of taking a step back and focusing on content and the needs of those who create it, consume it, and reuse it, organizations usually start by talking about software. And that is where the trouble begins.

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Since WAI has recently joined Twitter, I really hadn’t had time to think much about how technical documentation professionals like technical writers and others could really make the most of having a Twitter presence.

This post by Anne Gentle published on Twittip certainly stirs the imagination. While her post applies mainly to staff tech writers, she first discusses how technical writers can get started with Twitter:

• Monitor and listen first
• Play your part
• Give more than you get
• Measure

These steps apply to pretty much anyone who uses social media in general and Twitter specifically, but it’s the suggestions she has for how members of a company’s technical documentation team can help provide information on products and applications they document through Twitter that caught my eye, such as the idea of using Twitter as a medium for release notes.

I’m sure with the ingenuity and creativity many in the technical documentation community enjoy, it’s just a matter of time that this method of keeping customers advised really takes hold.

In what ways are your technical communications and tech support staff using Twitter or other forms of social media to get the word out about your products, latest releases, etc.? Have you given it consideration?

Great leaders are not always born that way.

Unfortunately, many management training programs don’t sufficiently emphasize leadership development, but instead focus on fundamentals and the day-to-day tasks that confront managers within the organization.

If you’re currently a manager or about to become one, you need to think about more than accomplishing tasks if you want to become a true leader.

As writer Kerri Harris points out in Fundamentals of Leadership: Communicating a Vision:

“Experts have long studied the subtle differences between general management, leadership, and truly great leaders. Thomas Cronin, author of, Thinking About Leadership observes, ‘Managers do things the right way, while leaders are more concerned with doing the right thing.’ “

Harris goes on to say:

“There are recognizable characteristics in great leaders and simple strategies anyone can adopt to improve employee performance and change the work environment for the better.”

Harris’ article takes a look at how having vision and then communicating it is the foundation of leadership and contributes to the makeup of a truly great leader.

What are some of the characteristics of true leaders that set them apart from other managers? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Continue reading Fundamentals of Leadership: Communicating a Vision

Going on or conducting face-to-face interviews can be nerve wracking – both for the job seeker and the person conducting the interview.

These ten tips from Karen O’Keefe are designed to ease the stress of interviews and make the interviewing process go more smoothly.

Use these tips the next time you need to conduct or attend an interview and perhaps you’ll improve your chances for success.

Read: Top 10 Interview Tips

Related Topics:

Negotiating Techniques
The Art of Self Marketing

Being asked to take the reins of a brand new documentation department is a challenge that many professional technical writers relish, even though the training and development activities they participated in may never have prepared them for such a rewarding challenge. This article looks at forming a new documentation department, team or group and determining what’s needed, when it’s needed and what resources are available to help the new group carry out its mission.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself While Creating a New Documentation Department

by Eric Butow

Congratulations! You’re the manager of your company’s emerging documentation department — and your work has just begun. To create effective documentation for your customers, you not only have to build a sound team, but also build working relationships with all other departments in your company.

In my contracting travels, I’ve set up two new documentation departments in two very different settings. My first was a documentation department for a startup networking software company in 1999. The company’s only previous documentation was a slim manual written by a programmer.

In 2004, I helped set up a new documentation department at the financial aid division for a major bank. Over the years, this division had been passed along to different parent banks — the newest of which was shocked to find that no one had written documentation about financial-aid processes, and no documentation about the software they had used during the division’s last 20 years! As a result, the new parent organization decided that relying on the institutional memories of its employees was a major risk, so the documentation department was born.

When you create your own documentation department, you should ask yourself five simple questions that will help your new department show its value to the company as quickly as possible. These questions are similar to those that a good reporter must answer when documenting a story — who, what, where, why, and how? — and they are as important for a documentation department manager as they are for an ace journalist.

The questions are:

Read the full article