With the economy struggling to regain a foothold, many employers are reluctant to hire permanent staff. However, as business picks up, the need for additional workers, such as technical writers, instructional designers, medical writers and other hihgly skilled and experienced professionals also picks up.

Working with a specializied staffing company like Writing Assistance can help you solve your specialized staffing needs without having to commit to the overhead of a permanent employee until you’re sure the employee will work out, your budget can handle it and the economic recovery is on solid ground.

A specialized staffing company offers several advantages through Contract to Hire positions. Here are the top 5:

1. Rent expertise – Bring in an expert that can “hit the ground running” and provide exceptional skills and experience. In addition to the contractor’s expertise, you have access to staffing experts who will offer insight to the writing world including salary expectations, hot or cold market, experience level required to complete the job and current tools being used to complete tasks.
2. Limit your company’s liability – By working with a third party staffing company you limit your co-employment liabilities. The staffing company providing the consultant assumes the employee’s liability and will manage payroll (including unemployment), taxes and benefits.
3. Gain immediate access – Using a specialty staffing firm you access the “best of the best”. Niche staffing firms have large networks of consultants for any industry, location or specialty and recruiters are always networking to build their connections in the industry. They work with the specialty day in and day out and typically can provide qualified candidates within a couple days.
4. Try before you buy – By bringing in a contractor on a Contract to Hire basis you will learn the individual’s work habits and decide if they have the technical knowledge and personality fit to be an employee. There is no obligation to hire or keep a contractor. If you decide they are not a good fit, you end the contract.
5. Thaw the hiring freeze – Instead of delaying a project or having the timeline fall apart while waiting for the hiring freeze to be lifted you can bring in a contractor as a Contract to Hire. This will keep the project going and when hiring is approved you have an expert ready to go.

   What are your thoughts on adding Contract-to-Hire staff? Have you tried it before? If you need contract or contract-to-hire workers in our niche specialty areas, contact us to get started.

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

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

Event: ASTD 2010 International Conference & Exposition
When: Sunday, May 16 through Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Location: Chicago, IL
Event Website:http://www.astdconference.org/

Writing Assistance, Inc. (WAI) will be exhibiting at this year’s ASTD International Conference & Exposition at McCormick Place in Chicago. Exhibition dates are May 17th through May 19th.

The ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) is the world’s largest association dedicated to workplace learning and performance professionals. Held each spring, ASTD’s International Conference & Exposition is considered to be the premier event for workplace learning and performance professionals and welcomes attendees from more than 70 countries. More than 8,000 workplace training and development professionals from around the globe, representing a wide variety of industries attend the ASTD International Conference & EXPO each year.

If you’re planning to attend the event, be sure to stop by and say Hello. We’ll be in in booth 1010. (Mention you saw this on our blog.) As we did at the recent STC Conference in Dallas, we’ll be offering the chance for you to enter to win one of two Kindles.

We had a great event in Dallas at the STC. We heard some good reports from other companies that see signs that the economy, and specifically the job market, is recovering nicely. We’ve experienced that first-hand with new postings on our Jobs page.

ASTD Conference Registration
ASTD Conference Expo Hall Floor Plan