Harlock - Column for 5/29

Employer Hints: Part 2

Same theme as last week, just more of it. 3. Show some respect for your employees. At the same company at which I interviewed twice, etc., the doc manager seemed reluctant to trust people. The writing test that I had to take had a short writing section, a "write instructions for using the phone" section, and a final section with twenty sentences that I had to correct. Of those twenty sentences, four of them dealt with semicolon use. I have used a semicolon exactly zero times as a tech writer. You just don't use the things in tech writing, and the sentences were all informal, anyway, and not at all something you'd encounter in tech writing. When I pointed this out, the manager justified it by saying that they needed to ascertain my grammatical ability.

Sure, that sounds reasonable, until I tell you that I had already provided them with doc samples, and these were docs for which I was the sole author. Everything, from the font choice to the individual words to how those words fit together, was mine. She just didn't seem to be convinced by this, and that rankled. Sure, there are far too many people out there who call themselves technical writers, even senior technical writers, who are blatant, unrepentant, unskilled liars. But I've interviewed (and worked with) a number of those, and it doesn't take too long to realize that they're unqualified. I know that you're looking for qualified people, but "guilty until proven skilled" just isn't going to make me want to work for you.

4. Be prepared for questions. Having just watched a company crash and burn, I'm interested in gathering financial information about potential employers. Most companies have been willing to share this information, and understand why it might be important these days. Even if they can't give me specific information about customers or exactly how much they have in the bank, they've been able to tell me what their prospects are, and how long they'll last even if everything goes wrong.

One interviewer, however, was completely unprepared for this question. She hemmed and hawed for a while, and finally answered, "No matter what, the company will go forward in one form or another." That, of course, isn't an answer at all. At least it's not an answer that puts a potential employee's mind at ease. She couldn't tell me how much runway the company had; she couldn't give me more than a very general idea about how many customers they had; she couldn't even elaborate on that and tell me if those were real, paying customers, beta customers, potential customers, or fantasies of the sales department.

I'm not looking for ironclad promises of corporate stability and a lifelong position at the company; I simply want to know what state the company if there's a chance that I'm going to work there.

Most importantly, an interview is a chance for both parties to evaluate each other, and intelligence and honesty are qualities that I look for in a manager and employer.

Columns by Harlock