Jill Nicholson: > Well said Warren - who wants who to do what? I certainly wouldn't want my > ability to get a job affected by a non-official release of a 'what you must > do to evaluate a tech writer' document to an agency. In fact, if I think > about it, I don't want it affected at all (except by myself) and I am sure I > am not in a minority. Agreed. Although I'm only on the fringes of technical communication these days, I still operate as an agency when called on -- and I'd say I'm one of only a handful who understand the field and the role. No matter what documentation is given to agencies, they are not (for the most part) capable of evaluation. > Those that employ will always have the upper hand I am afraid unless there > is a meeting ground somewhere in the middle. Yes. To establish that middle ground, employers have to be made to realise that they shouldn't use general-purpose agencies to recruit for specialised roles. They also have to understand how to spec the job, even when recruiting through relevant specialised agencies. (I don't mean HCI, TP, and Brandle here -- I mean the agencies who specialise in IT recruiting, for example.) The specialised agencies can recruit for (say) developers who can build an inventory management system out of J2EE. They can't recruit for technical communicators who can review the UI design, help define improvements, then translate from "how it works" into "how to use it". (And let's not forget that in many cases technical communicators also write "how it works".) Michael Lewis -------------------------------------- Brandle Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia www.brandle.com.au -------------------------------------- ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************