For those who were unable to attend the live event yesterday, here is the link to the recording of our webinar: Recruiting the right Technical Author.
The recording lasts 38 minutes.
We have a revised job description for vacancy #4124 Lead Technical Author, City of London, to £50K DOE
Registration is now open for our free 60 minute webinar called Recruiting the right Technical Author.
This webinar will be held on: Thursday 29 November, 2012 4.00pm – 5.00pm (16:00-17.00) GMT.
Need content written? Cherryleaf’s Content Development Services team can help: clear information, written for you, simply and efficiently:
Need a Technical Author? Cherryleaf’s Recruitment Services team can help: the specialist recruitment service for permanent and contract Technical Authors.
According to the ITJobswatch Web site, the average salary quoted in vacancies for a Technical Author has risen by 14.83% over the last 12 months. The average salary offered has risen to £40,000, compared to £35,000 for the same period in 2011 and 2010. 90% of jobs offered a salary of more than £27,950. 10% of jobs offered a salary of more than £45,000. If we take London vacancies out of the figures, then the average is £37,500.
These increases are in a market where there has been a 2% reduction in the number of vacancies for Technical Authors.
Judging by the required skills listed according to the site, and based on the vacancies our Technical Author recruiting service has had on its books, there doesn’t seem to be any significant change there.
It may be the increase is simply taking into account the period of salary freezes in 2010 and 2011.
Another possibility is a demographic change. Many authors started their careers in the 1970s and 1980s through training schemes offered by large IT companies such as Digital, HP, ICL and IBM. As they leave the job market, there may just be fewer Technical Authors around. With few graduate and junior Technical Authors around at the moment, it may be we’re seeing a high demand for that particular age/experience group.
See also:
Cherryleaf specialist Technical Author recruiting services
Cherryleaf Technical Author induction training course
The Recruiting Services team at Cherryleaf has created a a free eBook that provides help and advice on recruiting a Technical Author. It provides the answers to the most commonly asked questions relating to recruiting a Technical Author (such as salaries and the skill sets to expect).
The eBook is free; it’s available as a PDF, and in EPUB and Kindle (MOBI) formats.
Free ebook on selecting the right Technical Author to recruit for your organisation.
This latest vacancy may well be.
Following on from our post Assessing writing skills – a response to “What Does It Mean to Know How to Write?”, we’ve created an experimental test page on our Web site that can help you assess your technical writing skills. The idea is you can compare your skills profile with that of a typical Technical Author:
Assess your technical writing skills – beta
It’s a proof of concept, just for fun etc, but we welcome any feedback on it.
Tom Johnson has sparked a lively debate with his blog post What Does It Mean to Write?. In the post, he wrote “It seems that writing is a spectrum skill”, providing a chart to demonstrate this:
In the post’s discussion thread, a consensus seems to have been reached that you cannot define writing skills and types of documents as a spectrum on a single line.
I suggest the “writing spectrum” could be described more effectively, by using a radar or polar chart.
By using two or more axes, we can then start to differentiate between the different skills needed for a number of writing roles. For example, we could create a diagram of skills needed to create (a) persuasive, “selling”, marketing-type documents (b) educational, “telling”, technical-type documents (c) creative writing and (d) general business communication:
If we assess people’s writing skills against the same criterion, it’s likely we can get an idea as to which profession would best match their abilities.
The key question is, what should be measured? Some initial thoughts are:
Another issue to bear in mind, is that the axes do not necessarily have to be positive/negative:
Potential measures could be: expression, adequacy of content, cohesion of information, compositional organisation and mechanical (grammatical) accuracy.
What do you think should go on axes?
Recently, I was asked to provide a personal reference for someone who was a member of my aikido club, as she had applied for a new job (as an IT Project Manager).
When writing personal references, I try to relate my experience of the person in the personal setting to the work environment. For example:
Through her study of aikido over the past five years, XXX has demonstrated her ability to learn complex tasks, to pass on her knowledge to others, to be a team member and to improve her skills.
It is also an activity that requires focus, dedication, enthusiasm and persistence. She has passed a number of gradings, and XXX has become a senior member of the club. I believe these attributes would be extended into the workplace environment.
A prospective employer is also interested in knowing if someone is trustworthy, reliable, and what their work ethic is like. If someone is applying for a leadership role, have they demonstrated leadership outside of the work environment?
For a Technical Author, do they demonstrate a close attention to detail, the ability to get on with others and to get things done, within their private sphere?
It makes sense to state your opinion with regard to these.
How do you respond to personal references?