By Vinish Garg | Member
Hiring technical communicators brings the same kind of challenges, complexities, and even apprehensions all over the world, although the regional preferences and trends vary across locations. A documentation manager in Boston plans a hiring campaign differently than in London or in Pune; however, the fundamental requirements remain same.
Primarily, every manager looks for a candidate with a good command of the English language, a positive attitude toward working in a team, and preferably, the knowledge of tools that the documentation team uses. What essentially separates them are factors such as the organization work culture, the industry practices in that country, and personal preferences of the hiring manager.
For this article, I conducted an online survey of Indian technical communication professionals. Approximately 200 professionals responded to the survey questions, and I have used the survey results to talk about the trends and preferences in Indian technical communications community.
Hiring Managers and Job Seekers: A Level Field
While hiring a technical writer two years ago, I called our trusted placement agency and asked for a conversation with an eligible candidate. "A conversation? Or do you mean an interview?" was the agent’s response. I dislike the word interview. A candidate needs a job as much as an employer needs a qualified candidate. When they meet, both try to understand if they can really work together on mutually agreed-upon terms. So it is a conversation and not an interview.
No ecommerce is a success because of buyers only. A buyer needs a book as much as the seller needs to sell it. The same holds true for employment, although it is not always reflected. It is a level field.
Practices, Preferences, Priorities, and Trends in India
The chief executive and chief technology officers of many companies in India are more concerned about the challenges in talent management than in technology upgrades. The new complexities in talent management have reshaped the leadership styles. For many years, the primary challenge in talent management was to find the right candidate. Now, the challenge is also to retain the candidate, and to plan for risk. Job seekers are more aware now. They have access to a wider network of employers and are ready to relocate, even internationally. Talent management leadership must be more proactive and strategic, yet friendly to retain talent. In hindsight, it means that hiring managers are more rigorous about the hiring process.
Hiring Managers: Practices, Preferences, and Trends
The survey I conducted asked hiring managers to share their experience and preferences. Table 1 shows the key findings.
| Most Preferred | Least Preferred | |
| Hiring methods used by hiring managers | Use networking and communities (LinkedIn Groups, STC, TWIN-India) Internal references (networking and word of mouth calls) |
Print advertisements Using placement agencies Social media |
| Most Important | Least Important | |
| Information on résumé | Experience and role in projects Domain experience |
Current location Current and expected salary |
| Most Important | Least Important | |
| Evaluation in personal interview | English language skills Soft skills (communication, confidence, thought process) Project planning skills (documentation plan, schedule, milestones, review process) |
Tools knowledge (fine if listed on résumé but not evaluated) Surface skills (scoping, business analysis, wireframing, UX) |
Table 1. Key findings from hiring managers.
In India, the hiring process invariably involves a written test and the format and level of questions vary for the candidates’ experience. The survey results suggest that more than 85% of hiring managers use a question in the test such as, "Write a procedure or instructions for a sample snapshot of an application," while 50% of managers added that they include instructions to edit a poorly written procedure and a descriptive question. For the descriptive question, a beginner might be asked to write 200 words on "why you think you are a good technical writer," whereas a seasoned technical writer might be asked to write 400 words that "give details of your most challenging project so far and how you added value to the business." The objective of this descriptive question is to evaluate different aspects of candidate’s skills, such as language skills, comprehension skills, and the actual answer to the question.
What This Means for Job Hunters
Hiring method. Managers prefer to use networking communities and groups to identify the talent pool and reach to target professionals; it helps them find references as well. Managers are not sure how to evaluate the value a new writer brings to the team. To many, the new candidate is another resource to plan documentation or to write procedures. How it impacts the return on investment is left for human resources. The candidates need to be active on community groups for notifications of new postings by companies. They need to update their professional profile regularly for skill and experience and be part of discussion groups to showcase their subject knowledge and experience. This interaction is a win-win situation for the community.
Information on résumé. Hiring managers are more interested in the candidates’ role and experience in past projects and less concerned with their location or salary expectations. They want to know whether the candidate has the right skills to work on their documentation projects. The work experience detailed in a résumé allows the manager to shortlist suitable candidates, those who are familiar with the domain and have been developing the deliverables as that manager needs. Location is not an issue because many candidates are willing to relocate.
Personal interviews. During personal interviews, managers are most interested in evaluating soft skills, English-language skills, and to a lesser extent, project-planning skills. They observe a candidate for confidence and communication skills and try to understand how well the person fits in their documentation team. The candidate’s familiarity or experience in such software as RoboHelp or Confluence is generally not doubted, or at least not discussed in detail. The common assumption is that it is easier to train a candidate on the tools than to train them on communication and other soft skills. The survey suggests that managers are least interested in the business analysis skills of candidates, such as project scoping, wireframes, and prototyping, because few writers are actually involved in the business analysis or scoping stage of documentation projects. Such tasks are usually done by the product managers and documentation managers.
My Take
So it all boils down to individual preferences. Sudhir, a senior technical writer from NetHawk Network, says, "Language skills are important but this is not the most important factor for me while evaluating a candidate. Many English language graduates fail to be good technical writers in spite of their excellent language skills. I find evaluation of other aspects such as content organization, learning quotient, simplistic approach, and rapport building as more important than the language skills. Though, I ensure it in the initial rounds of communication before interview that the language skills meet the minimum expectations."
Job Seeking: Preferences, Priorities, and Trends
Job Search Methods Used by Job Seekers
The survey also asked what methods job-seekers were most likely to use.
Most likely:
- Job Portals (naukri, monster, shine, and others)
- Communities (LinkedIn Groups, STC, TWIN-India)
Least Likely:
- Unsolicited résumés to employers
- Social media
- Placement agencies
What This Means for Managers
Most preferred job-search methods. Most candidates prefer to use online job portals. The job portals enable candidates to set their preferences and keywords so that the right employers contact them for open positions. Candidates need to upload their profile only once to the portal and its mass reach connects the candidate to many employers. In addition to job portals, candidates prefer to use professional communities and groups, such as those on LinkedIn, STC, or the TWIN-India portal for their job search campaigns. This is primarily because professionals invariably have access to the Internet 24/7 and they can directly reach companies who post requirements for open positions. In addition, professionals see only relevant postings that are specifically targeted to technical communication professionals. This works best for them because—as we saw in the hiring managers’ preferences—many open positions are posted in these professional groups and mailing lists and hence it serves a purpose for both candidates and employers.
Least preferred job-search methods. Candidates do not use social media or placement agencies while looking for new jobs. Indian writers use social media primarily for leisure-time activities. Also, because few companies use social media to post open positions, candidates do not find social media responsive or useful enough. For placement agencies, candidates have many channels to directly reach companies (professional communities and mailing lists apart from traditional methods such as direct email to company human resource offices) that they do not really feel any added advantage in calling placement agencies.
Specific Note on Core Skills
While it is a good sign that Indian technical writers are rubbing shoulders with the best in the world, be it with their technical skills in using authoring software, following documentation process, or delivering the deliverables, I feel that this growth has been quite one-dimensional. Most often, even the experienced candidates lack basic skills and discipline to apply to open positions, particularly when communication is the important factor. I recently wrote a guest post on Tom Johnson’s blog (http://idratherbewriting.com/2012/08/16/core-skillsets-for-technical-writers). Several mistakes reflect the experienced candidates’ lack of seriousness or respect toward the profession:
- Poor résumés (mistakes, poor structure, formatting issues, duplicate and irrelevant details)
- Poor email skills
- No follow-up or thank-you emails
- Poor attitude when responding to feedback
These errors are unfortunate and it is not easy to find out the reasons for this sorry state of attitude.
A high percentage of hiring managers overlook the issues in candidates’ résumés and emails. They focus on their requirements, which mean that candidates are not made to take these basic skills seriously. I do not buy this logic. Individuals however should plan and write a good résumé not for hiring managers but for themselves. We write good emails not because the receiver will feel good but because we feel good about writing professionally accurate and clean emails. As technical communicators, we are answerable to ourselves first.
There are no (or only a handful of) recognized Indian universities that offer technical communication programs to inculcate these basic skills in young graduates or beginners. And when candidates learn these skills on the job, the focus is usually on HAT and deliverables. When one grows in experience, the focus is on documentation plans and scrum meetings. And somewhere along the way, the core skills take the back seat.
This reflects a more linear thought process and absence of a commonsense approach. A writer with two years of experience includes details of three projects in a résumé and the same writer with six years of experience includes details of 14 projects. And the résumé turns out to be 12 pages. I wrote a post on handling poor résumés and difficult candidates, where I shared my experience of dealing with a nasty applicant (http://enjoytechnicalwriting.com/2011/04/06/handling-difficult-applicants).
No university will teach such basic things, but when a majority of writers are thinking alike with no commonsense approach, it is high time that Indian universities roll out programs in technical communication with dedicated focus on core skills.
Conclusion
The job market for Indian technical writers is growing just like everywhere else, and more writers are being trained on board and by private training services providers and are hired. It is again a welcome sign that beginning-level writers get a chance to work with onsite teams and for exposure to the global work culture and authoring software. Both the managers and candidates have some common preferences and thought processes. Both prefer to use professional communities and groups, such as LinkedIn or STC, for hiring and job search, respectively, although both talk less about the added value a new writer can bring to the documentation team. The only concern is a lack of focus on developing core skills—something that currently both managers and candidates are missing. Overall, the Indian technical communication industry is at an interesting juncture.
Vinish Garg (vinish.garg@vhite.com) works as director of operations, technical documentation, in vhite systems. Vinish is an STC member, and he has developed technical communication (B2B, B2C, and B2E) for global businesses in past nine years. In addition, he is a published author and has been writing for media for 13 years.
