Guest post by Rob Hanna, STC Certification Commission Vice-Chair
Certification is an important investment in time and money for any candidate. The criteria we have established are intended to objectively assess your knowledge, skills, and abilities to become a certified professional technical communicator.
This is a valuable process that you should take seriously. Here are some tips on how to succeed:
- plan your time wisely
- carefully review and analyze the submission details
- research each submission area for the latest advances in methods and technology
- critically assess any works you intend to use as a basis for your submission
- draft your submission and let it sit for a week or longer before review
- self-assess your submission against the submission requirements
Plan
You have one year after your application is accepted to complete and deliver your submission to the STC Certification Commission. Remember to allow enough time to put together a submission that reflects your finest work as a technical communicator. Some candidates have indicated they spent two-three months assembling their submission.
Research
You have access to years of research and best practices through STC to help prepare your submissions. Start planning your research activities as soon as possible by
- reviewing schedules for upcoming STC webinars and webinar archives
- reviewing scheduled chapter events, articles, and presentations
- interviewing STC mentors
- reading books by renowned STC visionaries.
Organize your research for each submission and cite your research in your submissions. It should go without saying that any evidence of plagiarism is grounds for permanent disqualification for certification.
Organize
A common misconception about the submission process is that you are limited to submitting actual work samples with your submission. This could not be further from the truth. If you have viable work samples to use with your submission, use them as the basis for a submission rather than using them verbatim. If you are using previous work samples, you may want consider:
- correcting any mistakes
- eliminating any anomalies
- enhancing the work samples to include any missing features asked for in the submission requirements, and
- replacing product or company names with fictitious names rather than redacting them in the content.
While you are permitted to explain any deviations from best practices in the commentary, it is advisable to avoid the need to try to explain deviations.
Prepare
There are many factors to consider when preparing your submission.
Make it fit
Each submission has a page limit that you must observe, so make every word count but keep it legible. Remember that the entire submission is scored, not just your work samples.
Remove all identifying information
The review process is anonymous. Therefore, please remove any information that may identify you. If evaluators are able to identify the submission owner, they are not able to proceed with the process. The only identifying information that should be in your submission or work samples is your candidate ID.
Keep it simple
Each submission must consist of only one PDF file. No other file formats are permitted. The evaluation system software automatically flattens all PDF pages into images when the PDF is uploaded. Here are some other tips to keep it simple:
- Do not use any special features in your PDF such as bookmarks, links, or attachments, as they will not appear in the PDF that the evaluator sees.
- Do not cross-reference your submissions as they will be evaluated independently. An evaluator will likely never see other submissions in your packet.
- Do not password protect your submission.
Make it as easy as possible for an evaluator to match your responses to the submission requirements.
Don't miss any elements
Missing a required element automatically disqualifies a submission. Pay close attention to the submission requirements.
Succeed
There are no trick questions. We want you to succeed. If you carefully follow the instructions and research your responses, you will succeed. Best of luck.
For more information about certification, see