Leah Guren's abstract

Identifying and Screening Potential Technical Communicators

In many places, it is still difficult to find qualitifed technical communicators. Training is therefore a necessity. But whether you run a TC school or training program, or intend to hire and then train internally, the biggest problem is identifying those candidates with the potential to succeed in this profession (and screening out those who are not appropriate matches).

TC is a complex and demanding profession. For the right person, it represents an exciting career with unique challenges and opportunities. For the wrong person, it can be a stressful nightmare ending in failure.

What does it take to succeed as a TC? What are the skills and traits needed in this profession?

Training programs can teach skills, but they can only build on top of existing traits or characteristics. For example, the skill may be the knowledge of how to use Word or another DTP tool, the application (usage of the skill) may be the ability to create a template and correctly format a document, but the underlying required traits are an eye for layout and attention to detail. These traits are very difficult to teach.

This session looks at the key traits and characteristics and suggests methodologies for screening training candidates, as well as ways of building training programs to properly develop needed skill sets.

About Leah Guren

Leah Guren has over 22 years of experience in the field of TC (technical communication). Since 1995, leah has developed and run TC training programs in Israel for In Other WORDS. She is a regular speaker at international TC conferences.