Zohra 0:08

Hello, let's start. In season two, we get a scope on how you can build your resume, interview for success, and ultimately advance in your career. This is Insight Techcom with Sahara Matabano. Let's get started. Hi, Denise. Good morning. Good morning, Laura. How are you? I am doing excellent. Thank you for joining me on this nice warm Sunday morning.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Well, thank you for inviting me. It's warm even here in Cleveland, Ohio. So I don't think, yeah, I think we're about the same this morning.

Zohra 0:38

Yes, we are in the 70s, but we are expecting three digits later today. So I'm looking forward to getting toasted. So Denise, thank you for being on my show. And share with us a little about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

My background educationally, my degrees are in English. I have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English. My first job out of college, I actually worked as a journalist for several years before moving to Techcom. And Blackbot actually, from leave when I left journalism and moved to TechCom, Blackbot was the company that hired me, and in my you know, my opinion took a took a little bit of a chance. Journalism and technical writing were especially then very different. And I've now worked in the field for 23 years, all 23 of them with Blackbot. The nice thing is too, especially, you know, having participated for that long, it's like, you know, I feel I came into technical communication just as the profession was starting to explode into a much larger, broader arena, right? Um I first started at Blackbot, we were working in Microsoft Word, we were creating tech pubs, you know, that went off to the printer and we had all these little manuals that we put into boxes and stuff. And the the week I got hired, they were moving to like embedded help systems. They were still going to do the tech pubs, but um, but yeah, my before I even started with Blackbot, they put me into training for FrameMaker because that was the big move at the time. It's like, oh, we're leaving Word and we're going to FrameMaker and we're going to have these embedded, you know, help systems. And you know, so that was pretty cool. So, you know, I went from the tech pubs and Word to the creating help systems and FrameMaker. And then it wasn't, you know, it was maybe what 10 or 11 years after that when our our products just became so complicated. It's like, you know, we needed single sourcing, we needed granular reuse, we needed web-based content. And then we made the big move to flare. And now we're just kind of even it's great watching it broaden out even more from there. Because as you know, right, we're now looking, we're technical writers on our team, we're content designers on our team, we were all involved in usability. So many of us are involved in you know UX chores like Discovery. We wear UX writer hats. It's just really exciting, and it's just so broad, and it's it's a delight coming to work.

Zohra 2:47

That is so true. And you know, as you were sharing your background with me, taking a chance, whoever hired you, and then how the field has broadened. Those two things I think pretty much sum up our field today.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

That is true, right?

Zohra 3:03

Without a doubt. Absolutely. So you worked as a journalist. What sort of prompted you to switch to technical writing?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Oh man. Well, this is the thing, too, right? When I switched, I was switching from a profession that I really love. I really did enjoy being a journalist. And they, you know, I was allowed to cover stuff that I really enjoyed, primarily politics. I was a politics writer for the newspaper, but the salaries were just terrible. Um, I was the hours were unbelievable. You know, you work roughly 60, 70 hours a week and you know, you make peanuts, so it's not really good for family life. Plus, my partner at the time was she was just hired as a professor at the Citadel, so I needed to find a job in Charleston, South Carolina. And it's funny because I did, I tried really, really hard to find a job in journalism, but it just wasn't working out. And I said, Well, you know what, Blackbot, this company Blackbot is hiring, let me see what happens. And I was stunned. First, I was stunned when they called me for an interview, and then I was even more stunned that evening when they called me at my hotel and said I had the job. But it's all worked out terrific.

Zohra 4:03

I mean, of course, I work with you today, full disclosure, right? And we do, we are on the same team, and it's been fantastic working with you. And for listeners, we have a concept at Blackboard called office hours. And there, Denise and a few other members of our team lead a discussion around UX. And we will get into that, as in not the office hours per se, but how do we hire for these different talents that we have on our team? But a fascinating story, Denise, with you know how you moved. Uh, so for our listeners, this is we are on season two, so we've moved on from professional journeys. Denise is one of the team managers, and we are here with Denise to really understand how the hiring process works. What sort of talent is she looking for when she's doing a backfill for a tech writing position? So that's what we are going to be talking about. But thanks, Denise, for sharing with us what your journey has been like. I mean, obviously, you started off 23 years ago as a new technical writer. I mean, brand new, right? Oh, yes. And today you're a manager. What has that been like? Because you've probably, like you said, you had to pivot constantly, not only learning new tools, but even in terms of probably the mindset that was required.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

And I okay used the word mindset, and that's that's a really that's I'll start there. I've told this story before, and and it's it's it's true. So, you know, I made the, you know, I told you how much I loved my job in journalism. And when I got the position in technical writing, I was happy because I mean money was substantially better. It was more of a regular hours. I was able to live in the city with my partner, but I was not happy as a technical writer my first couple of years. And I that was my it was a mindset issue. It's because I was coming from journalism, you know, I took that job, I I approached that job as a profession. Um, and I don't know what I was thinking when I, my first maybe two years as a technical writer, and this was certainly not BlackPod's fault, this was entirely me, but you know, just kind of like a clock puncher, I felt. And then I approached my manager one day. I saw that there, I didn't even know what the STC was, the Society of Technical Communication. But as part of our employment at BlackBod, we all had memberships. And so, you know, we got these magazines, the Intercom, and the Intercom came and there was going to be this conference in Chicago. This looks cool. Uh, I like Chicago, I could probably use some training. So I approached my manager and she let me go. And even though I mean, I I can honestly say I didn't go to that conference that seriously, but within a few sessions of sitting at that conference, my mindset changed. All of a sudden I was I was just shocked to find out. And even back then, I mean, we're talking what 21 years ago, I was just shocked to see just how vast and energetic the field was and and how seriously these presenters took their positions and and how they enjoyed doing the research and whatnot. And and that was a big eye-opener for me. And after that, I I did, I'd say that's that's when I really started getting getting interested in doing research in the profession. It's like, okay, you know, what are the trends? What where are we going next? You know, what can I do to up my technical skills? So when it comes to becoming an information architect, that's what changed for me. All of a sudden I was doing research, all of a sudden I was continuing my education. Uh, and then we uh we ran into a bad experience where we really outgrew our existing authoring process. You know, the one I mentioned before when they hired me, we were doing FrameMaker, we did because just because of the number of products. I mean, we really, really needed to move to something that had granular research, that was web-based, that was modern. And nobody assigned me the task. I do remember that. It was just something I was interested in, and again, my mindset had changed, and and I ended up being really, really involved with making helping our group make that shift. And that's how I kind of got into information architecture. I didn't even know that such a role existed. My manager at the time, um, who is now our director, he can't he promoted me. And uh, I was shocked. I said, Oh, information architect, this sounds cool, you know. But that's how that came about.

Zohra 7:55

The field of technical communication is a niche field, and it's pretty well understood to some extent when you say technical writer. But there are these other hats that we wear: information architect, content strategist, content developer. I mean, there are so many of these, which we are doing in our day-to-day lives, right? At our jobs. Can you speak a little bit about what, in your opinion, is information architecture and why would it be important for a business?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Well, information architect, it's it could be many different things. But for me, my job as an information architect, it's primarily keeping track of, it's got, I guess, more of a stronger content strategy, content management component. A lot of it is how we present the content, right? Exactly, just exactly what the title says. How are you going to architect this content so that readers are going to read it? And actually, now that, which I know we'll talk about in a few minutes, but now that we also wear UX hats, that has become even more important is you know, how do we architect this stuff so people read it? But at the time I got the position, it actually had more to do with understanding how the content was created and how we can create that content, giving us more options publishing side.

Zohra 9:05

You sum it up really well. And using the quote unquote, the word architect for UX, I love it because this is where we sort of bring to the fore how technical writing is evolving and what sort of talent would be required to take this field ahead. And how can our listeners sort of, if they have these skills, you know, they could benefit from this discussion, hopefully. So the great, great, this is all great stuff, Denise. But I do want to say, I do want to ask, you know, you are a speaker, a prominent speaker, so to speak. Did that happen? Like, is that something that your manager pushed you, or did that just happen? Can you share something about that?

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah, it truly just happened. And as a matter of fact, yeah, uh, it kind of goes back to the story I said too. Like, you know, when I when I had that switch flip on me, and all of a sudden I started, you know, like this is really a profession, and it's a great profession. And look at all these great things we can do. And so you guys are all gonna laugh, but again, remember, I've been doing this for 23 years. At the time, one of the big areas of research at that time was indexing, because we again we still had, you know, tech we still had hard-covered books, and the indexes were important, and the tools at the time were just not that great at indexing. So, you know, creating good, useful indexes is was not an easy task. So it was one of the areas I started researching in, and and I enjoyed doing it. And there was uh STC, a regional STC conference at Mercer College in Georgia, which was not long, a long drive from Charleston, and I don't even know what possessed me to do it, but on a fluke, I I said, you know, hey, I could be, you know, I could present on indexing, and they accepted me. To be honest with you, Zora, I don't even remember, I don't remember if if it went well, if it went bad. All I remember is when I was done, I was just a bag of nerves, and I said, I am never doing this again. But you know, I'll be honest with you, you when you do keep up with the field and you do do your research and you do enjoy what you're doing, it was hard not to do it. I mean, I think it was just a natural outgrowth because even after that, they said, I don't know, I really don't remember what the experience was like for the users. I mean, they may have loved the presentation, they may have hated it. All I know is I was miserable and I wasn't gonna do it again. But you know, about a year or two later, I was at the national STC conference presenting on some stuff we were doing in Fraymaker. Um, and again, even after that experience when I got done, I remember finishing that and saying the same things like, well, okay, I did it again, I'm never doing this again. And here I am, right? I mean, I'm I'm doing a three-hour workshop in two months for a lava con. So as you can see, I've I've lied to myself after every presentation when I said I'm never going to do it again.

Zohra 11:34

I happened to attend one of your presentations a few years ago, and I'm thankful that you did not give up on it. And I took a lot away from it. I think it was about flair at the time. So thanks for continuing to present. You know, we definitely benefited. I was one of the audience and I've benefited. So there is your confirmation, validation, hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Oh no, I appreciate it. You've been you're really very sweet. Thank you.

Zohra 11:56

Yes, absolutely. So, you know, how has that propelled your career? Has it being on the scene, so to speak, has that contributed to your success, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Oh, yeah, without a doubt. You know, you know, one of the good things about doing these presentations is it requires a you know a good deal of preparation on your part. And without a doubt, that preparation has benefited me professionally at BlackBod. Plus, I mean, as you know, for working, working on our team, uh, we're encouraged at BlackBod to present our work. I mean, you know, this is something that's that we're not pushed out there to do it, but if you if you do it, I mean, they're thrilled. So, you know, there's the the encouragement on the BlackBod side, there's the the side effect. It's like, you know, when I get done prepping for uh a presentation, and this is a presentation that you know you've you've gone into it already thinking, oh, you know what, I'm pretty smart on this subject, I should be good, which is the whole reason you put a proposal forward to present on it. But by the time you finish preparing, your knowledge on that subject has increased twofold at least, and a huge help professionally.

Zohra 12:55

Yeah, and I the reason for asking this question for the listeners is when you are thinking about progressing in your career, this is one way to self-learn. And right? And that's what you shared with us that you think you know, but you learn so much more when you prepare yourself and then you present. So that's one way. And since the focus of the season is career advancement, this could be one way. Not everybody wants to do it, but if you have the knowledge on anything, don't hesitate to share. This will definitely help you progress in your career, regardless. Apart from what you can do with your resume and the whole preparing yourself for the hiring process, this is one way, again, to prepare for that next big gig.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Along the same lines of, you know, what your manager probably wants to hear and not want to hear when it comes to professional development, is I mean, I think you know, being self-motivated and self-guiding is going to be key to your success. All organizations need to make their framework for promotions and and whatnot transparent and available and understood. But at the end of the day, you know, when you've got folks on your team saying, okay, you know, I want to move to the XYZ role, you know, what do I need to do? Don't expect your manager to tell you step by step what you need to do to get to that level. And I think this is a good way to motivate yourself. And some of the best things that have happened to me happened by accident just because I was motivated to continue learning. And just the good stuff that came was just a nice side effect of doing that. So, you know, self-motivation and understanding the profession, understanding what you want and what's going to benefit your company. I mean, that's huge.

Zohra 14:33

You hit the nail on its head. So I'm not even going to sort of delve into this because you you just brought the whole with the why behind it to the fore. That's fantastic. Denise, we definitely want to talk about the whole hiring process, right? Uh, because we're talking about career advancement and professional development. Now, you are a manager and you definitely manage a team. And the hiring process for you specifically, I'm just going to sort of jump a few steps ahead and ask you when you are looking for a candidate for to be on your team, what are you looking for?

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Um, we're looking for somebody who understands the field and they demonstrate, there's a demonstration in that resume that they understand the field and that they are, you know, as I said before, they understand the field, they're self-motivated, and they're educating themselves. The one thing that's going to kill you is if you do anything on that resume that suggests you're stagnant. And having looked through tons and tons of resumes over the last several years, you know, one of the worst things you could do is just tell, you know, lead with the fact that I have been a senior technical writer for 20 years. And then I, you know, we look at your experience and you know, it's like you've spent 20 years doing the same thing. At Blackbot, that's not going to make you a senior technical writer. That's going to make you an entry-level technical writer. We don't care how many years you've had. But you know, our field is vast and our field is complicated. And that's what we want to see in resumes. The fact that, you know, you created the installation guide for this complicated piece of machinery, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, that's that's great. But but again, you know, you have to demonstrate an understanding of a fee of the field.

Zohra 16:08

When you say demonstrate, you know, you said stagnant, and you've talked about what stagnant looks like. What would you like to see for somebody like us, if you're backfilling for a senior tech writing position, what is it that you want to see that will say, okay, this person is self-motivated?

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Okay, this is an extreme example, right? This is not what everybody has to do to prove, but we've just had a little bit of a growth spurt. So I have three new members on my team, and two of those new members are one of them comes from the education fields, school teaching. Uh, the other one is a senior technical writer. She's been doing technical writing for a long time, but they took advantage of like the COVID shutdowns. They went to coding school. Uh, you know, again, a teacher, right? A teacher went to coding coding school. Do you know how hard coding school is? And these were 100% online, self-driven, self-motivated, self-paid for, and they did it and they completed them. Now, when you see that on a resume as a hiring manager, you're going to be pretty impressed. But like I said, these are that, those are extreme examples. When it comes to, you know, just about I'm trying to think of what a more real-world example would be. Like I said, I've just been lucky because these are my, you know, my the last two people I hired for my team had this type of background. But you know, I'm an understanding in UX writing and understanding the new trend or one of the new trends in technical writing right now has to do with writing for tech bot or for bots, chat bots. That's a whole different type of writing, right? Yeah, it's conversational design, you know. Again, putting little nuggets like that in your resume that suggests that not only do you, you know, that that you know this exists, and maybe that you've taken some steps to educate yourself on these trends is helpful. I hope that answered the question.

Zohra 17:51

Yes, yes, it absolutely did. And it shows the variety of background that we bring to the table. And we are trending towards UX. So our team focus is right now to do UX writing. How does coding lend to UX writing? Uh do I go to coding school now to become a UX writer? So I I think my question is more geared towards that. That how do you sort of build that experience to get that break, even if you've not been doing UX writing?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, you know, the coding example, no, you don't have to go to coding school to be a UX writer. Uh I think I was just an example of two individuals who are very self-motivated to learn. And of course, you know, since we've these folks have joined our team, they've both been very self-motivated to learn UX writing, and they've done a terrific job. I mean, they're they both come along like just you know fantastically in that process. I think when it comes to UX writing, I'd have to say overall, you know, our group at Blackbot, we've been doing this, we really started, you know, pushing to where, well, I think we officially started wearing the hat like around January of this year. We've had great luck because we've got so many talented people. Again, right? When we're looking for new hires, we're not looking for the person who's been spending 22 years doing the same thing. We're always looking for people who are trying to expand their horizons, who are trying to learn new things. And as a result, we've got a lot of great people on our team now who when we said, okay, you know what, we we need to take ownership of this UX text, we need to take ownership of this text. We did a little bit of internal training, but most of it was self-taught. Like you said, too, we do the office hours where we kind of like, you know, swarm around a problem and see the best way to address it. But no, when when you're looking for somebody, you know, granted, if if I look at a resume and it says, oh, you know, I've had 20 years UX, well, probably not 20 years, if if I've been doing UX writing for the last two years, that's you know, that's a big plus. But but when it comes to like what suggests you're going to be good at at doing this, again, it's just it's the variety you've got on your resume and just demonstrating your willingness to learn new things.

Zohra 19:50

Yeah, thank you, Denise. I, you know, I sort of didn't mean to put you in the hot seat by asking that question, but what you answered, what you really brought out to me was how these candidates, these individuals that have joined our team, have been self-motivated to go seek their answers. And UX writing doesn't have a playbook at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

It does not, no.

Zohra 20:11

Right? And and we are all trying to figure it out. And members, individuals who are willing to find what that would look like and taking ownership of that and trying to seek answers out, are the ones that can really bring the most value to that. So even if you don't have that experience, it shouldn't stop a person from thinking, oh, I don't have it, I'm not. Because there are companies out there, for example, at Blackboard, where they're willing to see how motivated you are. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Oh, that's it right there, exactly. Because like I said, you know, um, and you know, this is the thing, we're talking about UX writing today. You know, if you were interviewing me two years ago, we wouldn't be talking about XY X UX writing. It wasn't on, it wasn't in the playbook yet. So UX writing is just the most recent example of you know how the profession evolves and takes on you know new responsibilities. So down the road, we you know, it's like ah, UX writing, that's yesterday's newspaper. Now I need conversation designers. There's always something new coming down the pike, and what you want to do is you want to make sure you've got folks who are willing to embrace that and evolve with it. So, you know, like I said, UX writing is just the latest, greatest thing. But you know, my guess is two years from now when we talk Zora, we'll be talking about you know, some other new it thing we need to start embracing.

Zohra 21:20

Exactly. And and we have to be ready to pivot. And having that a driven team will get you there.

unknown 21:27

Yep.

Zohra 21:27

Without that's what I'm taking away from this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

It's true. And you know, the nice thing is too, going back to the UX writing thing, it's it's just been so cool to see our technical writers embrace it. Well, you know, we still have the technical writer labels, but our our folks are, you know, unfortunately what our writers are capable of doing is just so vast and so impressive. It's hard to label it. But the folks have just embraced the UX writing so much and they've been enjoying it. It's been, you know, again, because they like the evolution, it's like, okay, well, you know what? I've been doing this other kind of writing here for several years. I'm really good at it, I'm still doing. It, I'm still enjoying it, but look, some part of my day I get to do this. And they're really enjoying the fact that now they get to pivot for a few hours every day and do this. They love the close relationships that were, you know, as a result of this, right? We've always had a good relationship with UX. Now our relationship with UX is even better. We've always had a good relationship with product management. Now it's even better. It's strengthened relationships and it's it's improving our product. So it's it's just such a great win.

Zohra 22:25

It is a win-win. And I think you said it so beautifully that it has strengthened relationships. And this is a way for technical writers to sort of understand the contribution that they can bring to the table. So even if you're not applying for a job, if you see an opportunity in your company that you can sort of leverage and expand and present your the value that your skill can bring, or if you want to stay the same company but advance in your career, this is a way to show how you can pivot and what you can do with your profession and your skills to build those partnerships, to strengthen those relationships.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Well, you mentioned at the beginning, you said fill find a need in your company. I mean, if you are interested in staying with your company, and that's key. I mean, you have to find a need, you know, if if right now at Black Bob I can identify 10,000 needs. So finding a need for you that your company has is not probably going to be a difficult thing. Finding the solution might be, but looking to address, you know, needs personally and seriously will definitely help your career.

Zohra 23:25

I can definitely see that. Why that would matter to the business. And my objective as part of this conversation is to, of course, help our listeners find their next big adventure. I call it an adventure because I think life is an adventure, but at the same time, elevating the profession and getting your seat at the table. And there's been a lot of talk about getting your seat at the table. As part of your professional development, you want to keep thinking, how can I get my seat at the table? What do I do to earn my earn your seat at the table? Would you agree?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Oh, I agree 100%.

Zohra 23:59

Yeah. Perfect. So, Denise, we've sort of talked about organically the conversation just came up where you shared what sort of skill sets you're looking for on a resume. You don't want to have things that are stagnant. Is there anything else that you would like to add to that piece?

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Nothing that I can think of. Stagnancy, like I said, I think, well, I mean, I did, you know, not just stagnant, but I mean, you do have to be, you know, show that you you've got a knowledge about the field and that you are self-motivated and you're willing to pivot and embrace change. If you can demonstrate that in any way on your resume, that's always going to be a big win. And like I said, I used the coding examples before when we were talking, and I just really want to be clear, that's just an example, and it is extreme because I don't want folks to feel that, oh, you know what, I need to go to coding school to be a technical writer. You don't. As a matter of fact, the two writers that we hired that had coding skills so far really haven't even used those skills in their profession. It was what taking those classes and completing those classes demonstrated that was so impressive. So that helps.

Zohra 25:03

That definitely helps. I mean, I think one of the questions that I was going to ask you was share an interesting story about a candidate or a resume that has stayed with you. The coding example is definitely sound something that is an interesting part of the hiring process. Is there anything else that sort of has stayed with you that was different, unusual about a candidate?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Yeah, on the negative side, it is funny because when I saw the question, this was the first thing that popped in my head, so I figured it had to be the answer. This was probably, I don't know, three years ago. We were opening, we had an opening for a senior technical writer. I'm remote, you know, even before we were all remote. I've worked remotely from Black for Blackbot for like the last, I think, 18 years. So it was uh it was a phone interview with a candidate in our New Hampshire office. This gentleman called me from a Walmart parking lot in his beamer with the top down because he apologized. There was all this background noise. So he says, Yeah, yeah, I apologize. And he made sure to tell me he was sitting in his beamer, not his car. He said, Yeah, I'm sitting in my beamer out in a parking lot because I didn't want to do this interview at work. And the whole reason he took the interview is he wanted to explain to me what I needed. You know, what I what the position that we had posted is not the position that's not going to satisfy Blackbod's needs. This is what you need to do to satisfy Blackbod's needs. And of course, he had all of the things that you know needed to that were going to be required to satisfy our needs. So, needless to say, that was uh that conversation ended in about 20 minutes, and we never called him back. But but that's the one has stayed with me the longest.

Zohra 26:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

What not to do in an interview?

Zohra 26:35

What not to do in an interview? Okay, that's an interesting story. Definitely an interesting one. I mean, I can imagine, right? Yeah. With how that would go, how quickly it could go south.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

And you know, this is the bad thing, right? You know, you ask that question, and and unfortunately, it's not the good stuff that that comes to mind immediately, it's the bad stuff. Yeah.

Zohra 26:52

Yeah. I mean, and it is important to know what not to do as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Well, it is, and just and though it will stay with people for a very long time because you know, that's missteps like this are just just hard to put behind you.

Zohra 27:02

That makes sense. That makes sense. I mean, you probably also remember the person's name, and if you can encountered them, I haven't encountered him again, but I'll never forget his name.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

So just know that too. It's like, you know, it's seared in my brain. So, yeah, that's another bad thing, right? You don't you don't want to be remembered in that way.

Zohra 27:18

Exactly. Good, yeah, yeah, yeah. That that absolutely valid point there. Now, I think this is a good segue. You said you've been remote for a long time. And I'm just curious, hiring as a remote manager for your team has anything changed since the whole pandemic started?

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Yes. I mean, I've always so since I become a manager, I all of my teams have been remote, but they were in offices. Uh, so so that made it you know a little bit easier because they they were in an environment with other people, even though I wasn't there. But we always did the phone interviews as our first screening. But unfortunately, you know, there was never now there's not an in-person interview. You know, back in the day, even though I was remote, the director would be on site and he would sit in on the interview, stuff like that. And then usually after we did hire somebody, and this was like my favorite, this was honestly my favorite part of the process is you know, I'd go and visit. So if I if if the new hire was in our New Hampshire office, I'd go up to New Hampshire for a week after they started. If it was Charleston, I'd go down to Charleston for a week. Uh and I really did, I really enjoyed it. I do miss that. I mean, even though I've been remote for 18 years, you know, that part of it is I kind of mourned for that that part of it. The other thing is too, the uh onboarding process is a little bit more complicated now. Your experiences was because you were actually onboarded remotely. So, but back in the day, right, you'd hire somebody, they'd be sitting in the Charleston office around all these people who knew everything. It didn't matter that I wasn't there. They were surrounded by people who knew stuff. Now they don't have that. So it's been uh it's been a lot, a lot, a lot of time on the telephone with with new folks getting them on board.

Zohra 28:54

Yeah, I you know, we bring two different perspectives. And you ask, what was it for like for me? This was probably the first position that I was interviewing for being 100% remote. So I definitely had my own fears, and uh, we had an a video interview. And I don't know what David and Colleen were looking for in that video interview, but what actually amazed me was that there were no portfolios asked for. I didn't have to do any presentation. It was a just a regular dialogue, not just a natural conversation. And at the end of it, a week later, Olivia got in touch with me and she said, You have this job. But definitely uh there is fear. There is like, what do I do and what do I not do on a video call? So that is my question to you from your perspective. What don't you want me to do?

SPEAKER_00 29:43

You know, it's interesting you brought up the lack of portfolio. That's probably going to shock a lot of people, but we really don't. And that when with our interviewing processes, we emphasize a lot more just like the personality and the performance of the individual and the conversations. You you can't, in my opinion, it's it's a lot harder to fake it when you're talking, you know, live in an interview or even in a video chit chat, right? You know, if I start asking you, if I see, you know, you've a lot of folks like to put that they that they have experience with data, which is you know fairly complicated, very technical writing architecture. Yeah. So, you know, it's always kind of fun to start talking to people when you're interviewing them about, you know, their work with Dita. And you, you know, nine times out of ten, once you start scratching, you find out it's it's not that vast, right? However, if you if you ask them for a portfolio or samples of their writing, they've got no problem putting these things together and showing you what they did here and what they did there. And you know, maybe at the end of the day, it might, maybe it shows you that they know how to write, but there's no way for us even to confirm that they wrote it. So I'm not I'm not saying I'm not that cynical about you know what people are doing, but I think you learn a lot more through the actual, you know, the verbal intercourse you have in an interview than you're going to learn through any portfolio.

Zohra 31:00

Uh so is there anything, I mean, again, so we are talking about the things not to do for somebody that is being interviewed, what would give them away? I mean, and and we are not trying to say, hey, hide yourself, but from your perspective, how do they come prepared for this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Well, read the job description, number one. So, you know, if in our job description, you know, we mentioned on our authoring tool, we we mention our author our dev environment. So, you know, when we bring up things like, oh, are you familiar with Matcap Flare? Are you familiar with the agile development process and and they're scratching their head like, oh, I've never heard those words before, then you know they didn't even really read the job description. Okay, so don't get tripped up by not reading the job description. And the other thing I would be, you know, we all you know, everybody's going to exaggerate resumes, but be prepared because you're probably going to be asked questions. And especially if you're really selling yourself on something very technical, those are usually the things that stand out the most to me when I'm looking at a resume. And I use the DITA example just because it's gotten to the point where I don't know that I get a resume that doesn't mention data. Not that we're even looking for somebody that you know knows or has worked in a data environment, except that it is topic-based and we do that. But then once I nobody seems to be able to answer the hard questions when you start actually talking about data. So, you know, be prepared. No, no, you're probably going to be asked questions about what you put on your resume. So, you know, be comfortable talking about it.

Zohra 32:22

Yeah, naturally. And so, in your opinion, have there been any red flags, just like the interesting story that you shared about that call, as you were having these video calls, anything that a candidate did that sort of showed a red flag to you?

SPEAKER_00 32:36

That's a good question. I'm sure there have been. I can't think of any right now, other than you know, not being able to answer a question that was either addressed in the um in the job description or that they put on their resume. Um, but beyond that, I can't think of um of a red flag.

Zohra 32:52

Doesn't nervousness come through on a video call?

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Yeah, it really does. And and it's it's amazing the degree of nervousness that folks deal with too. We've had some candidates that you know we thought were really going to be strong candidates, and you know, this is the thing, they may have been, but their inability to communicate during the video interview just kind of crashed their chances, especially when you've got really, really good strong candidates out there. So, yeah, that is unfortunate, but it can it will affect really negatively your chances.

Zohra 33:22

So, any suggestions for those kind of scenarios?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

No, I really, you know, I think I think if you're just a really nervous person, I don't know what you do about that. You know, I'd like to say that if you're comfortable with what you have on your resume and you're comfortable with the position that you're applying for, that you're not going to be nervous, but but I really don't think that's the case because some of the folks that we've dealt with that were really very nervous, they were really, I didn't really experience any red flags regarding their ability, their tech, their skills. But at the same time, right, you know, this is a believe it or not, this is kind of a social job these days. You know, we're an agile company, everybody is embedded in development teams. You really have to be able to communicate with with your developers. You have to be able to communicate with the UX person. You know, we're now the UX writers. You, you know, so communication is key, and especially video communication now that we're remote. So it's it's become, you know, it's become not a nice to have, but a requirement for our job. And you can you could be the best candidate in the world, but if you can't talk, it's just not going to work out.

Zohra 34:22

That is, I mean, that is so very important. It's a soft skill that you need, and how we've had to pivot. And this is one of those areas where I definitely knew that I was what would I need to do to sort of pivot and figure out how to communicate? And we've all had to do that, not just me. So from your perspective, it's good to know that, yeah, that is important because how else do you get your information? And like you said, it is becoming a social, social job these days. And you know, there is this perception when I share with uh people I know when I say I'm doing technical writing, they think it's a very silo job. I'm just sitting at my desk writing away, but it's not that. And and what you brought to light is communication with your developers and your other stakeholders is absolutely what is going to give you that content that you need to write. Otherwise, you have no content to write.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Oh, exactly. And and otherwise, you know, you're just kind of sidelined in the process. And again, you know, I again I can't emphasize this enough with when it comes to the UX writing. I mean, that is so interactive, as you know, right? I mean, from the office hours to you know what's happening at the triad with the UX developed designer. I mean, it is interactive. So if if you do plan to wear the UX writer hat, yeah, your you know your communication skills need to be top-notch.

Zohra 35:40

That is super, super awesome. Denise, we've covered quite a bit of ground here. And from my perspective, I think we've hit some really hard questions here. Is there anything that you would like to add to this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 35:52

No, not that I can think of. I think we did cover everything pretty thoroughly, so I can't think of anything to add.

Zohra 35:58

Yeah, I literally I'm looking at my list of questions here, and I think we've gone through pretty much pretty much everything. And we are coming up on top of the hour, and I really, really appreciate this fascinating conversation with you.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Well, thank you so much for inviting me. This has been a lot of fun, Zora. Thank you.

Zohra 36:14

Thank you. Thank you, Denise. Have a lovely Sunday. Thank you too. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app, including Apple, Google, or Spotify. Follow me on LinkedIn or visit us at www.inside techcom.show for the latest updates. Catch you on another episode.