Zohra: 0:01

Hello folks, welcome to another season of Inside Techcom with Zohra Mutabana. In Season 6, we unpack how generative AI works and what it means for your Techcom workflow, from core concepts to practical use. We're going to go under the hood. It's time to adapt, create and thrive with AI. Let's dive in. Adapt, create and thrive with AI. Let's dive in. Hello listeners, we have Jack Molesani, who has been a guest reappearing on my show, and I'm excited to talk to him about how the trends have changed. Welcome back to another season of Inside Techcom with Zora Moulabana, and we have Jack Molesani here. Hey, jack, you don't need an introduction, but please take it away.

Jack: 0:47

So first of all, thank you for the invite. Always happy to talk with you. When you say trends, I assume we mean trends in hiring and career development.

Zohra: 0:55

Techcom yes and we're going to dive into all of that, but I just want you to briefly introduce yourselves Although, as I said, you don't need much of an introduction but we would like to hear more.

Jack: 1:06

Sure, so I'm the president of ProSpring Technical Staffing. We're a staffing agency that specializes in content professionals. We've been around for 26 years now, so we survived two recessions, dot-com crash, a pandemic and we're still here, yay, yay. I also produced the lavacon conference on content strategy and tech on management, which will be in october in atlanta this year, and then, finally, I wrote the book be the captain of your career, which hit number five on amazon's career and resume bestseller list a few years ago, and we're getting ready to publish a second version coming out soon oh, wow, congratulations, and I have read that book with amazing tips.

Zohra: 1:48

I think I received that as a gift at one of the STC events that we had here in Dallas. I won that book.

Jack: 1:56

May the STC rest in peace.

Zohra: 1:59

May the STC rest in peace. Yes, absolutely. Actually I don't want to start on a somber note, but since we talked about stc, stc does not exist anymore as a networking organization for us and that, for someone like me, who really almost like that was my lifeline, my professional lifeline, and without it I feel lost and I don't know where to go for the latest trends. What are the salaries out there? There is just so much that I feel like I have lost Data that was accurate, that was reliable and that was by the community, for the community.

Jack: 2:40

I am right there, 100% with you on this one. I definitely feel like lost a family. For those who on your audience may not know, the Society for Technical Communication STC for short was the professional organization for tech writers and other content professionals. A couple of things happened real quick, and then we'll move on.

Zohra: 2:58

Absolutely.

Jack: 2:59

They suffered from. What a lot of organizations are suffering from is that kids air quotes. Kids these days are not joiners, they're not volunteers and, as people aged out of the industry, there was no one there to take over the reins and membership dropped to the point of viability. So I understand what happened. On the other hand or however comma, as my associate would say I had been beating the drum that so many technical communicators don't self-identify as quote technical writers, whether they're content strategists or UX writers or whatever else you want to call them. So I was saying we should have changed the name to the Society of Content Professionals. But they studied it, but it came a little too late, I believe, to make a difference.

Jack: 3:53

So there are people out there thinking about creating a new organization. There's several ideas I've seen floated. The problem is they're going to run into the same problem. The STC did you know? If the kids aren't joiners, if they can find everything they want on a podcast or a webinar, right then why join? So I know a lot of the people in the STC Florida chapters. Was it the Association for Training Development, atd?

Zohra: 4:19

I believe so yes.

Jack: 4:21

Yeah, there are organizations out there, there's places to be the Project Management Institute, but that's a conversation for another whole podcast.

Zohra: 4:28

That is a conversation for another whole podcast. However, I would like to acknowledge what you shared, that there were inherent problems and, of course, I was not behind the scenes so I cannot speak to it, but I'm glad that it's something for us to learn from as we move forward. And, however, I would love to tell my audience that, yes, podcasts and the content that you find online is going to bring you the knowledge, but if you're looking for the community and if you see an organization, please join. And as a podcaster, I highly highly found my net worth in these professional organizations. You learn a lot more than a podcast can give you. So, although I would love and encourage you to listen to all podcasts out there, I highly highly recommend that you consider these professional organizations because they offer more than you can see.

Jack: 5:22

Ana. Interesting transition back into our topic for today is that I heard an interesting saying a week or so ago saying that in the age of AI-generated video, where you can make anyone sound like they're saying anything, the only place that you're going to get data that you know is true is at live conferences.

Zohra: 5:43

Absolutely.

Jack: 5:44

Live meetings. Live meetings.

Zohra: 5:46

Live meetings, exactly. And on that note, Jack, let's jump into the topic that we are here for. I started with what are the trends, but I think we will come to that. What have you seen since generative AI made its appearance? How have things changed in terms of job descriptions and what clients are looking for?

Jack: 6:09

Let's start by defining some terms. There's clearly a difference between artificial intelligence, generative AI where it's generating content for you, and is it even AI? To begin with and I'm going to start with a couple of real life stories I was at a conference earlier this year and it was a programming language conference, doesn't matter which, and this one booth you use this program language to generate a mortgage application tracking system. And they said we and it's AI enabled. I went great, show me. And it says okay, list every dollar value in this contract. And it went and did that. And I went that's not AI. That's a script that I could write in Visual Basic in about five minutes, right?

Jack: 6:59

So I do think a lot of people are jumping on the AI bandwagon so they can be what I call FBC, fully buzzword compliant. But is it really AI? Again, that's another. We could dive deep into that one question alone, but we're going to just moving forward. Anytime we say AI, we're talking about an added functionality. Whether that's AI or just they finally got around to adding that functionality to their existing system is another story, but we're going to distinguish that between is it really AI, is it really AI helping you and is it generative. So we're going to make those distinctions as we go through the rest of the podcast today. Is that okay?

Zohra: 7:37

Yes, absolutely.

Jack: 7:38

Okay, good.

Zohra: 7:40

Absolutely, and thank you, thank you for bringing that clarity into this discussion. I think we need to scope this discussion Absolutely.

Jack: 7:48

Oh, it's just like. One of my pet peeves as a recruiter is when I get resumes with acronyms that they don't spell out. All right, so you may know what you do in your industry or what your company does, but and I saw that in a job description from an employer yesterday they used an acronym. They just assumed everyone would know, and maybe in their industry that might be true. But even if you get past that AI-enabled applicant tracking system, which we'll talk about in a little more detail later, they're still going to be a human at some point reviewing this resume and the last thing you want them to do is go to sleep because you're using words they don't understand. Similarly, okay, have you ever done any computer programming yourself?

Zohra: 8:28

I have many, many years ago. Yes, I don't mind dating myself. That was a couple of decades ago, but right now I'm learning Python. I am coding in Python.

Jack: 8:38

The reason I bring this up is if you tell the computer to print A plus one and never define what A is, what's the computer going to do? Throw their hands up and go.

Zohra: 8:47

I don't know what to do Exactly Right or crash.

Jack: 8:50

Worse, just crash altogether. So, as a word of advice from a professional recruiter to your listeners stop using words that have no definition like seasoned professional. What does that mean? Like seasoned professional? What does that mean Proven track record who did you prove that to? Recognized expert in who recognized you? Your mother, as opposed to saying technical writer? Five plus years experience in the automotive, financial and banking industry, creating printed and online documentation for both internal and external customers oh, that says something about you. I understand that Telling me you're a seasoned professional does not.

Zohra: 9:29

Right. In fact, I was helping somebody update their resume recently and I gleaned a whole lot of these sort of tips from your previous episodes. Honestly, I want to understand from your perspective have you seen any changes in how candidates are approaching their resume, writing, etc yes and it's not good.

Jack: 9:52

Okay, I should warn your listeners I am a man of few opinions and I rarely state them, so take anything with a grain of salt. It's always been my opinion, jack Molisani, professional recruiter, that a resume should be a personal communication from you to the reader, and a resume is just a vehicle that shows that you match what the reader is looking for and that's all. It is Right, especially if you're a writer. This is a sample of your writing ability. So the minute you start using AI tools to write something, I no longer know how well you write and I'm going to give you a very hard threat this morning. Today I want to pepper our conversation with real life examples, so I'm not just espousing an opinion out of nowhere.

Jack: 10:37

So I mentioned earlier that I produced a conference and we do offer scholarships, specifically if someone's between jobs. But I got this email saying asking if there was scholarships available, but it was just weirdly written. It used phrases directly from my website that you would just not use in everyday conversation. Is this a bot? Is this some auto-generated spam? So I wrote him back and said yes, we do have scholarships, but we've already allocated them this year. Ps, this email sounds like it was generated by an AI and he wrote back all excited he goes yeah, it was. So he was excited that he used AI to craft this resume, which got it immediately thrown out because clearly it was not a communication from him to me, it was some automated AI generated. That one I didn't trust and two, it sounded AI generated. So realize that, yes, there are tools to use, yes, there are ways to format this, yes, yes and right, right. But take it too far and you start losing that personal communication for them to you.

Jack: 11:52

Right.

Jack: 11:53

Now again the difference here and I'm using my hands because I'm Italian. First law of technical writing know thy audience. Are you writing this resume for an applicant tracking system, ai, or are you writing it for a human right? Now, the first thing I tell people is stop applying for jobs through applicant tracking systems. They are designed to weed you out. Just say no right.

Jack: 12:16

Reach out to a live person at an organization through LinkedIn, through a personal connection, I don't care. One, if you find a writer or someone in that organization, they may get an award or a bonus for finding you. Say hey, I see you've been opening. Will you pass my resume out to the manager? Two that manager is probably on LinkedIn and they want to find you. Reach out to them. Worst case scenario reach out to a recruiter there and say may I send you my resume Now? They'll either ignore you. They'll say sure, or they'll go apply for the job online, but I'll keep an eye open for the application. Ah, but you're still dealing with a human that can pick your resume out of the spam folder If the AI doesn't think you're qualified. Now, we did a whole thing on that before and I've got a you know what, if you want to, in the release notes of the liner notes, a link to a whole article or presentation I've done on that.

Zohra: 13:05

Yes, absolutely Give me that. Please do send me that link.

Jack: 13:09

So one more real life example and we'll go on to the next question. So that's my experience in receiving an AI generated communication A very notorious example of applying for a job through a website using an AI applicant tracking system. Ui UX is user interface, user experience, and a friend of mine was a UX UI designer applying for a UX UI designer and not getting interviews. Now, if you search the internet for, is my resume applicant ATS friendly? There are websites out there where you can post the job, post your resume and it will tell you how well the AI will think you match. And what she discovered was her resume said UX UI developer, but the job said UI UX developer and the ATS said that's not a match and kicked her out.

Jack: 13:57

Now, clearly a human would see UX UI as the same thing as UI UX, but it was sufficiently different and not an exact match. So this is where artificial intelligence is a misnomer, because it's actually not Right. So let's leave that first question and go on to the next, because we could talk about that one question for days.

Zohra: 14:16

For days. Yes, as you were sharing these stories, you demonstrated to me the two questions that I actually wanted to ask about. So just kind of summarizing on what you shared being authentic as we quote unquote I'm using my hands here again because I'm an Indian and I use my hands to communicate as well.

Jack: 14:34

Which is why we get along so well.

Zohra: 14:37

Absolutely yes, and I think, especially as we do things virtually, using our hands to communicate becomes even more critical in my personal opinion. So we are just more expressive that way. But resumes how do you craft your resume? You shared some tips around that what to do, what not to do, Sure, and I should stop using. I attend Toastmasters and that's the first thing I'm told not to use and I'm still using them. So reminder to us.

Jack: 15:02

I would not have noticed had you not pointed that out.

Zohra: 15:05

I pointed out so that anybody listening to me should know not to use you know, especially in an interview or when talking to another person.

Jack: 15:12

Okay, before I answer the resume question, I have not seen this myself, but I've heard of it, where companies are now in a video interview, like we do in these days, especially for remote positions. They're using an AI to grade you on your video alone and if you have a bookshelf behind you as your virtual background, it will score you higher than if you had like my photo of or yours behind oh, none of the audience can see us. Okay, yes, you have a golden gate bridge. I have a beach in my background. It will score you higher if you have like a bookshelf behind you with books on it than if you have a seascape I should not know that I know me either.

Jack: 15:56

Like, go figure, right, but again, you should be finding people who are not using these artificial tools to weed you out. You should be finding people who are not using these artificial tools to weed you out. The problem is I can see that working for I don't know cashiers or some commodity, like even a forklift driver. Not that I would want to be hiring somebody over Zoom for a forklift driving job, but I would seek out those companies who are not using these artificial tools. In my opinion, a company is looking for five things when they're looking at your resume. One, what are you? Are you a ditch digger? Are you a chef? What are you? Two, how senior are you? Entry level, right. Three, do you have domain knowledge?

Jack: 16:35

Biotech companies want people with a biotech background. Networking companies want people with an IT background. So you understand what you're writing about. Four, do you have the tools we use here? Right? If I'm using structured authoring in a content management system, I may not want to train you for that from scratch, in that I want you to have it already. And then five, can I afford you? And that five is the only aspect that's not covered in a resume, right?

Jack: 16:59

So, getting back to that, what I was talking about earlier, about using these flowery words, giving me a summary of attention to detail tech writer with a proven track record of attending meetings and meeting deliverables. Blah industries creating online printed and user documentation. Ai enabled for multi-channel publishing. Wow, okay, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Yay, I can stop reading right there. Harder to do if you're just posting your resume on the internet in the hopes that someone somewhere will find you, but if there's a specific job you're interested in, you have to make sure that your resume shows right at the very beginning that you match what the reader is looking for. Ok, I answer your last question. Let's go to the next one.

Zohra: 17:50

A couple of questions that come from this, what you just shared. One you tailor your resume to the job that you're writing for Extremely important or for which you're writing for your grammarians.

Zohra: 18:02

Right. And two, this is actually a question. The previous one was just a comment. You mentioned look for companies that are not using AI tools to weed out candidates. Yep, looking for such companies, because the more I read, it's hard for me to want to know what's going on behind the scenes, and it appears more and more companies are doing that today. What tips would you have in this regard?

Jack: 18:32

Join groups such as discussion groups on LinkedIn, whether that's structured authoring or international tech recording, or any of the hundreds of thousands of groups out there. Most often, the hiring manager will also post that job themselves. Hey, we have an opening in my company right, dm me your resume. Lavacon has a Slack channel with a, or Slack workspace with a jobs channel where I post jobs, that I get our members post jobs and saying, hey, we're looking for an XYZ, here's the job description. Either apply online or, better yet, just send me your resume directly, as opposed to and I hate to bash LinkedIn, but it's such an easy target They'll post a job in five minutes later. There's 150 job applications. Do you really want to be one of 150 salmon swimming upstream for that one job, real quickly? It's germane, and I think I covered this before is stop applying for jobs through applicant tracking systems, and here's an example of how I've done that myself.

Jack: 19:37

At one point, I was in Orange County STC chapter in California and working as a contract tech writer County STC chapter in California and work as a contract tech writer, and I reached out to the five companies I like to work for, reached out to the documentation managers there and said hi, I'm writing an article on trends in technical writing hiring in Southern California. May I interview you? Everyone said yes. So I asked them so what do you look for in a tech writer? What tools do you use there? When are you hiring what's needed, what's nice to have?

Jack: 20:06

And I did say, by the way, would you like a copy of their article after it comes out? Yes, great, what's your email address? And by the end of this I knew who was hiring, what they were looking for, and I said I did send them the article when it came out because I did write it and get it published. I said by and get it published. I said, by the way, my contract is ending next month. I might send you my resume. I have never been unemployed because I didn't wait for a job to be posted to send my resume, along with 150 other applicants in the first 10 minutes it was posted. So this is where you, as the listener today, has to stop applying for jobs through websites and get a little more creative, a little more proactive in your job search.

Zohra: 20:45

Great tip out there and it makes it so much more personable, especially oh yeah, for sure, that's a great tip.

Jack: 20:52

Looking at it from a hiring manager standpoint, oh God, okay, now we are going so far off topic, but I think this is usable, actionable data, so let's keep running with it. In that I had a hiring manager once looking for it was a director looking for a documentation manager, but she wanted someone forward-looking. There were a lot of changes coming down the pipe and at the time, windows came out with a new online help engine. So one of the questions that she wanted was familiarity with the code name of this help. It wasn't even out yet, so not experience with, just familiarity with Longhorn. Now, and when I'm really busy, I'll go. I submit a summary of how your experience matches the job requirements. And I said, hey, do me a favor, here are the job requirements. You can be a summary that I can send with your resume to the manager.

Jack: 21:38

And the guy it was a guy got to the question of familiarity with Longhorn Help. His answer was never heard of it Pregnant pause, so okay. So I jumped on the internet and did a search for what is Longhorn Help and the very first hit was an article by Joe Walensky at Wynn Writers called what is Longhorn Help, and it took 0.0003 seconds to find. And I was thinking, if this person was so bored lazy that he didn't spend .003 seconds to see what he'd be doing in the next five years of his career, the hiring manager would not want him, and she was right. I wouldn't have hired him and I didn't even submit him. All right. So circling back to what you just said about this is a personal communication from you to the hiring manager, all right?

Zohra: 22:24

Yes.

Jack: 22:25

Emphasis on personal. That would just get an illustrative story showing that, yes, there are tools out there, but if you get far enough away from the personal communication, it becomes no communication at all.

Zohra: 22:37

Absolutely. I mean, I haven't been doing much of interviews in my current role, but previously it was that personal communication, a cover letter or an interesting story. Actually, there was one candidate who shared an interesting story in the cover letter and why they wanted to work at the company. Did we hire them? I would have liked to hire them. We didn't end up hiring them but, again, out of the hundreds of resumes that we received, that candidate got interviewed, they got called, but through one of the hiring managers they talked to several of them at this company. They got referred to another company actually and they got hired there. So there are these personal stories that we can talk about day in and day out. On how personal communication, especially in the age of generative AI, that's the tools that I use, what you can do to kind of elevate your resume weightage, if I may say so. All right, did you have any other interesting stories to share?

Jack: 23:36

Very short.

Zohra: 23:37

Okay.

Jack: 23:37

One of my piece of advice for people when they do get that interview have you ever been on an interview and the first thing they say is tell me about you.

Zohra: 23:44

Always.

Jack: 23:45

Yeah. So I always used to say well, tell me a little bit about what you're looking for, so I'll have a context in which to answer your question, because I guarantee the hiring manager is looking for something different than the head of HR is right, and I went on an interview once and they asked me that, and I asked me that, and I asked them that and she replied with I need someone with diplomacy skills. I went er. Apparently, this company had a lot of very brilliant PhDs, all of whom thought they were individually right and they needed someone who could wrangle these personalities. And what happens if they give multiple conflicting edits? How do you smooth those feathers? That was nowhere in the job description and had I not asked what are you looking for that you haven't already found, I would have never gotten that job, that contract. End of story. Back to your questions.

Zohra: 24:35

I want to reiterate what you just illustrated. As much as you're being interviewed, you are also interviewing the hiring manager and whoever is on that panel. So ask questions.

Jack: 24:46

Yes, yes, because two reasons why you're going to be working 80 hours a week, 40 hours a week for the rest of your career. You should go someplace where you enjoy being right. So you're interviewing them just as much as you interview they're interviewing you. Second, I can tell more about a candidate by the questions they ask than the answers they give. If they're asking me, are you using a style guide or do you need me to create one? Is this part of a larger documentation set or is it standalone? Who are my subject matter experts? All those things that a technical writer would put into a documentation plan. Air quotes Again, I agree with you 100.

Zohra: 25:24

okay, back to your questions thank you, I need to catch up. What question did I want to follow up?

Zohra: 25:28

on my list we've moved on to question number four or five because we have covered ground we have talked about. You've illustrated in your stories the many questions that I had in mind, at least the first few questions that I had in mind. I think I the first few questions that I had in mind. I think I would like to ask this particular question Again. We've touched upon this. Ai tools can now generate mock interview questions and coaching. How might this influence a candidate's preparation, both positively and negatively, in your view? You have touched upon it, but anything else you would like to add there?

Jack: 25:58

I have to admit I have not run into this problem as a recruiter yet. People come to me for the really hard to fill positions, so I'm looking at the pet. Well, that's not right. I just placed four people in a six month contract, but again they were looking for someone a tech writer with experience, with assembly line experience and the specific authoring tools and either you had those or you didn't. So again, contract is less data AI driven than full-time staff positions. So here's the deal yeah, go ahead.

Jack: 26:35

Okay, so I'm gonna answer this way, is that? And here's another whole presentation. We could put it in the liner notes that I think a portfolio is a tool that I use to guide an interview where I want it to go. That shows I'm a professional, I have really done what I said. I've done and I can help the same thing for them. So I had a very bad habit of controlling where I wanted the interview to go, which. If you do that, then it doesn't matter what these mock interview questions are, because they're going to be so impressed by your professionalism that they never get around to asking those boilerplate questions. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it.

Zohra: 27:10

All right, I have a personal story that I think is worth sharing here. I was helping my brother actually apply. He'd been in this job for almost a decade and he was looking for another opportunity and he hadn't interviewed in a long time. And I used ChatGPT to pretend as the hiring manager and interview him and this was the free version of ChatGPT and my brother ended up using that as an option. For example, he would find a job description and he would share that with ChatGPT and say this is the job description, you are the hiring manager, this is my resume, got all that uploaded into ChatGPT and said okay, now I'm the candidate You're going to role play and ask me questions.

Zohra: 27:57

And that helped him come over a lot of his fear because he was not doing this with a human. And this was a positive use in this scenario and I'm just sharing this tip out there for somebody who may be intimidated or interviewing for the first time after many, many years at a company and unfortunately, many of us are in that position. So that's a first step my brother told me that he didn't feel as intimidated or judged. What are your thoughts on that?

Jack: 28:25

The first thing I tell people is to take a class in improv comedy.

Zohra: 28:29

Hmm.

Jack: 28:32

What Right? What's interesting about improv is the whole concept is based on yes, and you take whatever your partner in this case interview and agree and add something of your own. You'll never be thrown off by a question you weren't expecting right. So again, you're practicing those muscles. You know.

Jack: 28:52

In this case I was laid off in the mid 90s, like half of california, and I could not work find work as a tech writer. But a friend of mine had a show that put booths in a home and garden shows demonstrating a ginsu knife and a little salsa maker. So I didn't have anything else to do. So they needed some help. So I traveled the country for almost a year selling Ginsu knives at home and garden shows, and I'll tell you that one summer job advanced my career so far. I learned how to handle hecklers. I learned how to handle questions I weren't expecting. I learned how to state a view. I learned how to handle hecklers. I learned how to handle questions I weren't expecting. I learned how to state a view. I learned how to ask for the close, and I can see how someone who's never done what I've done in life can use that same thing through ChatGPT or some other AI. Excellent use. I didn't think of that, but I'm glad you brought it up.

Zohra: 29:39

And again coming back to the human in the loop, what your story illustrates is all these soft skills you have to. You are applying, you're pitching for your next job while you're in a job. That's my philosophy you have to continue to upskill, and it's not just professionally, it's also all these soft skills that you just talked about.

Jack: 30:00

Oh, yes. So getting back to an earlier question about using AI to write your resume, if one of the requirements in the job you're applying for or for which you are applying is experience using AI to generate content, then by golly say this resume generated using an AI tool. But if you're just communicating to a bank and they may not want you using AI tool because their industries have very, very strict regulations against None of our internal content can even touch it AI, because otherwise it's out in the world unless it's like really really hidden behind really good firewalls. Again, it's know the audience. If you're a dotcom startup in the AI field, they're going to want make sure you have ai experience. If you're in a bank, in a regulated medical device industry, they probably will not. So take a class in prompt engineering, which is another whole field that's emerging. Prompt management all right, we had knowledge management, now we have prompt management. Write a prompt from scratch. If there's a library already that you can use and modify. Again depends on how you're using AI.

Jack: 31:11

There are things that are at least in the tech comm field, because that's our audience, for the show is as a profession, we document things that don't exist yet. You can't look at a new software product and say, hey, document this for me, because an AI can't read a user interface. It doesn't know what's behind that icon. If it's an accounting system, there may be like reports, but there might be 35 reports behind that one report icon. Which one do I want? It's not going to know that.

Jack: 31:41

However, things like Boeing, who has a billion pages of technical documentation for their aircraft, tell the AI to scan the whole documentation set and identify topics that are sufficiently similar that we can combine into a single topic and reuse it 14 times. Excellent use. Or you're doing structured authoring. I'm creating a new topic, Automatically populate the meta tags for this topic and we won't get into what that is. If you're doing structured authoring, you'll know what that is, but then you still have to go back and did it? Do it correctly? Ooh, how about this? I just finished documentation. Index it for me using synonyms, and usually we don't have time to index a document. We're already on to the next one.

Zohra: 32:23

Right.

Jack: 32:23

Right, excellent use of an AI. Ai is great at summarizing. Here's a 135 page report on the influence of climate change on the fish population in Iowa. Good, summarize this for me so I don't have to read All excellent uses. So again, look at how your client or your potential client is using AI and make sure that your resume reflects. Yeah, I can help you with that. Or and here's the most common question I'm getting for people in tech comm is my boss is asking me to find out how we can use AI to streamline what we're doing, and I don't know where to look. In that case, you do that research and going all right, one of the things that I bring to the game is suggesting ways that we can streamline what we're doing, go to market faster, perhaps with fewer resources, and be more productive. Not let's use the AI to generate the documentation for us, because that's never going to happen.

Zohra: 33:21

I was talking to my husband last evening about this very pressing question and it appears that more and more people are leaning towards. No AI is going to start generating content. It is happening, but I think the marked difference here is content that has not been created. And that's what we are creating and the effort and the thought process and the research that goes into it. I tell my husband I probably spend 10 to 20% of my time writing. The rest of the time I'm doing everything else, and that everything else cannot be described in a nutshell.

Jack: 33:53

And I'm nodding my head in agreement. Yeah for sure. Now here's another example. One of my speakers worked as a head of documentation strategy at a bank. The way they're using AI is they'll write an article or a blog post and then said now, rewrite this, as a CFO would want to read it. Rewrite this in terms that a financial analyst would understand it. Rewrite this in terms that a lay public would understand it. Brilliant use, but again, it's not generative. It's tweaking. It's tweaking something that someone already wrote.

Zohra: 34:27

Precisely.

Jack: 34:28

If you're doing web-based content for customer facing right, where you're writing blog posts and 15 tips ways our software can help you save money Excellent, yeah, that can be. You use AI to draft the first draft of that content, for sure. Or even, as we did today is asking an AI, all right. What are 15 questions I could ask about when talking about use of AI in interviewing? Excellent starting off point. Do I want to publish that? Maybe not.

Zohra: 34:58

Very honestly. Yes, I'm using that as a template for ideas, but I've For ideas. I've literally not asked you one single question in the way that I was, in the way it was written up for me.

Jack: 35:11

I'm using Question number one. Yeah, we covered number one out of out of. I think we are on question number five now, but again, it's a starting off point and it's a starting off point away in the door. Oh, I never thought of that. Let's go down this path. Yes, for sure.

Zohra: 35:27

Another example that I would like to share is in my current role, we have to generate UI content, user interface content for the models and the different dialog boxes and whatnot. I use that as a starting off point. So we use AI for brainstorming as a tool to get me going, but the end result is invariably so different from the starting off point. But that brainstorming definitely so. Do I use AI in my current role? Yes, absolutely, because my company allows it. We have, we use copilot. That's approved. So you have to be mindful of what approved tools do you have in your company and if, if you don't, maybe that's a starting off point for you. But use it for ideation, not something that you would spit out into the world without vetting it. So that human in the loop is absolutely important. It is a tool that you use to brainstorm.

Jack: 36:30

Just as a side at my conference this year, we've got the head of documentation from Salesforce who management says oh yeah, we want to get rid of all the tech writers replaced with AI and they went oh, and how they change that from replace us with AI, for us to become indispensable, using AI as part of our job. So that will be an interesting session that I'd be interested in.

Zohra: 36:57

I'm very intrigued. I'm very intrigued. I will keep that in the back of my mind because that is a pressing question for me, for sure. Again, we've touched upon this loosely, I think have you seen shifts in what recruiters value in your role as a recruiter creative AI, prompt engineering skills, data literacy or AI tool proficiency when hiring technical communicators today? Now, you, I know, are not working for a company as a recruiter, so how is that different?

Jack: 37:23

To answer your question. The simple answer is no, I do not see a difference. As a recruiter, I'm looking for five things what are you? What have you done? Do you have the tools we use here? Do you have domain knowledge Right, none of which an AI tool will get you. Listen, if I'm recruiting somebody for a medical device company and they need experience, someone with familiarity with the medical device standards that's what I'm looking for. Now. Is it a nice to have that you've also got a prompt engineering class under your belt? Yes, now it's different if I'm looking for the chief information officer who's got a mandate to increase organizational efficiency by 53% using AI tools. Well, by golly, if you're part of that team you better be familiar enough with and I know that Jasonason kaufman started a whole new company. His original company was how to validate ai content, and we talked about that in one of your questions is like now we're coming more like not content creators, but content validators. Is this correct? Is there a better way we could say that right again, taking that first pass and just using as an ideation first pass, now let's do something that you know? That just doesn't sound right.

Jack: 38:41

I saw someone post something on linkedin the other day who was a ux writer, and there was this particular it was a series of tasks that a user a to do I hate using the word user A customer had to do and she was struggling with what verb to use there. Was it validate, was it confirm? Was it are you sure you want to do this? And she did A-B testing and did it on live people right and said oh okay, I mean, I'll give you a pet peeve. I have an applicant tracking system I use for my conference and clearly the UI was written, designed by the programmer because to delete a record, if I had someone registered twice, I have to change their deleted status to yes. Who in their right mind would have come up with that? You know I could see an AI doing that. Yeah, to delete someone. Yeah, change this variable to no. No, just click yes.

Jack: 39:39

Or another thing that I see is this is the most common mistake I see as a consumer of technical writing yes, to access the report, click on the reports tab. Thank you, where's the reports tab? What does it look like? Where am I supposed to find it? Did what they gave me was true? Yes, it was actually 100% accurately true statement. Did it help me? No, and until you do usability testing on real, actual users of the software, you won't know. So again, now we're getting away. We're back to being user advocates, usability testers yes, the AI can generate a first pass for you, but they'll never be able to sit down in front of people going and watch their reactions and watch them frown trying to figure out where is it on the screen I'm supposed to be clicking right now and then.

Jack: 40:30

This is a really good segue to a quote from Sharon Burton, who used to be really, really, one of the leading technical writers in the online help sphere. She was known as the RoboHelp queen in her day and got laid off a decade or so ago and decided to rebrand as a content strategist. But not just when I say rebrand in air quotes, it's not calling yourself a new name, a new title. It was going back and reeducating herself and realizing that creating online help just didn't excite her anymore, but helping companies adopt a content strategy that helps their users be more productive and their company be more profitable. She found that exciting, but she had to go back to school, she had to relearn her craft and didn't able to offer those services as the very ground beneath them changes, and I think we're in a very similar situation now when it comes to AI.

Jack: 41:27

I'm going to add one more comment and then turn the floor back over to you. Sure, as a conference producer, I'm constantly looking for what's the next big thing, right? What do people have to know? Why would they go to a conference and pay all this money and fly halfway across the country? Five years ago, it was micro content. Everybody has to do micro content. And then, the year after that, crickets. Oh, the next big publishing platform are chatbots. Everything is going to be done by chatbots. Crickets then oh my god, it was the vr. Remember, remember the metaverse? Oh my god, everything is going to be in the metaverse the next year, crickets and now it's ai now.

Jack: 42:06

I don't think ai is going to go away like all those other things did, but it's no longer the theme of my conference. It's one track. We're getting back to basics, right the content strategy, the usability, the user interface, design, all those things that go into a usable either product or documentation set, and we just happen to use AI to get there, like we use any other tool, like Illustrator or whatever other tool. So I believe, moving forward, that AI is just going to be another tool in your toolbox.

Zohra: 42:36

And that's a great segue to my next question. But before I jump into my question, what I would like to acknowledge is, like you said, I attended the Convex conference a few months ago. What I'm realizing is your output, the ai output. If you're using ai to generate content or in whatever, however, you're using ai in your pipeline, the content that is upstream is what you are the quality. If you don't do that quality check, it's what's the term? Is it trash?

Jack: 43:10

and trash out giga garbage in garbage garbage and garbage out.

Zohra: 43:14

thank you, gigo, that's what I remember. And all these strategies that you just talked about content strategy, seo, ui, ux these skills, these disciplines, inform the content that you create upstream extremely important. And going back to that, basics, and that follows my question, you've talked about what you are looking in a resume when a candidate sends something to you, but are there any specific skills that hiring managers are asking for that apply, that are industry agnostic for a technical communicator, but things that are looking for? So, for example, we've talked about prompt engineering, rag, and I do not know what RAG stands for. I have talked about it, but if you know what that stands for, we'll get to it Just understanding large language models. These are the different things that come to my mind. Are there any specific asks that you're seeing coming from hiring managers, companies, et cetera?

Jack: 44:16

Let's take what is RAG first. It's short for Retrieval, augmented Generation, and it's basically doing the search that you asked for and then generating the content based on what it is they think you're looking for. It's based on a large language model. Again, I'm trying to think of the most successful way, jack is out of words.

Jack: 44:40

I know how is that possible? People are not searching for AI people. They're searching for good technical writers or good content strategists, who happen to use AI again as one of the tools in their toolbox. Right? No one said, oh my God, this person's done right, we must hire them immediately. No, we will never move away from who's your audience. What grade level are you writing for? How many languages are you running into? Are you using controlled vocabulary? All those things that one needs to have effective communication. Now, that said it also God.

Jack: 45:21

That's another whole presentation is how does your company, or any company, value technical communication? Is it an integral part of the product development lifecycle or is it? Oh, we have to have a manual. So it's a commodity to be acquired for the lowest possible price, given an acceptable level of quality. So if it's in the latter, it doesn't matter how good you are. They're not going to pay you what you want. They want to offshore that for the lowest possible price, and it doesn't matter what tools you have under your belt, where. If you're going to a company like Salesforce, where the content is part of the product, you are part of the product development lifecycle and the thing that you generate generates millions, if not billions of dollars in revenue. So if you're interviewing and you know, talk about what you did. You didn't write a manual. You were part of the development team that generated $5.2 million in revenue for your company. See the difference in positioning.

Zohra: 46:21

Yes.

Jack: 46:22

So, yes, I think, if you come away with nothing else from this podcast is should you be aware of AI tools? Should you take a class? Yes, you know, because there are times when they'll say, well, let's use AI to do blah, and you're going to have to sit there and go. Sorry, excuse me, that sounds great, but AI can't do that. What it can do is this so you have to be sufficiently familiar with your tools to know what they can do and what they can't do. Is it appropriate to use it now? Yes, is it appropriate to use it now? No? And if the answer is no, what can we do instead, or when? Yes, we can do that, but we have to port everything into a content management system first before the AI can effectively use that to generate answers to queries submitted by chatbot. So now your job is. Okay, I see where you, so are you familiar with the term gap analysis?

Zohra: 47:16

Yes.

Jack: 47:17

Okay, so great. So what your audience needs to do is this is where our content is now. This is where it needs to be to do what you want me to do, ceo, with AI. So let's do a plan to get us from where we are now to where we want to be, and at that point then you will be able to leverage this content and AI to automatically generate answers by a chatbot. But we got to do steps A, b, c and D first. That's where I'm saying what technical computers need to have under their belt when it comes to AI is familiarity, because, really, if you're looking for a prompt engineer, there are people who specialize in prompt engineering. I am not a prompt engineer. I go to Jason Kaufman and going I'm trying to do this. Can you write me a prompt please? And he does, because that's what he does. He's really good at that. Yeah, if I'm going to leave anything, that's what I'm leaving your audience with.

Zohra: 48:12

Again. That in a nutshell, covers all of the above discussion that we've had. And to be AI aware, even today there are candidates that I talk to, the candidates that I mentor, who are very against AI and I encourage them to at least understand. You should be able to speak in that lingo. You need to familiarize yourself, otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot.

Jack: 48:31

The term is AI literacy.

Zohra: 48:33

AI literacy. Thank you, yes, yep, they are not AI literate and they're just. You need to jump on that wagon, unfortunately and this is for your own good and to be AI literate again. Yeah, that's right. All right, I think this is probably going to be my last question, since we are already at the top of the hour, and I really appreciate you diving into these stories, because that makes it so real for me.

Jack: 48:57

How fast our hour goes every time we're together.

Zohra: 49:02

It's gone. It's gone, it's just, it's just burning away. I was going to continue this and I'm like, wow, we are already at the top of the hour and plus four minutes. All right, again, I think we've covered everything because we've jumped around so much, but I want to kind of bring it all back together. Probably with this question we will attempt that Writers are feeling anxious with the shifts that are happening. What is the one positive note that we can end this interview on? If you had to share some stories or tips or insights, keep in mind that our industry has been evolving for decades.

Jack: 49:40

We started out with yellow pads and gave it to a typist, you know, and then we gave it to a desktop publisher. Then we had our own desktop publishing tools and we had to do it ourselves right. And then came online help. Oh, pdfs first and then online help, and then multi-channel publishing.

Jack: 49:57

Alvin Toffler, off the top of my head and you have to Google this to make sure I get it right said the illiterate of the 20th century or 21st century will not be those who could not read and write. It'll be those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. So, again, getting back to AI literacy, I think it's any tech literacy. Like, 10 years ago we weren't talking about cloud computing, we weren't talking about data, we weren't talking about content management systems, and those of us who enjoy see, I personally got into tech writing because I love documenting things that didn't exist yet. See, I personally got into detector writing because I love documenting things that didn't exist yet. I loved being on the leading edge of change.

Jack: 50:35

But here's the deal, and here's an analogy that I'll leave you with. It's almost like surfing If you start surfing too soon, you're digging out in front of the wave and the wave's going to crash over you and you know, take you down. If you wait too long, that wave is going to leave you behind you down. If you wait too long, that wave is going to leave you behind. So the ideal is to ride the crest of that wave. Where you're far enough out that you're propelling it forward, you're riding that wave and then the wave dies and you're on to the next big thing. So don't wait too long, don't jump in too soon, but you're exactly where you need to be right now.

Jack: 51:10

One way to handle the anxiousness is this you are exactly where you need to be right now. One way to handle the anxiousness is this you are exactly where you need to be right now. There are so many classes out there teaching you exactly what you need to know right now. Take a basic class in it. What is AI? Ai for tech writers, a basic class in prompt engineering, or certificate prompt engineering. So again, achieve that AI literacy so you know what you can do and what you can't do, and when and if so, why and why not. And then you won't be caught like a deer in the headlights because you'll know when someone says let's use AI, you go, let's not, and this is why.

Zohra: 51:45

I love the surfing analogy that you gave. Do you do surfing?

Jack: 51:49

I've tried it once. I'm way too big and top heavy to do surfing, although I live in California. I swear to God before the end of my days I'm going to go skiing and surfing on the same day, just because I can.

Zohra: 52:03

Well, good luck to you and more power to you. And what a great tip, insight, advice for our listeners Ride the wave, get in front of it and time it right. Beautifully said.

Jack: 52:18

And then we're going to run this podcast through an AI. Who's then going to summarize it for us?

Zohra: 52:22

And write the show notes for me. But where did that knowledge come from? From this discussion. It didn't generate it for you. This was based off of human experience, real human stories.

Jack: 52:34

Yeah for sure. See, you're right where you're supposed to be.

Zohra: 52:37

Exactly. You're right where you're supposed to be and on that note, Jack, thank you so much for coming on my show and for your willingness to share all these amazing stories. That's what we want to hear. What's going on behind the scenes?

Jack: 52:51

Thank you for hosting this Carry on. Absolutely Thank you.

Zohra: 52:55

Listen to Inside Tech Com on your favorite app and follow me on LinkedIn or visit me at wwwinsidetechcomshow. Catch you soon on another episode. Thank you for listening. Bye-bye.