Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Sour Grapes

Notice the bold / italic text in the original email sent to me. They want someone with "comfort with working with geographically dispersed teams" but require the person that fills this role to be based on-site. So, what does "geographically dispersed" mean if it doesn't mean people in different geographic locations working on the same project?

That's okay, I didn't want to do a contract for the next 12-18 months anyways.


From Me
Yes, I guess I am out of consideration.

I'm sorry that is their requirement as I recently worked on exactly this type of work. We have multiple user guides, one for each customer, and because there was not a single source solution, which is what I gather your client wants, there were multiple versions of the same user task. I took the multiple versions of the same task and consolidated them into a single version that was applied to all customers. This consolidation of text is something that can be done remotely.

I hope you find the right fit.

From Recruiter
This cannot be done remotely, unfortunately. They want someone on site. Would this take you out of consideration?

From Me
This sounds like a great fit for me. I have done exactly this type of work at various companies over the 19.5 years of being a technical writer. I have a dozen years of RoboHelp experience and 3+ years of using Confluence.

Can this work be done remotely on a part time basis? I have a den in the basement that has served as a home office when working on other contract-based projects. I am hoping that your answer is "yes"!

I will send you my updated resume before Monday morning.

Thank you,

From Recruiter
Good Afternoon,

(company) has new opportunities available for a Technical Writer in (location) area for a 12-18 months contract. I am sending this to you because I came across your resume in our internal database. Please take a moment to review this opportunity and let me know if you would like to learn more. If you are not interested or available but know of someone who may be please feel free to pass this along to them. If you are interested, please reply back with an updated resume. Thank you very much for your time and I look forward to hearing back from you!!


Start Date: September 1st, 2014 or earlier if possible
Duration: 12-18 months contract
Location: (location)


Part of the National Implementation Team – will be working in a team environment to document and write for an online help system AND Content Management System

This company is currently in the process of taking all of the documentation that share common topics across multiple business lines that have differing versions, taking out all of the information in sections, then re-writing the sections to be ONE version so business lines can build their own COMPLIANT documents.

They are finding this section in ALL documents, writing one common version, and distributing for ‘re-entry’ into the full document.

Recreate this over and over for each section in each of the 1,000’s of documents within Consumer Lending.

Job Description (day-to-day responsibilities):
Demonstrated topic-based authoring experience; either in an online help system or content management system.  
Comfort with working with geographically dispersed team’s 
Proven ability to author content as part of a team.

Must Have's / And Top Priority Skill Sets:
Previous experience using RoboHelp, Framemaker, AuthorIT, or DITA-based documentation systems.

They are currently using Robohelp, but are migrating to a new system. However, They do not know WHICH system as of yet. This is why ANY content management tool experience will suffice.

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