Hail the job interview!

Are you in a job searching mode? Are you looking for a job which would pay you better salary? Are you looking at the job description and thinking you would get it? Look at your previous experiences of job interviews.

Worst! The job interviews are not predictable, that’s for sure. You never know what kind of questions the interviewer will ask you and what kind of answer they would be expecting from you. But you can never be sure about the question the interviewer would ask you if they themselves have no clue about that or they do know the answers of those. Albeit, you can understand if the interviewers do not have answer about the question they have asked, how are they going to judge you on the merit of your answer? Is it simply the test of how you would address the question? Or do you know the answer of that question? I doubt nothing of these two. But most certainly, its only a catch to show that you do not know and they know better than you. Most of the time, interviewer suffer from this manic depression to prove themselves to the interviewee that they know better than them. You hate it or love it; most of them have this attitude. Most of them take credit in failing people then looking into the worth of the people who could be a useful resource. Call it inferiority complex in your words or rate this as the superiority complex of their personality, but here they are.

In my experience I have seen that most of the interviewers hardly go through the profile of a candidate before they enter the interview room. They do not do their home work to understand as what kind of questions would be valid to ask and judge the candidate’s competence and skills for that role. There are rarely relevant questions asked pertaining to the role. On the contrary, there would be several other questions which would not be relevant in relation to the role for which you would be getting interviewed. At some of the places, interviewers have said that you have written all kinds of documents or at least you have knowledge of authoring such documents. Some of the recruiters have surely have been impressed by my missionary zeal to have hands on experience writing various kinds of document and few of them have uttered saying you have got good writing experience. However, at the same time, they would also say, ‘your stay with any of the companies has not been long enough.’ Can you call them Id***s, F***s, or Novice? I would bet not the last one. Because they know what they are asking and at the same time they also are proving themselves that they fall into the earlier of the two categories. They can not be so ignorant. When you say I have good experience that means these experiences I have gathered working at different places. If you rot at one place you would end up doing same thing again and again, year after year. I can not have greater experiences working simply at one place handling different kinds of documents. Similarly, I can not learn more number of authoring and image editing tools if my company does not use any of those. Merely having knowledge of how to use the tools would not make me an experienced candidate on that tool unless it is used in the work environment. Importantly, most of the time resume would get short listed only if I know certain authoring and editing tools. So, can I be my own enemy, not knowing the tools and variety of document writing style and lessen the chance of my employment.

Funny! If you stay for the long time with a company and when you seek a change, an obvious question, ‘What made you stay so long with this company? Were you happy with your job?’ If the answer is, ‘yes’, ‘why then changing now?’ ‘Couldn’t you get a better offer earlier?’ ‘You have no knowledge of skills and tools we are looking for?

You are at their mercy. And remind you, a fool will opt for a fool; an intelligent would opt for a lesser intelligent, and none of the bosses like to have an efficient and intelligent worker. The idea is, bossing on good worker would be difficult and if they would be able to do their work on their own why would they need a boss. Question of survival! So, to survive, better get the ones whom you can hammer the way you want. Keep those away who can not be a ‘Yes Boss’ material. Well, judging the “Yes Boss” material in half an hours time would be sufficient. Any candidate, who tries to imitate the yes boss type, even if they are not, would definitely make some stupidity in half an hour time and that is enough for them to reject their candidature.

The professional hazard! Believe me or not, females are outnumbering males as technical writers in IT industry in India. I have no statistics about all over the world. Again, I do not have statistics about the writers in non IT industry, and male and female ratio in particular. But, ongoing scenario and folks around suggests me that biasness prevails quit a large. Not that we are unbiased. As human material we are vulnerable to be biased, but it is really astonishing that d***heads and feminist attitudes are adding up to the numbers of growing female writers in the industry. I really feel sorry for those d***head people whose groin governs the mind. Feminism always resides in the comfort zone. Although exception prevails, however, feminism survives better because of few d***heads.

If you believe that the job interviews are the test of your skills and knowledge, you are mistaken. All the gyan of how to face the interview or how could you get through the interview remains the imaginary gospel of some of the column writer who make their living by writing these posts. In reality nothing of that sort happens. By reading those columns, if you believe that you can do a better job, I advise better think before you take these seriously.

I have started understanding, you need to be smart to get through the interviews, and I agree I am not. But may be most of you could be. Smart! What is the meaning of this? I have no idea how this word might have originated but I am impressed whomsoever might have used might have been a screwed person who might have thought of making up for everything with winning spree. I am not sure, this is my assumption. However, the true display of smartness appears to be the same for me. Its all about how you portray, whatever you are not. Image building, character building, and career building with all sorts of trick, lies, conspiracy, and falsehood to cover up your incompetence, snatching credits from other, making yourself known what you are not, are all acts of smartness. Its like showing venom even if you do not have poisonous tooth. What about your conscience? Who cares?

Unfortunately, that is the last thing any of the smart people will think. Smart people! Everyone is fooling everyone. So, better know the art of fooling, otherwise you would be failing in many of the interviews. To be successful, be smart. To be smart, you know how to fool others and all is yours, whether it is d***head or feminist, all will hire you.

Hail the job interview!

Test is not tested

The door to work in the software industry as a technical writer begins with a writing test which at time becomes most important for short listing the prospective candidate. The writing test being conducted by various companies to select the technical writers in to their fold most often fails some deserving writer. I am not sure how good the test is tested before it is administered to the prospective writers. As the test varies from companies to companies, its length and breadth to test the knowledge of candidates also increases manifold. Most of the time and places where I have gone for the interviews I failed to understand the mindset of the persons who sets the questions and to understand the real intent of some of the questions. To me, it looked, more often than not that it fails to evaluate the skills and knowledge of the prospective writers.

Writing the test for getting through the interviews reminds me of the academic days which forces you to memorize the subjects for scoring marks to get good grades. I understand and most of us have understood by now that academics have no truck with reality in life. We definitely look beyond that in the professional field to measure our real value in terms of analyzing our potential. But the state of testing a writer’s caliber to fit him in the software industry is not a truly professional story to narrate about. The writing test which is administered on the writers to get selected as technical writer is not true test of their skills. Mind you, this test is not aimed to judge the geniuses of your creative imagination. This test is aimed to know the ability to write procedures and instructions in simple and clear language applying the style guides what the industry follows.

The real skill of a writer is to write. Be it any piece of writing if you have the ability to write you can always learn the style and use that into your document. So, the real intent of the test should be to test the thinking ability of the person and the way thoughts are presented in grammatically correct sentences. But some of the question which are asked has no connect with the writing ability of the writer, it is purely intended to judge the English and grammar knowledge of the writer. The knowledge of grammar and English language are important for writing good English but at the same time writers are not expected to remember entire grammar. They need to know how to use them in the writing. The necessity of queens English for the king’s crown is definitely not desirable.

However, you will keep getting the questions, which will intend to test your knowledge beyond your writing ability. Some of the questions what I came across while writing different tests are as follows:

What is the long term goal of your life?

What is the short term goal of your life?

According to you what is the main hurdle of India’s growth?

What is dangling modifier? Explain it with example.

What is restrictive clause? Explain it with example?

What are parts of speech? Discuss all the parts of speech with example.

What are subject-verb agreements?

What are articles? Describe about different articles.

There may be many more questions which our other writer friends might have faced during the test and can vouch whether it is justified or not.

Some of the questions will be posed to test the knowledge of the tools you have used. The fact is, you need to know the tool to use for the documentation. Your past acquaintance would gain you some mileage but tools would not do the writing on your behalf. It is used for the presentation of your content. Some of the companies have realized lately that tools can be learned while you work on the product. And they have changed their approach in their selection procedure. Similarly, knowledge of process in software development is another desirable factor which is stressed. Whether you have worked on scrum methodologies or age old water fall methodologies does make some difference.

Some of the companies would try to test the domain knowledge of the writers. This is another indigestible fact because a writer who has not worked in some domain would not know even the basics of that domain. The job of technical writer is to get the knowledge from the stake holders of the product that includes subject matter experts, developer and architect and transform that knowledge into writing for the user. The writers are the flexible lot whose job is to learn the technology and domain knowledge on the job. The open mindedness and interest to learn new technology and new domain can let any writers do wonderful job. However, there would be definitely some exceptions, but exception can not be the general perception. As of now, it looks to me that the entire technical writing in India is driven by perception.

All this is done to siphon out the better writers from the good lot. But these tests are not always foolproof. The vivid example came into the light when ten of my ex-colleagues got into a mobile software technology company by virtue of scoring very high in their written test. The secret is one took the grind and let others know the answers in advance. All of them were not the great writers but their score made the interviewer believe in them. No one tried to find anything beyond that.

Giving the subjective tests also does not get you always the better part of a writer. Writing depends on the state of mind. The day when a writer is calm, composed and has clear thinking during the test, he/she might do a good job. If too many things are hovering through the mind, the distraction can lead them end up doing a bad job.

The blend of subjective writing exercise, some of earlier writing samples and a personal interview can give a fare idea about the capability of a writer. Moreover a writing exercise administered a day before the personal interview on two of the topics given by the interviewer in writer’s own time would also provide little more insight. Nevertheless, the judgment of a writer’s capability in an hours test is sheer eyewash. If you pass, its your sheer luck. If you fail, its your destiny. You do not know where the battle of your luck and destiny would take you.