Helping Your Employees Manage Their Stress  

This progression provides an opportunity to discuss the stress-related challenges technical communicators face in today’s changing environment. The focus is on on coping and thriving.

Gillihan, Dana L. and Joy Lashley. STC Proceedings (1995). Careers>Management>Workplace

Hiring a Technical Writer  

Hiring a technical writer can be tricky, even if you happen to be one. Where can you find a technical writer? What characteristics should you look for? How can you tell a good writer from a bad one?

Docsymmetry. Careers>Management>Interviewing

Hiring for Success  

Hiring writers and editors on “gut reaction” can be risky. To be sure that you are hiring the right people, identify specific criteria that candidates should meet, use these criteria to create a set of questions to use during interviews, and develop a consistent interview and assessment process.

Tatge, Pamela K., Sheryl A. Moore and Nancy S. Robinson. STC Proceedings (1996). Careers>Management

Hiring Right: Road to Success

Running a translation business is not easy. As small as the industry may be, we as business owners face a full set of business challenges: personnel management, sales and marketing, client relations, and the list goes on. Everyday, we go into work hoping to improve the business, to make it more successful. Sometimes we wonder, what is the killer factor? What makes some companies more successful than others?

Iler, Huiping. WTB Language Group (2005). Careers>Management>Interviewing

Hiring Technical Writers: Are We Looking for the Right Skills?  

Winsberg argues that the most valuable employees are those with a work ethic and analytical, organizational, and writing skills, rather than those with specific software experience.

Winsberg, Freya Y. Intercom (2000). Careers>Management

Ho-Hum, Not Another Meeting: A Delightful Experiment Changes the Way One Company Conducts Internal Meetings

Company meetings are often regarded as conservative and uninspired by those who must attend. We all know that meetings are necessary, but we also know that they can be wearisome. Not all meetings need be that way. In fact, meetings can inject some lighthearted fun into the day and stimulate the creative juices. This is a story about how a series of humdrum meetings at one consulting firm evolved into a creative expression that is as varied as the participants themselves.

Zvalo, Peter. Writer's Block (1998). Careers>Management>Workplace>Community

How Do You Deal With a CEO Who Wants to Run the IT Department?  

A CEO is enamored with technology but doesn't understand the issues involved in implementing his time- and money-hungry IT ideas. What would you do to solve this problem?

Roberts, Becky. TechRepublic (2003). Careers>Management>Technology>Collaboration

How Much Is Enough?

Conventional wisdom defines business success largely by company size; the steeper the growth curve, the better. But is this model appropriate for freelancers? Most freelancers in publishing work independently; the amount of work we can accept is limited by the number of hours we can work and how many pages we can edit, proofread, or index per hour. For this reason, if we cultivate too many clients, we’re forced to turn down projects we’d like to accept. On the other hand, few freelancers have arrangements for receiving regular, predictable assignments from clients.

Shore, Lys Ann. Editorial Freelancers Association (1995). Careers>Freelance>Management

How to Build a Nonprofit for Your Community

This article details how mozdev.org built a nonprofit organization and shows you how to do the same for your community. I'll cover fundraising, obtaining legal advice, staffing, and more.

Boswell, David. O'Reilly and Associates (2004). Careers>Management>Legal

How to Conduct a Review Meeting  

Although technical reviews of many draft user’s guides, references, and help systems occur through the black box (that is, the author sends out the material, and reviewers send it back marked up, without the two ever seeing one another), many technical communicators find that a personal meeting ultimately saves time and improves communication in the process of developing a technical communication product.

Carliner, Saul. Intercom (2003). Careers>Management>Editing

How to Hire a Designer

Each year during May and June we get hundreds of calls, letters and emails from young graduates who would like to work for Showker Graphic Arts & Design or any of the Graphic Design Network web sites. This year, since we had a specific letter from a potential employer, we thought it would be cool to show graduates how we approach reviewing candidates for employment.

Showker, Fred. Design, Typography and Graphics (2001). Careers>Management>Graphic Design

How to Hire Technical Writers: A Manager's Viewpoint  

Hiring technical writers is an infrequent but important part of a manager's job. Clearly defining the job and the required skills is the first step. Then use all of your networks to find candidates. Read résumés to find those that best match your requirements. The interview team needs to be prepared to ask relevant questions that verify and expand on the résumé and samples. Compare the interview team's evaluations, then check the references of your best one or two candidates, and make a prompt offer.

Huettner, Brenda P. and Ken Jackson. STC Proceedings (1996). Careers>Management>Writing>Technical Writing

How to Interview and Hire People

Before you worry about interviewing, consider this: good interviewing does not make a good candidate out of a bad one. The higher the quality of the people coming in to your interviewing process, the higher the quality of those that will come out of it. Do not rely on HR or some other person to decide who enters the process. The more energy you, as a hiring manager, invest in recruiting, the better your results will be.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2006). Careers>Interviewing>Management

How to Justify Hiring Technical Writers During Hard Economic Times

The marketplace for technical writers has often been challenging. In difficult economic times when companies seek to slash their budgets, it is often difficult for corporations to understand the need for a technical writer, let alone to understand the need to increase staffing in the documentation department. This article looks at the benefits of hiring technical writers, since their often diverse skill sets can be used across various departments in the organization.

Datta, Aparna. Writing Assistance (2007). Careers>Management>Writing>Technical Writing

How to Manage Agile Development  

This whitepaper provides an Agile development overview full of techniques, best practices and educational materials.

Leffingwell, Dean. Rally Software Development (2005). Careers>Management>Agile

How to Manage Smart People

What follows is some advice for managers on how to manager people, especially talented people. I worked for nine years at Microsoft, sometimes managing projects, sometimes managing people, but always with a manager above me. I think I’m smart, but many of the people who have worked for me definitely were. Over the years I’ve experienced many mistakes and successes in both how I was managed, and how I managed others. There's no one way to manage people, but there are some approaches that I think most good managers share.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2006). Careers>Management>Collaboration

How to Market a Documentation Department

When you first ventured into the tech writing ranks, marketing the department was likely the furthest thing from your mind. You already had work to do, so marketing was somebody else's job.

King, Robert. Writing Assistance (2006). Careers>Management>Technical Writing>Marketing

How to Survive a Bad Manager

The best advice for having a bad manager is to seek other employment. Don’t undervalue your happiness: it’s impossible to be happy if you work directly for someone you can’t stand. It may be difficult to find another job, but if you are willing to make compromises in other areas (salary, position, project, location, etc.) it will certainly be possible. Being happy and underpaid is a much better way to spend a life than unhappy and anything else.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2006). Careers>Workplace>Management

I Need to Know What?  

Every technical communicator must develop a set of management skills appropriate to the task in order to excel as the leader of the communication team. This calls for multiple skills including being part diplomat, part technical expert, part salesman, and part turtle.

Bailey, Elizabeth. STC Proceedings (2005). Careers>TC>Project Management

Implementing Strategic Plans  

Strategic planning is a process that enables organizations to determine where they intend to be and how to get there. Independent businesses must plan ahead to survive. Many internal organizations, threatened by corporate downsizing and outsourcing, must do the same. But what do you do after you've developed your strategic plan? Committing yourself and your organization to implementing your plan is a long-term challenge.

Hansen, Lauren Y., Mary C. Boyd and LeeAnne G. Kryder. STC Proceedings (1998). Careers>Management

Improving Management of Your Business

All companies have business processes that can be improved. Most companies can benefit from automation or further automation of solutions.

Pires, Halstatt. Ezine Articles (2006). Careers>Management>Project Management>Workflow

Indexer Wants to Retrain

With such a considerable portion of our collective mindshare devoted to information management products these days, it's no wonder that you're lost in terminology and technology. And it's no wonder that so many of us are confused.

Byrne, Tony. CMSworks (2004). Careers>Content Management>Indexing

Influencing the Uncooperative

Even when the other side in a conflict seems unwilling to change, you can still exert a positive influence. Kenneth Kaye, author of Workplace Wars and How to End Them (AMACOM, 1994), assesses stalemates realistically: 'You're the only one you can change--and even that guy, you don't have all that much control over.' But to the extent that you're able to overcome the frustration of dealing with an uncooperative opponent, Kaye suggests several steps for improving the situation.

Hard at Work. Careers>Management

Information Product Development Process Quality: Vision, Process, and Implementation  

Two members of the management team from LSI Logic Storage Systems' Technical Publications Department review how their team developed a vision statement and an information product development process based on that vision statement. The workshop provides participants opportunities to learn about the value of vision statements and production processes as well as to begin developing these materials for their own organizations. Participants will also share ideas on how to maintain process integrity through customer focus, team feedback on product and process quality, and strategic continuous improvement. Participants will receive materials that enable them to draft their own vision statements, information product development processes, and continuous improvement team operating practices.

Burroughs, Dia H. and Randy Clark. STC Proceedings (2004). Careers>Management>TC