Outplacement, Day 1

Ok.

I hate buzzwords.

HATE.

It comes from being a technical writer and getting to see the worst examples of buzzword-ish usage ever that come from people who don't understand them.

I will say, some marketing peeps know how to use them well and sparingly.

Those people are few and far between.

Today in Outplacement 101 was working on the resume. Now, I feel pretty solid about my resume. It's sadly been out there enough and luckily has proven itself enough that I know it ain't crap.

Ok.... number one... the Big Book of Resumes Ala Outplacement Company that they handed out... the guy told us to not open it and start reading or flipping through it until he told us.

Dude.

Writer here.

You can't hand me a freakin' pamphlet for a service I don't even WANT before I start to thumb through it and pick it apart. It's what I do.

A somewhat large part of being a tech writer is being a critic/editor to the stuff people want you to say. Well-meaning people hand stuff to you, wanting you to put stuff like "CAUTION!!!!!! This procedure is perfectly safe to perform" into documents that are going out there into the real world (and yes... that is literal... recently got that one handed to me). One of the many services you offer is going "Umm...... NO" sometimes.

However.... if it's a company-approve term, if it comes from above from marketing... you let it slide. Let them answer for it in grammar heaven. You were just following Orders, sir.

To quote That Word Guy.... "I usually have an opinion, but I don't always care."

From the approved resume format of the placement company, I just needed to do some reformatting. Turn large blocks of bullet points into paragraphs and have the only bullet points be specific accomplishments. I can do that.

Add those marketing-y type stupid phrases that are raping the English language?

"I buzzedy-buzzed-buzzed the buzziest-buzzish-buzz-buzzly buzz....."

Um. No.

Ain't happening.

And I have to wonder how out of touch this place is.

They still seem to think a resume as a piece of paper you actually hand to someone for the first time they see it, and it somehow magically gets you an interview.

/enter real world

From the past ten years of my experience, a resume is something where people look for the words of specific skills that the hiring person is told to look for, and if you hit some majority of them, they call you to make sure you can put together a sentence and they ask you some basic questions. They call you in for an interview, or they don't. You can't understand the way it all happens, because every company is different.

And I'm not sure that they get how people hire tech writers is a little different. We're an industry fairly equally divided between full-timers and contactors, and most of the good ones are pretty good at picking up whatever industry/field/whatever they are in and running with it. The one thing you can really count on is that a good tech writer knows their tools, and won't need a lot of ramping up on a specific piece of software or general knowledge on how to beat content or reviews from people.

Buzzwords are not going to help me.

I'm hopeful tomorrow may be better, but right now I fear the follow ups with the outplacement company. I know I'll likey have to lie (although I can do that well, if I prepare for it) that I'm using their resume format. People miss things in the context of a paragraph.

• They
• Don't
• In
• A
• Bulleted
• List

Sigh.

It also doesn't help that I quickly lost ALL respect for the Big Book of Resumes Ala Outplacement Company when it was just SO badly organized.

The reason we couldn't open to page 1?

We started on something like page 34.

And then skipped around without rhyme or reason between the front and the back to do what we we told.

Bad.

BAD.

If my two current leads don't pan out, I may need to try and offer them some services to get that damned manual into some sort of thing resembling order.