Interviewing and hiring technical writers: the Siberian way
summary
Claim: hire excellent writers and train them on technical fundamentals rather than teaching coders to write. Process uses a lengthy pre-interview test: explain SSL certificates to a noncrypto uncle and public topics like UTF-8 vs UTF-16. Results: 120 assignments checked, hired 6, now 4 over four years. Built onboarding curricula, university classes and bootcamps; outcome is a working documentation team at Zodiac Interactive in Novosibirsk and a local market growing to about ten openings per month.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:10Why the company needed technical writers
- 3:32Integration Architecture Dogs
- 4:26Requirements
- 6:21Finding technical writers
- 14:00Assignment test
- 16:27Structure
- 19:50Strategies
related talks
27mInterviewing a Technical Writer Candidate
21mSkills for Managing your Documentation Team
29mStarting from Scratch: Finding and Hiring Junior Writers
38mHow and Why Technical Writers should Lead Onboarding
44mHire Better Faster Stronger
27mA Better Technical Interview
51mEngineering the Technical Interview
38mMyths, Mistakes, and Missed Opportunities