One of the best places to look for candidates is through the web sites of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). The STC is a professional organization run by and on behalf of technical writers and illustrators. There are STC chapters in every major city in North America, and in several European and Asian cities as well. Nearly every chapter has a web site, and many have job banks where you can submit a job description. You can find links to the chapter web sites at http://www.stc.org.

When looking for a documentation manager, do not let yourself be impressed by someone who has been a documentation manager in a larger company. While this person may know how to write performance reviews, allocate salary increases, and sit through rounds of budget negotiations, he or she may not be able to cope with the stress resulting from an aggressive development schedule. What's more, a big company manager may not have actually written a technical document in years.

Look instead for someone with a lot of native intelligence, energy and a proven ability to create programmer and user documentation. This person should know the best tools to use for hardcopy and online documentation, and will have some 2 or more years of experience in leading documentation projects.

By Kevin Donovan, Documentation Manager.

If you have questions, you can e-mail Kevin in French or English at jardin@banet.net