I got a number of calls yesterday from potential new customers. Within 20 minutes of one of these calls, I was able to send the potential customer CVs, samples and references. How? Because I have a writing staff and I am not a “job shop”. Within an hour, they chose the writer and we arranged an interview for this morning. If they like my writer, they plan to have him start on Sunday. One of the other callers was looking for a technical writer with a particular skill set for an urgent job. I probably don't need to tell you that HONESTY is the best policy. I think that if you don’t have anyone available at that exact moment with those exact skills, then tell the HR manager or the PM that you don’t have the person.  

I was shocked that within half an hour, two other technical writing companies were culling CVs from random applicants for the same job I had turned down. It didn’t occur to me to advertise on every job and technical writing list in Israel because – given the short time frame – it would mean I wouldn’t have time to properly vet any of the applicants. When Tech-Tav recommends or offers a writer for a project, we take more into account than just the CV. Finding suitable candidates means a whole lot more than finding out whether the writer has mastered a certain tool or has a particular number of years of technical writing experience.

I’m not going to share all my secrets on how I successfully recruit and place candidates, but I will tell you this: before you choose a technical writing outsourcer or recruiter, I think you should always ask them the following questions:

It has been a super-busy week for new contracts, new writers, placements and deadlines (not to mention the summer camp that is currently taking place in my house, but that’s another whole story). So you’ll please forgive me for not posting this sooner. And now, without further delay, welcome to Part 3 on why it pays to outsource.

In Part 2, I made the following claim: “Outsourcers appreciate the flexibility that their work provides, and they don’t expect the usual perks of full-time employees such as lunch, travel or paid leave.”

A member of my Documentation and Technical Writing Management group on LinkedIn commented in response, “…outsourcing doesn't make the burden of ‘perks’ vanish, though it might seem that way. The burden is simply transferred to a vendor, who, in turn, will surely factor the perks into the billing rate.” 

Kumar, I would suggest that if you are paying the same or more for your outsourcer as you would for an in-house writer of the same caliber, then it’s time to start looking for a new outsourcing company. In Israel, where most of our writers are located, employers pay a base salary plus an additional 37% for social benefits. Without going into all the math, it should suffice to say that my hourly rate doesn’t even come close.

I didn’t mention it last time, but this is going to be a three-part-series. I already covered some of the great reasons to outsource your technical writing in my previous post, mainly focusing on how the peak-and-valley nature of the workflow in hi-tech lends itself to outsourcing. Now let’s talk agility and experience.

Picture it, if you will…a lone technical writer (or even a team), full-time, in-house. Spending 188 hours a month sitting at the same desk, working with the same SMEs and managers, documenting the same technology. Day after day, year in and year out. Yawn.

From the perspective of the employee (as the commenters from last week pointed out), the benefits of outsourcing are many:  flexible schedule, pick and choose your projects, be your own boss, gain exposure to a wide array of new technologies, writers, writing and management styles…the list goes on and on. Looking at things from the employers side, the view is just as attractive.

Outsourcing your technical writing means more to you as a manager than just “pay your technical writer for the hours she works and not one minute more.” You also get the added benefit of a writer who, by the nature of her work as an outsourcer, is constantly exposed to a wide variety of new and changing technologies, management styles, applications, authoring environments and fresh ideas. During your downtime, the outsouced writer can easily work for 5 or 10 other customers in the course of a year. She brings back to you a breadth of experience that simply could not be gained by sitting in the same company at the same desk year-round.

A startup in the midst of their initial product development cycle was trying to decide between hiring a full-time technical writer or outsourcing the work on their datasheet and user guide. They were the perfect candidate for outsourcing:  the budget was tight, the work would not be steady over the long term and there was not a single native English speaker on the team to do QA or document review. Nevertheless, and against my advice, they hired a newbie full-time, in-house writer, Bill, because they really thought it would save them money. Bill called me after four months, bored out of his mind, unsure what to do next and looking for project work on the side to fill in the hours and to learn more since he was fresh out of a course. What was happening here? While the startup initially had enough work for a full-time writer, the peak and valley nature of the release cycle meant that:

• The company was paying Bill a full-time salary for doing part-time work.
• The company didn’t benefit from someone with experience and know-how in modern documentation technologies or strategies. They took someone cheap, and with little experience who still needed an additional mentor.
• Bill went from being overworked and underpaid to being bored and underutilized.The usability and purpose of their documentation was never really well developed and Bill didn’t know how to make himself useful to other departments.
• Bill left within 6 months to find a job where he could hone his skills and learn more. The company had to start knowledge transfer and the documentation process all over again.

Total cost:  Double the cost of the same work via a reputable outsourcing company