How to Hire a Process Associate
Whether you're looking to become a process associate or hire a process associate, there are a few things to look out for — prior experience in training / education and having a structured way of thinking.
In today's video, I walk you through a job description for a Process Associate at an agency that specializes in Trainual Consulting.
Transcription
Hi, it's Xavier Chang, Principal of XC Consulting. Today we're back with another episode of Xcel with Xavier, and today we are looking at a job description for a Process and Training Associate. So I decided to record this video because I thought it would be interesting for people that are looking to get into being a process and training associate, or looking to hire one. So let's dive into this job description. I'm going to give my take on it and provide any commentary that'll help guide you.
So this job description is from a consulting firm that helps companies with documenting their processes and building training programs for them. So a couple of the prereqs, if you're looking at this from, maybe this could be something for me, is that they're looking for strong written and verbal communication and a native English speaker. I think this point is really important because if you are building training programs, if you are looking to help document processes and you're doing it for an English speaking audience, it's important that you have a native speaker that's able to translate the things that are being documented or the things that are being shared.
So it's really important to get the nuance of the language. So that's why they've bolded Native English speaker. Couple other ones, background in training, development or education. So just looking at this job post and previous job posts, a lot of the folks that they seem to bring on as contractors do have that training development or education background. I think this is helpful because people, folks in this space or in this industry, they're very knowledgeable with structuring training programs or sharing information in a way that people will understand it and absorb it. So I guess that is the reason they're looking for this background. Skipping ahead, knowledge of standard operating procedures, processes, operations. I think it's helpful to have a structured way of thinking, either if you're building those SOPs or have worked in some type of operations where you need some type of consistency so you can regulate the output and the quality of work.
Going on, experience and organizing, compiling, formatting, uploading, written and visual content. So what I'll say about this, and we'll dive a little bit deeper into this later, oftentimes how this works whenever you're documenting processes or you're building training programs, is that there will be an interview or some type of exercise where you have a facilitator and an expert. The facilitator will ask pointed questions. They'll ask them to talk about experiences, and this will all be recorded either with video or with audio. And the job of the process and training associate will be to organize, compile, format, all of this content into some type of structured way, so it is digestible. So that's why they mentioned the experience in organizing, compiling formatting, and uploading. Basic video editing skills, I'm not sure if this is really necessary. We'll skip on that. Ability to think critically and confirm the documented workflow is complete and easy to understand.
So I think this goes back to the training development and education background. If you have that background, there shouldn't be any gaps in how you are sharing a process. There shouldn't be any misses and steps or things like that. So it's really important to think about whoever's absorbing this content that they really understand what's going on. So we'll go on to the technologies. They've got Otter.ai, if you're not familiar, I believe they do some type of AI generated transcripts. I'm not a huge fan of AI generated transcripts. I think they get you 80% of the way there. This goes back to being the native English speaker. I think a lot of things get missed whenever you're relying on AI generated transcripts. I rather would use a service like Rev.com, which they have here, which I believe they use a combination of AI generated transcripts as well as a human to double check that everything is correct.
So I've had much better success with Rev.com. Moving on on the technology list, Asana. Asana is a project management software. It's digital, and this is probably how tasks and work is being distributed as well as being tracked. Trainual is a software and, essentially it's a training manual. And this company, they actually are Trainual consultants and they help their clients with implementing Trainual as well as documenting processes. iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier Pro - these are video editing software. Snagit, this is screen capture. So if you're looking to get a screen capture, you can cut it, you can point arrows, you can put text on the screen whenever you're doing screen capture. Vimeo, just skipping on the list, Vimeo, this is video hosting software. Grammarly - this helps with grammar, much like a spell check type of software. Slack is pretty ubiquitous communication tool as well as Zoom.
And then finally Miro. This is a tool that's a whiteboard that you can share with folks and collaborate a lot easier. So let's get into the workflow and the scope of work. I think this will be especially interesting for potential people that are in education or training that might want to take some type of freelance work in this space. So you're going to receive an assigned project through Asana. So like I said before, Asana is your project management tool. It gives you the ability to track tasks, and organize the work that needs to be done. So second bullet point, you're going to extract best practices, instructions from Zoom, recordings, email communication and notes. You'll document all relevant instructions and notes from these conversations into the correct section of the client's Trainual account. So I alluded to this earlier, the Zoom recordings, the conversations between expert and facilitator. There's also email communication, there's notes.
So typically what happens is you get a flood of information about a certain process. This could be something in accounting, sales, logistics, marketing, and all of these pieces of information need to be compiled and sorted and put in a way into this training manual or Trainual in a way that makes sense. So I think that's a really important aspect of the job. So just collecting everything, sorting it, and pulling out all the relevant bits of information. Okay, going on. Edit Zoom and in person recordings or take screenshots using Snagit. So I won't read all of this, but I think this is important because the text is really helpful to go through and search. But sometimes you need to break up the paragraphs upon paragraphs of text, and you can do that with video. You can do that with screenshots. And this is essentially what they're trying to do.
Get those 30 second to one minute clips or a screenshot that helps reinforce the information that is in the paragraphs of text. So input URL links, create templates, upload documents, into the client's Trainual account. Yeah, so this is an agency that help companies with implementing Trainual. So you're doing all of that backend work. All right, last page. Create templates and forms to upload to the client's Trainual account. I think this is helpful if the process that you are working on, it requires some type of form for the team member to fill out. So it's kind of creating additional pieces of content or assets that will help with the process.
Okay. So take screenshots of the workflow process and upload them to the client's Trainual account. A workflow process is really the 30,000 foot view. So on earlier bullet points, you're focusing on the nitty gritty, the step by step, but the workflow process is a 30,000 foot view of what the process looks like. So for a business owner, a manager, it's really helpful to understand, okay, what's 30,000 foot view? For someone that's doing the process, they need to know the step by step. So couple of more bullet points, when applicable, perform research through Google searches to improve process workflow documentation when the employee's instructions are not clear. Yes, and I will say here with this - sales, marketing, accounting, all of these functions, they're kind of universal across the board, more or less. There's going to be different platforms, there's going to be different techniques, but they're pretty universal across the board.
There's a couple other ones as well. So a lot of these processes, workflows can be repeated. They can be applied to different companies. So that's why when something's not clear from the employee, if you have the 80 to 90% version, sometimes you can just fill in the blanks by doing a quick Google search on something like an accounts receivable process or accounts payable process. It's really important that you have the 80 to 90% to do that though. Okay, so a couple more. Maintain, update, project progress in Asana, right? So Asana, like I said, project management software. They're probably just using this to assign work as well as seeing where they're trending, where they are in a project, right? So meet regularly with practice and training lead regarding project process and professional development. So I imagined here the P&T lead is that facilitator. They are meeting with the experts to extract all of that information and best practices.
So thanks for watching this video. Just wanted to give you an inside look into what this type of work entails, and if you are either looking to be a contractor entering this space, or if you're looking to hire somebody that does this type of work. Just a little bit of more context and background. So thanks for watching. I will see you for the next video.
Thanks for watching another episode of Xcel with Xavier. I've got new episodes coming out every Thursday morning. Please don't forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel to receive notifications of new content. Thanks again, and I hope to see you again next time.