The Dreaded Page Turner

Last week I was involved in a conversation with several other instructors (representing several different vendors besides Microsoft) when the subject of new or more importantly unskilled trainers. Perish the thought, but yes Dorothy, they do exist. Most trainers have come across one of the “Dreaded Page Turners - DPTs” before and have had to deal with their ramifications later.

Who employs these less-than stellar entities and why? The ones who are most affected are the poor students who are subjected to the DPTs. I believe many of these DPTs are hired full time by some training centers because they don’t have to pay anywhere nears as much as they would for a more experienced trainer with a consulting background. I don’t suspect there are too many DPTs working as contract trainers simply due to their reputation. Once it is known that they have zero, zilch, nada experience and their training reflects this, than they will not get much repeat business. There will be some market for them though, as there is everywhere, but these would be the bottom feeders or the truly desperate brokers

Nothing generates more fear and trepidation to a highly experienced trainer than to hear a DPT say “In my experience” – what experience? You don’t have any experience on a production system anywhere – never have – so you just flat-out lied to the students. I actually heard a DPT say that a few years ago – “In my professional experience”. This came from a person who went straight from college (non-techie degree, I believe) into training without even a slight detour to touch a production system. What is more appalling is that they said this with a straight face.

Just like in any other industry, there are the good, the DPT and the ugly. The trouble is that the DPTs make life for the good trainers that more difficult and give trainers a bad reputation. A few years ago I was looking into switching jobs and was talking to a recruiting firm, their position was that trainers needed to go through a special testing examination as they have had too many come through who didn’t know anything or very little. Sigh – as I said, it is the DPTs who give us experienced trainers a bad reputation and the students a poor class.