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Subject:Re: Editing and writing tests for jobs From:Ben Kovitz <bkovitz -at- nethere -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 15 May 2002 09:02:32 -0700
Cara O Sullivan wrote:
> For those who are looking for work and are experienced tech writers, have
> you encountered many potential employers who use editing or writing tests to
> screen candidates?
>
> And if so, what do you think of that tactic?
I think it's silly. When I was interviewing tech writers, I and the
other interviewers just looked at samples of their work and talked
with them informally for a bit. We hired some magnificent folks this
way. I'd look at the work samples first. They told the whole story,
minus whether the person would be pleasant to work with. That's what
you'd learn from the interview.
Tech writing is expressing information in a way that's simultaneously
faithful to the content and comprehensible to the audience. A test
that asks you to spot spelling errors or nonstandard usage in someone
else's text just isn't going to reveal much about that primary skill.
However, I can see a reasonable basis for using tests. The "look at
their work" approach requires that the interviewer be able to judge
for him or herself whether the writing is any good. That is, it
requires that the interviewer have some knowledge or at least good
intuition about tech writing. Not everyone has that. No need to
bemoan that. That's why tech writers have jobs.
So tests are a sort of substitute for independent judgement. Perhaps
it would do some good to make a mechnically interpretable test that
relates to the primary skill of tech writing rather than the usual
proofreading minutiae. That would take some cleverness, but maybe it
could be done.
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