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While we're on the subject of pre-employment testing, what tests have you taken that you enjoyed or that you thought were particularly appropriate?
The one that comes to mind for me was at Black Pearl, in San Francisco. (Fellow Whirler and former coworker Martha Kolman-Davidson also applied there.) I was to be documenting some APIs, as well as some fairly low-level user docs. They wanted writers with a firm grasp of programming concepts: OOP, data types, standard algorithms, and so on.
I was interviewed by three people: first the person I would be reporting to, followed by two developers. The first developer who interviewed me asked me to diagram on a whiteboard what a linked list and double-linked list look like. I did so. Then, he asked me to show the algorithm for adding an element to the data structures. I did that, as well. He told me I was the first writer who had been able to adequately do so.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) the company's financing changed, and they were unable to make the offer they had been preparing to. But I was really impressed by this pre-employment test that actually *applied to the tasks I would be performing*. That's the distinction between a good test and a waste of my time, in my opinion.
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