Re: Hiring Question

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

I have yet to see or take a test that measures a candidate's ability
to drag information or review comments out of a recalcitrant SME 
or any of the other nonwriting skills required to get documentation
done to plan and schedule.  Most of the tests I've seen and taken
consisted of 30 minutes or so of correcting deliberately introduced
spelling or grammar errors into a few pages of document, and while 
I suppose that in this day and age of illiterate people holding college 
degrees they have some limited use, unless a tested candidate proved 
to be incapable of stringing words together into a readable paragraph, 
I don't think I would give the results much more weight than the answers 
to one or two typical interview questions.  Since we have established
formats and style guides, I am less concerned about a writer's ability
to design documents or analyze alpha product builds than some might 
be.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Loveless" <daveloveless -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005 1:28 PM
Subject: Hiring Question


Over the last three years, I have hired multiple technical writers and
interviewed at multiple locations for myself. I have always used
writing/editing tests in my hiring decisions, and have more often than
not been subjected to the same.

So I began to wonder, in your opinion, do tests have value and what
value? Are there problems?


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