RE: Spam:RE: Evaluating Candidates Using Tests, Logic Questions, and Similar

["Sarah Bouchier" <Sarah -dot- Bouchier -at- exony -dot- com>]

>Look - even if you don't understand the material (and it's pretty
>straightforward), you should be able to see that a sentence with 9
serial
>things should be a bulleted list. That the 4 narrative sentences that
tell
>you to do stuff should be numbered steps. These sentences are topic
>sentences so there are several paragraphs in this one big one and these
>should probably be labeled as sections because this paragraph is about
>something very different than the previous paragraph. That the passive
>voice, future tense, third person might be good to fix. That run on
>sentence
>should be broken up.

Some of that is obvious, but some of it is stylistic.  I've been in
companies that have +insisted+ on using the passive tense in
documentation, for example.  I can imagine some candidates failing not
because their structuring skills are bad, but because they have misread
what style they ought to be using.

>Perhaps you can make up something _here_ because you see between this
>paragraph and the next there is stuff missing and you can make it up

Is it clear to the candidates that they can make it up?  Although
ideally even if they can't, they'll make a note to the effect that that
bit needs improvement.  Assuming, of course, that it's as obvious as it
seems that there's stuff missing.

>If you make an upset face during an interview, when everyone is on the
best
>behavior during the first date, what are you going to be like in 6
months
>when I ask you to do a fast project on a technology that you have to
learn
>quickly?

I'm probably going to leap at it with enthusiasm.  I don't know about
you, but most of my relationships improve with time :)

>If you think that a writing test is beneath you as a senior writer

I don't think anyone here has argued that.

>If you think I should trust that you wrote your writing samples, then
you
>haven't done a lot of interviewing and hiring.

I can think of three different ways to test whether a candidate wrote
their own samples without asking them to do something unrepresentative
of their capabilities at short notice.

>In all the times I've administered the test, I've had 1 person do what
I
>expected.

This may suggest a problem with your test, rather than with your
candidates.

S.
Sarah Bouchier
Technical Author

exony

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