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Subject:Re: Hiring TW without a test From:Kathleen MacDowell <kathleen -dot- eamd -at- gmail -dot- com> To:Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> Date:Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:13:22 -0500
Re Gene's suggestion: Make sure you emphasize that you would like complete
answers.
A recruiter sent me a table of questions that I answered very briefly. She
let me know that they wanted very explicit answers; e.g., "How much
experience do you have with Word" = "I have x years experience with Word"
not "x years"
On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:
> That's easy enough to fix. Look at the questions you'd typically ask at
> the interview, pick one that will require a detailed answer and send it as
> a followup instead. Or send an email asking the candidates to give you
> their impressions of your company, the working environment, etc. Anything
> that will require them to reply with paragraphs instead of one-sentence
> answers. To get the replies in English, you can tell them there's another
> team member who is English-only who would like to ask them some questions
> and send the questions using that person's email address.
>
> Gene Kim-Eng
>
>
>
> On 3/21/2013 11:09 PM, Jen wrote:
>
>> Gene, you're absolutely right. We're not hiring a tech writer, but someone
>> who we hope can become a tech writer. I'm not doing the interviews myself,
>> but my team leader is paying attention to what you said. It's just hard to
>> gauge someone's writing skills without actual... writing. I hope we'll get
>> writing samples, even if it's after the initial interviews. (We weren't
>> involved in selecting the candidates, HR basically said "hey we scheduled
>> these 5 interviews for you" and we couldn't contact the candidates
>> beforehand.)
>>
>
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--
Kathleen MacDowell
kathleen -dot- eamd -at- gmail -dot- com
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