Re: What Might a Writing Test Be?

[Steve Fouts <stefou -at- ESKIMO -dot- COM>]

Peter Ring in reply to Chris Welch-Hutchings reply to Peter:

>Chris Welch-Hutchings wrote:
>
>> >The applicant is placed in a room with some source documents and
>> >computer equipment.  He or she receives five to six hours to produce up
>> >to five pages of a user's guide.
>>
>> Excuse me, but a company that expects me to spend 5-6 hours on a writing
>> test as part of the interview process loses my vote. If they can't judge my
>> writing ability by looking at my samples and asking me about them (plus
>> interviewing my references), I'm not sure I want to work for them.
>
>I understand Chris' points from the viewpoint of a proud
>professional techwriter - but refusal to participate could indicate
>an inflexible person, I wouldn't like to hire anyway.

The market for Technical Writers must be very different in Denmark, Peter.
Here in the U.S. at the current time it is such a sellers market in most of
the major U.S. job centers that the only way that I would agree to spending
an entire day taking someone's writing test is if they agreed to pay me for
my time. And pay me well. Otherwise, it simply isn't worth my time.

In fact, I would wonder about applicants who _would_ agree to take such
a test here. Why is it that they are so desperate for a job that they
would subject themselves to such a thing free of charge?


    _______________   _____
   /  ___  __/__\  \ /  / _\    Steve Fouts stefou -at- eskimo -dot- com
  /___ \|  |  ___\  |  /  __\   I am the Lorax and I speak for
 /   /  \  |      \   /      \  the trees.
/_______/__|_______\_/________\ But not for SAFECO.