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Subject:Re: Interview From Hell From:John Posada <jposada01 -at- YAHOO -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 8 Jun 1999 07:49:19 -0700
Why not ask the help desk specialist a real question:
"I'm a person in front of a PC, I've never used
Windows before, I have a phobia about anything related
to rodents, and I cannot get X type of application to
load." Ask me what questions you would ask the person
on the phone to find out what is wrong."
I may be a brilliant PC technition and can locate a
currupted DLL that Microsoft doesn't even know
exists...I just don't care about the color of the
drapes in your office.
Or how about "You just came back from vacation and
there is a new alpha version of the software on the
common network drive, 20 different stacks of
developer's notes from 20 different developers who
don't talk to each other on the corner of your desk
with changes, but they don't tell you what in the
software has changed, and your PC won't boot. How do
you approach getting the documentation up to date in
72 hours?"
I just may be a poor housecleaner and I pay a maid for
my household chores.
--- Hedgehog Communications <hedgecom -at- YAHOO -dot- COM>
wrote:
> Julie Badger wrote about an interviewer asking her
> to
> describe how'd she'd clean up an expansive mess her
> dog had made.
>
> Julie, I agree this SEEMS like an odd question up
> front, but it's not. It really does show how a
> candidate would organize chaos into meaning, which
> is
> excatly what we do as technical writers.
>
> A friend of mine, who hires help desk specialists,
> always makes candidates play "20 questions" with
> her,
> in which she says, "I'm thinking of an item in this
> room that is visible to you. Ask me questions to
> find
> out what it is." Help desk people, much like
> technical
> writers, need to understand high-level concepts and
> boild them down to specifics in a rational way...
> and
> how they handle this "game" is a great indicator of
> ability.
>
> Cheers, Monica
> ===
> Monica Milla
> Hedgehog Communications
> "Helping you get your point across"
> Voice/fax: (734) 944-2133
> HedgeCom -at- yahoo -dot- com
===
John Posada
Western Union International
(w) jposada -at- westernunion -dot- com
(p) john -at- tdandw -dot- com
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