RE: Giving a surprise test to interviewees?

["Spreadbury, David " <David -dot- Spreadbury -at- tellabs -dot- com>]

I recently was interviewed for a position. There was no advance notice
of testing. I expected, and got, reasonable questions about the ability
to do tech writing, from most of the interviewers. One of the
interviewers gave me, if you want to call it, an impromptu test. The way
it was done was subtle. He asked specific questions, or showed specific
examples, and wanted pointed answers. Now the position was for a
technical writer and some of the questions were direct
programming-related questions, so I didn't get the position.

Back to your question.

If the "unannounced test" is delivered as above, it doesn't come across
as a test. You would be asking specific, actual work-related, questions
and from this would be, hopefully, able to determine if the applicant is
suitable for the position. Deliver it as: "Given the following example,
(hand them the sentence/paragraph) then ask them what they see wrong?"
then produce the example, let them either mark it up or tell you
directly what is wrong, if they notice anything at all.

Here you are actually attempting "...to ascertain the interviewee's
command of basic English grammar/syntax".

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-195991 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-195991 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of
adf1972 -at- yahoo -dot- com
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2005 7:20 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Giving a surprise test to interviewees?


Hi,

I'm a senior tech writer with a small gov't contractor. My company is
looking to hire for a jr-level tech writing position; the requirements
are either 2 yrs' experience in tech writing or a B.A with a major in
English with a tech-comm focus. We work in MS Word, but our requirements
for this position regarding Word knowledge are pretty meager. Basically,
the person has to know how to start Word and start typing. That's about
it.

Given that the Word requirements are so minimal, I really hope that at
the very least we would hire someone with a solid command of English and
writing, and also with an eye for details (i.e. the ability to catch
mistakes). We do ask for writing samples, but I have been in a work
situation once where an interviewee passed off another's writing sample
as her own (this wasn't discovered until after she was hired, and she
was subsequently fired). As I'm one of three interviewers for each
candidate for this position, I came up with a fifteen-minute,
five-sentence editing/rewriting test to give during my portion of the
interview. I'm thinking this test will allow me to ascertain the
interviewee's command of basic English grammar/syntax. The applicant is
not apprised of this test until I actually give it to him or her.

Now, I wrote these sentences so that they contained a lot of mistakes --
some subtle, some not. If someone can tell that there should be a "that"
where there's a "which", I'd be ecstatic. Ditto for rewriting a sentence
that's in passive voice into active voice. But I'm not expecting that a
candidate would get 100%...or even 50%. What I *would* hope is that our
interviewee could at least spot the difference between "it's" and "its",
between "affects" and "effects", and detect that there's a semicolon
where a comma should be instead. There are about four such "glaring"
errors in the five sentences, and I'm really hoping an interviewee could
at least spot three out of the four. Anything else is bonus, IMHO.

Well, one of the other interviewers for the position got wind that I was
doing this, and complained. She feels it's unfair, off-putting, and
upsetting to the interviewee to give the person a surprise test.
Basically, she told me that she wants me to stop giving it. My boss
didn't like the idea at first either, but now seems to be in favor of
it; at any rate, he hasn't told me to stop doing it. Personally, I've
had to take unexpected tests several times during interviews for various
positions (bookstore cashier on up through technical writer), so I don't
think it's a horribly unfair thing to ask someone to do. The last
surprise test I had during a tech-writing interview was about an hour
long, so mine is a cakewalk by comparison. My friend the technical
recruiter says it's perfectly OK -- both ethical and legal -- as long as
the test pertains directly to skills required for the job. But my mom,
who is also a tech recruiter, thinks it's potentially unfair and could
even be construed as
(*gulp*) discriminatory, especially if it's not a company-wide practice
(and it's not here).

So I'm wondering, what do those of you on this list think about
springing a surprise test on an interviewee? Is it terribly unfair and
upsetting, or is it a reasonable requirement?

Adrienne
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