[thelist] Good "tests" for prospective employees?

Ed McCarroll ed at comsimplicity.com
Thu Jun 30 14:32:08 CDT 2005


> I like thinking exercises that help to demonstrate other cognitive
> skills...here are some examples

Quickie "IQ tests" are more likely to weed out those who haven't seen
them before, than they are to identify people with strong cognitive
abilities.  If you want to use that kind of thing, you should invent
your own riddles.

When I'm hiring, I'm less interested in how clever an applicant is
than how effectively s/he will get the job done.  The best job
interview test I ever took was, on first phone contact with the
hiring manager, he asked me:

   How would you read a flatfile from within a VB.NET page?
   Call me back within 5 minutes with the answer.

It took me 1.5 minutes to look up the answer in a help file and call
him back.  He scheduled a face-to-face interview without even asking
where I found the answer.  By doing it that way, he made sure that:

   a) he asked a question I could not answer to begin with
   b) I could find it quickly.

He didn't even ask how I got it.  
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Ed McCarroll                                            (310) 838-4330
Ed at ComSimplicity.com                      http://www.ComSimplicity.com



More information about the thelist mailing list