[thelist] Good "tests" for prospective employees?

Ken Chase raskenbo at gmail.com
Thu Jun 30 13:22:42 CDT 2005


> If I were on the hiring side, i would surely make them do a sample in
> front of you or in a room in notepad.
> 
> Whip up a basic site/home page for some topic or company.
> 
> then print it out (make sure the url isn't shown :p )
> 
> hand them the print out, and ask them to code what they see to make it
> match as best as they can.
> 
> 
> That way, you can tell off the bat what they do-
> do they go right for the table?  do they use a real doctype?  or do they
> just hustle through it with basic tags?
 

I've been tested this way before. It's not, in my experience, how
sites are usually developed.

Maybe I'm in the minority but although I can for the most part develop
a functional site using notepad, I rarely do. (Do most people memorize
doctypes? I copy and paste them from a list apart.)

I usely do whatever's fatest that meets the requirements. If this
means copying and editing another site's source code - so be it.

My (flawed) suggestion:

For a test I would recommend 

Ask the candidate to develop a site template for a certain type of
company/audience (clothing store for senior citizens in North
America). Ask them to how they approached the design and why they made
certain choices. If he/she can make you understand concepts, chances
are they now what they're doing.

Give the candidate strict measurable guidelines (valid css x.x, xhtml
x.x), 3 column layout, etc... That way you can quickly determine if
they passed or not even if you don't know anything about html/css (use
the free w3c validators).

If you're also testing for JavaScript, have them create a form with
validation. You can then test the form yourself to see if you can
enter bogus values into it.

Also, give him/her access to real life tools (web, notepad,
homesite...) that they would normally have access to in your company's
work environment.

I guess my point is that when testing make the test

1 - Easy for you to evaluate
2 - As "real world" as possible.

HTH,
ken 


Ken Chase
Freelance Web Design
http://www.kenchase.com


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