Well, one job I (unsuccessfully) applied for in Durham at the university
involved being set a number of tasks to complete in just about an hour.
I'm not sure it was easily possible to get fully polished solutions
working for all of them, but it was certainly reasonable to sketch out
what you might do for each problem. And there was a mix of difficulties
in the problems set, form pretty much trivial to things that made you
think quite hard.
The one problem is a lack of familiarity with any tools and network
topology which adds an overhead to applicants right away, and this is
not necessarily an even playing field. Other than that though, it was
fairly reasonable.
The tests covered making alterations to some PHP code, looking at a code
snippet and trying to explain what it did, setting up some db output for
rendering using XML and XSLT and a couple of other bit and pieces I
can't remember.
I think it's reasonable to do this because:
a) You see how someone copes under a deadline and some pressure
b) You do get some insight into their technical knowledge and expertise,
even if they only sketch the answer
=================================
Darren Stephens MBCS CITP
Centre for Internet Computing
University of Hull
http://www.cic.hull.ac.uk/
mail: [log in to unmask]
=================================
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Gareth McAleese
> Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 3:52 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Testing Job Applicants
>
> Folks,
>
> Something that has been mentioned at UU is what tests we
> could use if needed to help short list applicants prior to an
> interview. I know there are various aptitude tests out
> there, but I am interested to hear what other have used
> particularly geared towards IT/web developers.
>
> Any thoughts or pointers appreciated.
>
> Cheers,
> Gareth
>
> --
> Gareth McAleese
> Web and New Media Manager
> Corporate Information Systems
> University of Ulster
>
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