Unintentionally Hard Tests
July 7th, 2008
Filed under Running the Business, Thinking Like a Tester
I finally decided that too many of the things on my To Do list are things that I probably should not be handling personally, like dealing with getting business cards and routine invoicing. And too many of the things that I should be handling personally, and quickly, are being left undone too long.
So I posted an ad for a part time assistant on Craig’s List. And being test obsessed, I devised a test to give me a good indication of whether a given candidate had enough of the skills I needed to bring in for an in-person interview.
I asked the candidates who wrote an articulate reply to the job posting (and there were a lot of them!) to do a little research and find out what conference I’m speaking at in August, where the conference is, and what the titles of my presentations are.
It seemed to me like this was a pretty easy test that would weed out anyone who couldn’t do basic research on the web. But I made the test harder than I intended by asking about conferences in August. I forgot that there are two conferences listed on my web site for August: Agile2008 (where I am not speaking), and STANZ (where I am giving two talks).
When I realized my mistake, I thought “No problem. Good candidates will search for my name in the Agile2008 program and realize I am not speaking there.” Then I tried it myself and discovered that searching for a specific speaker is apparently a use case that the Agile conference organizers didn’t think about when they published the program this year. Even I found it difficult to determine absolutely that I am not on the program. There are too many places to look, and even the PDF program is a little difficult to search for a given speaker’s name.
Sometimes what seems like a simple test - whether of software or of a person - turns out to be much more difficult than we intended or imagined. Although I suppose that as long as none of the job candidates crash as readily as software, we’ll all be OK.
And if any of them manage the task without giving up, I will definitely know something about their ability to find information on the web!
8 Comments
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Jul 07, 2008
5:10 pm
So if a potential candidate were to check out your blog and read this post, they’ll have the answer. Would you still hire them? Would you hire me?
Jul 07, 2008
5:19 pm
Hi Zach,
Yup, I would certainly hire someone who used the clues here, assuming they were the most qualified candidate. That’s one of the reasons I wrote the blog post.
And would I hire you? Sure…but I don’t think you want the job. You’re a great software tester, and I doubt you really want to do assistant stuff like invoicing and dealing with Kinko’s print jobs. But if I had a job available that was a good fit for you, I’d be delighted to hire you. Sadly, I don’t…
Elisabeth
Jul 07, 2008
5:38 pm
Such kind words shouldn’t be wasted on such a sarcastic soul, but I’ll take ‘em. I must admit that I’m still quite happy in my current role, though I couldn’t beat the resulting “how did you get your job” story.
Good luck with your head hunting. I recently received a co-located direct report and must say I don’t know how I did ANYTHING before without Shane’s help. Good people: hard to find, worth the effort.
Jul 07, 2008
6:57 pm
Elizabeth and Zach,
I just happend to be one of the potential employees reading this blog and hope to be like Shane someday
Jul 07, 2008
11:05 pm
Pretty interesting way to “test” a job candidate .. Though on the face of it, the challenge looks pretty simple for those who “follow” happenings on blog-o-sphere. Figuring out whether you are speaking at a specific conference is bit of a stretch … At times google search can be “painfull” …
Look forward for updates on who you would be hiring …
Shrini
Jul 08, 2008
11:49 am
I too am a potential assistant. It’s great to have this oppertunity to look inside your world.
Jul 08, 2008
11:51 am
Hi Elisabeth,
I’ve been reading and enjoying your blog since about a month ago, when I got this testing job. I think being your assistant would be great.
I took up your challenge and it didn’t seem too difficult to determine that you would be speaking only at STANZ.
I Googled “software testing conference august 2008 elisabeth hendrickson” and found you immediately on the well-designed STANZ website.
I clicked your name there and went to the Quality Tree website, where I followed a link to Agile2008.
Under Programs, a table including each speaker appears. I looked at a few and didn’t see you.
As a cross-validation test, I picked a speaker from there at random and tried the same Google search, substituting their name for yours.
Links to Agile2008 appeared, so my inference was that if your name was anywhere in the Agile2008 site, my first search would have revealed that fact.
Thank you for the insightful and inspiring words.
Seth
Jul 08, 2008
10:12 pm
Hi Elizabeth. I am also a potential candidate that applied for the position. Just following up on your blog and thought I would throw in my two cents about your test. The comment that Shrini made about google searches being painful at times proved to be true. I researched your website and tried to find more information about conferences that you have spoken at…..not so succesful. It took a little digging around but I was able to successfully finish the tests with what I hope was the desired answers (with a little help from reading your post about potential candidates needing to do some extra research). I hope your search for the right person proves fruitful.
And good luck handling a whiny child while the power is out. That can’t be fun.