Re: interviewing "under the hood"

[dan_roberts -at- adp -dot- com]

Just a quickie response to the responses...

First of all, thanks for the comments! It's a half-baked idea, so it's not
set in stone, by any means <g>.

Regarding the HTML/DW comments: I realize that DW and similar tools do a
pretty nice job of applying code. I still want to tweak it sometimes, but
OTOH maybe I don't use it the most efficiently, either <g>. What I'd like to
avoid is code that looks like: <b></b><b><b><span style1><span style2></span2>Tex</span1><span1>t</span1></b><i></i></b>. That, to me, seems to indicate that
the TW didnt know the tool as well as they could.

Same kind of idea applies to Word. Manually formatted Normal that looks
like headings, blank Normal paragraphs to achieve space between
paragraphs, that stuff makes me cringe. But the candidate would get a
"kewl" outta me if they *did* use character styles at all. And yeah, I've
done plenty of CTL-I and CTL-B in my life <g>.

In fact, to be honest, if I were doing my job to the optimum, the above
kind of situations would not happen b/c we'd have good clean templates and
stylesheets and a staff trained on how to use them. So that's my
shortcoming.

As for springing it on the candidate *during* the interview: Absolutely
not. That's not fair.

And yes, I've got to evaluate the candidate's industry knowledge, writing
ability (the words on the page), and the tool skill supporting those
words. It's a juggling act - he's got industry experience, but can't
write; she's a Word Wiz, but doesn't know a Repo from a Dollar Roll; he
writes pristine prose, but thinks Word-produced HTML is good (ok, that's
my own prejudice showing thru). Ya got to pick and choose your priorities.

Again, thanks for the input and the comments, and I look forward to more
good comments and views on Monday. Have a good weekend, folks!

dan

> I'm about to start interviewing for a couple of positions. I'm curious
> about the list's reactions to one aspect to how I want to conduct these
> interviews.
> Comments?
> 
> dan

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