Re: Sample document creation for contract position

[beelia <beelia -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Jerry I think your experience is different because the hiring team had to be
sure that you had the technical chops they needed. That's not easy to do in
an interview. I think what they asked you to do was appropriate under the
circumstances. I wouldn't have objected either.

The original case posted seemed fishy because of the kind of task they
wanted her to do. It did indeed look like an attempt to get something for
nothing.

Bee

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Jerry Kindall <j -dot- kindall -at- tecplot -dot- com>wrote:

> This may be because I do more developer-oriented documentation, but I've
> been asked to do substantial work for an interview on more than one
> occasion.  The first time, for a contract position at Microsoft, the
> hiring manager actually asked me to develop a small application between
> my first and second interviews.  This seemed reasonable to me, as it was
> a programmer writer position in which I would need to write code samples
> in C#, and I'd never used that language before.  I was very interested
> in the position to begin with and looked at it as an opportunity to
> learn something new.  (Got the gig.)
>
> During my most recent job search, I was asked to write an introduction
> to an API I'd never seen before, while on-site for the interview.  I'd
> never been asked to do something like that, but it struck me as an
> interesting challenge as well, so I did it.  If nothing else, it made
> the next day's interview at another company seem much more
> straightforward by comparison!  (Got an offer for that gig, too, but
> didn't take it.)
>
> It's a good experience to have under my belt, but in the future, I
> probably would be reluctant to invest that much time again for a single
> interview unless the position was _extremely_ desirable.  (Or openings
> were _extremely_ scarce.)
>
> I have often been asked to send writing samples by e-mail ahead of an
> interview.  I don't think there's anything too unusual about that.
>
> --
> Jerry Kindall, SDK Technical Writer
> Tecplot Inc. | Enjoy the View
> Bellevue, Washington  USA
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ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
http://www.doctohelp.com

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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