[48088] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Certification or College degrees? Was: RE: list problems?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Hickstein)
Wed May 22 14:53:02 2002
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 11:52:36 -0700
From: Jim Hickstein <jxh@jxh.com>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Message-ID: <89940000.1022093556@jxh.mirapoint.com>
In-Reply-To: <007a01c201bc$c8382f80$0200a8c0@cartman>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
I once dared to require candidates to submit written answers to three essay
questions (200 to 300 words), along with their applications. The questions
were about the technical subject, but the purpose in asking was to see if
they could spell, and write in complete sentences.
We did a formal analysis of the job beforehand, and decided that the
ability to _write English_ was foremost, even ahead of the specific
technical skills the job also required. This person dealt with a large
community of people via email. (DNS top-level hostmaster for a large
company.)
We got a good guy. He's still there.
When I see a resume with more degrees than a thermometer, but even minor
spelling, punctuation, or other such errors, I throw it out. Meticulous
attention to detail matters a lot in this business.
