Two Down, (Hopefully) One to Go

This morning I got a written test from the company I interviewed with yesterday. I knew that the test was going to be timed, and I knew that it would be gauging my writing skills, so I thought it was going to be a breeze.

I was wrong.

The test ended up being a good challenge for me. I was given some rough notes from an SME and asked to convert them into a process document. I had one screen shot that showed the software, but beyond that, I was on my own for an hour and a half.

It took me quite a bit of time to wrap my head around what the software actually did. I was trying to figure out what task the person was trying to accomplish, and could nail that down pretty quickly. It was mainly the how that was an issue.

The person who created the test probably just took something that he had received from the programmer who made the changes. Since I had no idea what all the acronyms were (as well as having no idea how this fit into the larger picture), I did my best to try to get it all completed. There were breadcrumbs that described how to do something in the user interface (driven mainly by the function keys like F2 and F7), and then later in the document, you found out that the bread crumbs were not comprehensive.

My 90 minutes was almost up when I remembered that I also had to create a document to detail what I had updated. Needless to say, that got rushed a bit.

All in all, it is something that I would have sent over. I just wish I would have had about 10 extra minutes to look it over or have someone else take a quick peek before I sent it off to be final. After all, everybody needs an editor (even editors).

We'll see if this lands me another interview. I realized that I am a bit rusty on my authoring skills since my previous job was focused mainly on editing and information gathering. I guess this would be a good fit to stretch my core writing muscles once again and get working on things. It should keep me sharp.

Now, I'll just wait for that phone to ring and hope that it is a number that I don't recognize...