I have had a request to share with the list the questions Suzanne Huard
(UNH) sent me to use
when interviewing candidates for our Information and Technology Coordinator
position since many of you are planning to hire someone of this nature and
we seem to have wide ranging opinions regarding testing the computer skills
of applicants.  Thanks again to Suzanne for taking the time to put this
together.

e-mail:  there are various e-mail packages each with different
interfaces.  Some questions you might ask in an interview re e-mail:
what packages have you used?  mainframe or workstation-based?  how have
you helped users with mailing attached documents?  what incompatibility
issues re attached documents have you come across and how have you
resolved them? have you found useful techniques to help users organize
info they receive using e-mail?

Both internet and SPIN searching require an understanding of content
(e.g., what are you looking for,  and how best to frame what you are
looking for) and of how searches work, i.e. an understanding of boolean
logic, regular expressions and the syntax of both.  You might ask an
interviewee what search engines they have used and their assessment of
them;  or what techniques they have found helpful in searching the web
or in making use of information from the web; or if they've had direct
experience with SPIN, some of the more unusual/satisfying "hits" they've
made by constructing a search request "just right."

Some questions that would help determine
spreadsheet experience level:  Have you used macros?  For what purpose:
Have you developed Excel tools in Visual Basic?  what is the nature of
these tools?  Do you have users with different spreadsheets or different
versions of the same spreadsheet?  What kinds of problems has this posed
and how have you helped resolve them?

I would rather know what they think in general about ways to automate the
completion of application forms; if/how they've used TRAM; if they've
used TRAM what incompatibility issues have they come across; have they
helped faculty/staff download forms and helped adapt the forms to their
individual printers, etc.  What have been the more nettlesome problems
associated with downloading forms, etc.

-- HTML (hyper-text markup language), the language that is used to
design web pages, has undergone a number of revisions  (I think many
people are currently using v3.0 or v3.2), each providing for more
features.  You might ask for experience in  including graphics, tables,
frames in web pages.  And for feedback re the matching content with a
display type like tables, frames.  When is it useful to use a graph?  a
table? a frame?

-- what considerations affect how you design a page (I might expect/hope
to hear something like: clarity of information displayed, speed of
downloading, ease of navigation thru a series of pages)

-- there are many authoring tools today that make web-page design much
easier than before (e.g, Adobe PageMill, Claris Home Page -- at least in
a mac environment), so you might ask what tools the interviewee has
worked with; how the tool is helpful; what shortcomings it has.

-- web pages are served up by a server.  I don't know whether this is a
machine that you have in your office or one that is centrally located.
Someone who has had experience designing web pages will have some
knowledge of server environments and the development cycle (e.g,
WebStar, BBEdit, again for the mac environment).  I think it's possible
to design a web page and not have as great an understanding of the
server environment if that part is being handled by some other
office/dept.  But, I would prefer someone who had a basic understanding
of the entire development cycle (or had the capacity to learn it).

Barbara Gray                        Telephone:  803-953-5673
Director of Sponsored Programs      Fax:            803-953-6577
College of Charleston                     e-mail:         xxxxxx@cofc.edu
Charleston, SC  29424