I applied online. I interviewed at Crossover for Work
Interview
I sat for a psychometric test that we are supposed to get a high score on. This is the very first stage, more like a screening test.
Most of the questions were related to percentages, pattern recognition, sales-profit, and work-hour aptitude questions. What does a writer has to do with such stuff, is beyond me.
They say that it is an effective way to see if the person is competent, I call it non-sense. If you were to hire a painter or a graphic design artist, will you ask him/her sales percentages aptitude questions or see their portfolio and work experience?
Even the language related questions that were present were totally unrelated to Tech Writing. As Tech writers we avoid flowery language and do not use unnecessarily complex words, but in the test they threw in questions where one had to identify similar and opposite meaning words for words you would ideally never use (unless very unfortunate) or even have heard of.
I have been in the industry for 10+ years as a writer and have worked with three fortune 250 companies, and can definitely say that this is not the right approach.
Surely, whoever is creating these assignments for Tech Writers has little to no idea what we do and what our work is like.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Sales percentages
Profits
Aptitude
Synonyms and antonyms of words you will never use.
Immediately after applying, I was sent a link to a test. I wasn't really interested in the position, because something didn't seem quite right from the get go, but I decided to take the test out of curiosity. If I were truly interested, the first question would have been enough to make me lose interest. The amount of knowledge that they want, is ridiculous for $40k a year. Also, I swear the person who wrote the test is illiterate, and has no right to judge anyone else. Of course after I took the test, I received an email stating that I missed the qualifying score by half a point, and they offered me a discount on their training to get my skills up to their level. I don't need their training, I made almost twice as much last year with bonuses. Thankfully I "failed" the test, because the next step was an assignment. Everything about them appears to be shady. Make sure you read through the reviews as well, before you accept any offers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The test included questions about Flare, Framemaker, Word, RoboHelp, CSS3, and HTML 5.
Thank you for taking the time to write us a feedback. It appears that you participated in our recruitment process and glad that you gave it a try. We agree that reviews help applicants in accepting our job offers, but it is still best though to ask people who have been working for us for a long time. Some internet reviews maybe biased and it doesn't reflect Crossover in general. Also, we suggest that you go through the FAQs in our website for more information regarding Crossover. Should you have other suggestions or concerns, please feel free to send it to feedback@crossover.com.