VA Guide - Authorify

When is a Test Task Very Necessary? Here are a few positions that should require some kind of test task to ensure that the candidate can successfully hold the position. These are typically positions where the candidate needs a particular kind of experience (not just aptitude).

● Social Media and Other Marketing ● Building and/or Managing Website ● Accounting and Bookkeeping ● Database Management

● Listing Coordinator ● Closing Coordinator

With any task, don’t give more help in the test than you would when they start working for you. If you eventually need them to do their own research, you should also have them conduct research for the test task. Perhaps you need an assistant who will build a website for you. As a test task, you could give applicants access to a simple website and ask them to make some specific changes. If that’s not feasible, you can ask them to explain the process of editing a website, in step-by-step detail. Based on their responses, you should be able to tell which applicant is the most skilled web developer. Or, you could have applicants create a webpage for you on their own website. You can request that they place your logo or some other item on their site so you can be sure they created the site content. Good web developers should be able to do this in very little time. I often ask for past samples in addition to a completed task. I might ask a web developer to send me links to all the websites they’ve built in the past year, requiring at least five links. This gives me the opportunity to observe their skills closely and make sure it’s just a one-off. You want someone who can do good work for you in the shortest time possible. If two of your applicants do similar-quality work, you can differentiate between them by seeing which one finished more quickly. Recently, I interviewed two people who had, by coincidence, built similar websites. One did it in two hours, while the other one took two weeks because he was wasting time with unnecessary tasks. The first applicant liked to get his work done quickly and move on, while the other got too caught up in minor details that, in the end, didn’t matter.