I’ve just finished putting together the very first version of the syndeo::media design aptitude test, which I’m hoping will help us qualify job applicants a little more thoroughly before we start the interview process. At the moment, it’s less than 10 questions long and includes items such as:
3. In 300 words or less, explain the differences between JPEG, GIF and PNG, and what each format is most appropriate for. 6. As of July 2006, there were over 60 social video websites online. List down 5 of them, not counting YouTube. (If it takes you more than 5 minutes to answer this question, you are approaching it the wrong way.)
My favorite one is:
8. Design a 160×40 PNG button that says "Hire me!"
One of the questions that didn’t make the cut went something like: there is exactly one syndeo::media logo in Flickr. Look for it and write down the URL here. The main issue was that I honestly could not find the logo myself no matter how many different tag and keyword combinations I tried, although I knew for a fact that it was there coz I uploaded it myself. I’m assuming Flickr has some kind of search server that crawls its database on a regular basis, but for some reason, the graphic I uploaded simply wasn’t showing up. Annoying. We’re not quite at the level of Google (which according to this page, receives 100,000 job applications per month), but considering that I have to interview each applicant myself, this should still save at least a little bit of time.