True story…I’m a technical writer, and once upon a time, I applied to work at a large tech company (old-line, with roots in the pre-internet era). They sent out a call for resumes. They got 60. They sent take-home tests (writing exercises) to 12 of us. Easy questions, like “how would you explain the internet to your grandmother”? No problem.

Of the 12 take-home testers, 5 of us were invited to take the in-person test. We were given a 3-part exam and told that we had 2 hours to complete it. We were instructed to spend an equal amount of time on each section. The first part of the test was a massive chunk of really dense, highly unorganized technical jargon. We were asked to rewrite it.

I got to work, typing furiously. I was hard at work, untangling sentences and restructuring the document so that it began with an introduction and ended with a conclusion. I attacked the huge middle section of the piece, working my way through dense paragraph after dense paragraph. After about 45 minutes, I realized there was no way I could finish the exercise, even if I spent the whole two hours on it. I quickly sketched out an outline, describing what I’d do if I had more time.

Then I moved on, and did my best on the other two sections (I was able to complete those, to some level of satisfaction).

I was offered a spot. Later on, my manager told me that I was the only one who’d passed the test. I told her my theory about the test, which was that I’d probably been the only one who didn’t spend too much time on the first section. Yes, they wanted to know if I could write and decipher tech-speak.

But they also wanted to know if I could follow instructions.