[Chicago-talk] Qualify Skills?

[Steven Lembark]

> An employer once had the candidates do a test online at
> http://brainbench.com and we didn't have to pay (I can't remember the
> price but it wasn't that much I think) . At the time, I didn't expect it,
> but figured why not.
>
> So I took the test, and did pretty well on it. I ended up getting the job
> but since then, I use the scores I obtained on brainbench.com to answer
> "how do you rate yourself?". This is because the scores given to you tell
> you which percentile you are in compared to others who took the test.
>
> It's pretty cool...

I've taken the brainbench test a few times. They aren't
very accurate -- a few obviously wrong answers, tend to
be rather web-centric. I scored in the top 5% on their
quiz and pretty much incompetent at commercial website
design. Does that give me a 'C average' or just mean
that I shouldn't take on commercial webserver projects?

The thing is that most people have strengths and weaknesses
as programmers, professionals, or perl hackers. There
is no reason that someone can't be 'A' in one area and
'C' in another. You have to rate yoursrself in terms
of the work being performed.

Most people tend to under-rate them selves if anything.
If you are competent to write code given specs then
that puts you ahead of half the people who've worked
for me at least.

-- 
Steven Lembark                                       85-09 90th Street
Workhorse Computing                                Woodhaven, NY 11421
lembark at wrkhors.com                                     1 888 359 3508