[Framers] How do you identify an advanced Framemaker user?

[Pat Christenson]

I've interviewed a few people for such a position in the past. Here's what has worked for me.

- Basic questions, such as How long have you  used FrameMaker? What is the latest version you've used? What's the largest number of FM users you've supported? What types of documents/books (financial, medical, etc.) have you supported?

- Ask them to describe a complex template (book preferably) they've built. 

- Ask them to send that template to you. (They may not be able to because of company rules. In that case, ask if they can send a different template.)

- Ask them to describe a FrameMaker challenge and how they handled it.

- Ask them to describe a creative solution or workaround in FrameMaker they've developed.

- Describe a real-life FrameMaker problem/challenge you've faced and ask how they would handle it.

These last two sound pretty basic but you can learn quite a bit about their experience level from the answers:

- What is your favorite feature in FrameMaker (or favorite thing about FrameMaker templates)?

- What features would you add to FrameMaker? (I've found this is a better question than "What would you change?")

I've been very pleased with the hires I've made or recommended using questions such as these. I've never administered an actual test.

I hope you will share what you come up with. Good luck!

Pat

-----Original Message-----
From: Framers <framers-bounces+pat.christenson=morningstar.com at lists.frameusers.com> On Behalf Of Steve Rickaby
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2018 11:53 AM
To: An email list for people using Adobe FrameMaker software. <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Re: [Framers] How do you identify an advanced Framemaker user?

At 10:31 -0600 15/4/18, Carol J. Elkins wrote:

>Over the next couple of years, I need to help my major client find and train an in-house replacement for me as I wind down my freelance practice. They will not consider an independent contractor next time, so it may be harder to recruit and identify someone with the required skills. I've built 20 years of documentation for this client in unstructured Framemaker, and managing these thousands of documents and books depends less on someone being a good technical writer than being an excellent Framemaker user.
>
>For those of you who are corporate employers, I'd like to know how you screen candidates to identify those who truly are advanced Framemaker users.

I write here as a recipient of such a test, so apols because I'm not a corporate recruiter/test administerer. It was for a contract with a well-known London-based financial business, many years ago.

The test consisted of a number of unstructured FrameMaker tasks of increasing difficulty, done against the clock. At that time I considered myself to be an advanced FrameMaker user, but wasn't ;-) Nevertheless, I completed all the items in the test, which took about thirty minutes, successfully. I'm afraid I cannot remember now what the tasks were, but I'm sure you could easily make your own up.

At the end I was told that I'd done the test in the shortest time ever. Didn't get the contract, though, as another guy did almost as well and didn't have to commute/work remotely :-(

To build on what Robert suggested, how about asking candidates to build a folksy template from scratch, and devilishly include a couple of things that you cannot do with FrameMaker (there must still be some)? That way you get a good idea of their competence *and* incorporate the performance under stress and key-marks in the forehead stuff. And if that works out, then ask them how they'd adapt it for multi-platform delivery ;-)

--
Steve
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