OK, so there’s a recruiting group here in town that has been relentless about getting me to apply for a position at ACS doing development and implementation on a pharmacy POS system. The position is extremely light on details. By light, I mean 1 sentence and a few fragments. It also requires a project test that consists of a MPP and a spreadsheet with essay questions. Ridiculous. Also ridiculous in that it’s clearly a project plan that they’ve used very recently for business activities. I don’t feel that I can disclose the questions, because they don’t belong to me. Suffice it to say, I believe it’s really more of a consulting exercise. In my estimation, it would take a couple of hours to answer the questions and take the “test”. I don’t think I want to do that. Not unless they want to pay me for the analysis. They’re getting something for nothing out of the deal - an external assessment of a project plan that is either live or recently used. That’s called consulting, not a test.

I understand the need for an objective measure of ability. However, a lot of project management isn’t objective. How you control a project is subjective and depends on the climate of the organization. Maybe their “test” is to determine if candidates fit the environment, I don’t know. It was presented as a “Project Test” by the recruiters. Maybe I’m too worked up about it, I don’t know. Something about it is just really offensive.