Recently, a friend of a friend, whose nephew’s cousin’s brother’s friend has a friend who is looking for a job as a web designer in New York sent me a possible topic for discussion.
In it, s/he explained that in looking for a job, s/he was asked — without any hints at anything else — to complete a test that involved some design “challenges”. S/he asked to remain anonymous since s/he’s still on the prowl for a job and wouldn’t want this to become a hindrance. When s/he first sent me the e-mail the name of the company who provided the test was missing. Out of my usual curiosity, and thinking that it would probably be some hack agency looking for free ideas, I asked who the agency was. To my surprise it was a rather sweet-looking website for a Swedish interactive agency, now with an office in New York. After debating whether the agency’s name should be “revealed” in this post — or made a big deal out of — I decided that it would be relevant to the discussion to do so. Following is the e-mail I received:
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Having recently reentered the job market in NYC, I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with the usual eccentric HR folks and unusual demands that seem to be par for the course these days. This one really took the cake though. I had applied for the job online (a vague job posting, speaking of possible “opportunities” for interactive and flash designers), and received a response about a week later. There was no more clarification as to what positions were available, nor were they even requesting that I come in for an interview. What they did have, however, was…a TEST, in Microsft Word. Sight unseen, having never spoken to a human being at the company face to face, nor having any sense for what opportunities there might be, I was asked to complete the following:
This design test illustrates to Fantasy Interactive (FI) if an applicant can deliver basic elements to a very high quality, which is the essence of our work. Attention to detail, balance and pixel perfection are all factors which demonstrate your creativity, tool skills and quality thinking. Make sure that the design is Fantasy Interactive style. We would like to see that you can design to suit our clients.
For the test we would like you to design 4 things. If you can send in all 4 tasks we can better assess your talent and experience. However if you are short on time the layout test is the one you should do (but try and include some icons in it). Remember Quality over Quantity. If you show this in the test, you will have an opportunity to join one of the most famous interactive design & development companies in the world.
Layout:
- Please design a start page layout for a next generation Google application. This is a tough challenge but an imperative one in order for us to see the full extent of your skills.
- What we are looking for is balance, pixel perfection, the right use of colors, a corporate style, clean and not too cluttered.
- Good examples are attached (1, 2, 3, 4) but you can also look at the Road Runner site, the Ford site, the Fido site, all within FI’s portfolio.
Icon:
- Design 3 icons that are the same style, each icon must have a different function, eg, print, email, fax, but they should be of the same family.
- Reference examples are attached. The creativity and quality in these icons are what we think is high quality. If you can deliver icons to this standard and above, you have passed.
- All the icons on the FI site we regard as a standard.
Logo:
- We would like to see what skills you have in creating a logo. Design a logo for the FI team. Use whatever material you want or take from the FI site.
Swoosh:
- Take a look at the FI-site. You will see that on each page, at the top, we have designed white smooth “swooshes”.
- What we want you to do, is design a swoosh that fits in this family of swooshes. The design of it should be balanced. Try to make it look different from any we have there.
At first, being (like most job seekers) a little bit desperate, I said “yeah, I’ll do this!” But then, a couple things started to bother me:
1. That’s a hell of a lot of work to do, merely for the opportunity to get an interview!
2. They want everything designed in the Fantasy Interactive style. Presumably, most aspiring applicants will go to the site and make sure they’re not duplicating existing designs or icons or logos, which essentially means they’ll be getting a whole lot of design comps free of charge. Nowhere is it clarified who owns what, once you send them the designs which you — being in search of a job — have undoubtedly sweated over many a long night.
3. What, exactly, is a “next generation Google application”? Sure, I can answer the question technically speaking, but that’s an awfully broad request, at least from a design point of view. Kind of like asking you to “design something cool”.
4. Did they say “swoosh”?
Perhaps I’m overreacting. Perhaps this has become industry standard in the time I’ve been out of the job market. Maybe they’ve gotten burned by applicants misrepresenting themselves and thus feel the need to set up this extra level of filtering. Or maybe their motives are entirely nefarious and they’re just fishing for free creative work.
What do you think? Would you do the test?
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Thank you to the friend of a friend, whose nephew’s cousin’s brother’s friend has a friend for sending this topic.
Hell no!
On Oct.10.2005 at 12:29 PM