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  • Author Author: rscasny
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5 Reasons Why An Applicant Is Not Selected as an Official Roadtester

rscasny

This afternoon I have been going through roadtest applications. I do this on Fridays because it's quieter and I am left alone to really read and absorb what has been written in the application. The following came to my mind while reading them regarding why some applicants don't get selected as official roadtesters:

1. If you a provide a test procedure on a MS Word doc that is eleven words long. Test procedures tell a lot about an applicant's skills, knowledge, abilities, etc. Most of what we roadtest has a level of complexity that requires more than 11 words to describe what a roadtester will do in a competitive fashion.

2. If you provide a test procedure that is an academic research paper that's someone else's work without an explanation, commentary or personalization to your ideas for the roadtest. Of course, you are welcome to use a research paper as a reference to your own self-written test procedure. But the test procedure itself has to be your own work and explain to the best of your knowledge what you are going to do. You don't have to write a book, but 2 to 3 paragraphs is an amount that can tell me where you are going to go with the roadtest.

3. If you provide a test procedure that is a resume where the skills, experience and credentials are not relevant to the product being tested without a commentary or explanation. (For example, you could have a degree in chemical engineering and tell me you have done a lot of work with the Raspberry Pi, then that is fine.)

4. If you provide a test procedure which is an amusing image (jpg, png, etc) and nothing else. Perhaps I lack the sense of humor to understand why I am receiving an amusing image for a roadtest on sensors. Are sensors inherently amusing? 

5. If you provide a test procedure that looks like a generic testing and performance procedure from a university textbook and is not adapted to the product being roadtested, using your own words. 

  • I suspect  is correct, the "frivolous" applications are just quick attempts to get something for "free". The applicant knows their one-line application is not going to win against serious applications, but they are thinking maybe if all other applications are even worse frivolous applications, they will come away with something for very little effort. I assume they are learning this strategy doesn't work well on this forum, but hope springs eternal...I doubt any amount of lecturing about what constitutes a good application will eliminate this type of application, and I wouldn't get too fussed about them not getting the message.

    To some extent all applications have a similar strategy. When I apply, I try to write an application that is good enough to win against the types of serious application this forum inspires, which implies my assessment of what is good enough to win is much higher than a frivolous application.

  • The 11-word test procedure was something to the effect (my paraphrasing here): "To test the capacity of the device I designed."  That was the entire test procedure he uploaded to me. So, the kit I would be sending this prospective roadtester would enable him to do this testing of a prototype he was working on. I just don't think this is enough. Even a paragraph that discusses the kit and how it will be employed in this testing would tell me much more than this statement. I wouldn't want someone to write a 1,000-word proposal. I don't think it's always needed. But I have learned over the years the degree of detail in a test procedure tells me if the applicant can handle the roadtest or it might be a bit too much for him. If it's too much, then discouragement can follow, the need to a lot of support, or the roadtester will just return the kit to me. All this could lead him to not applying for a roadtest again, which I don't want to see happen.

  • I occasionally see blog posts that reproach the RoadTest Review selection...'I have applied numerous times and have never been selected."

    I'm surprised that applicants don't appreciate the expectations for an application. No, I take that back. I'm not surprised. Maybe the application effort reflects the commitment. I want something for minimal effort. What does FREE cost?

    My application reflects the understanding I am up against some pretty stiff competition from this community to be successful. If successful in the application, getting feedback during the process is ideal. I enjoy engaging the community and making them a part of the process.  

    I'm brainstorming a RoadTest Review workshop. A committee of successful RoadTester would offer the opportunity to have applications critiqued. Participants submit applications to get feedback. I have done this exercise for creative writing. It can be difficult and rewarding. Having a third-party critique your work and rip it apart can be hard to take. Getting the right feedback can lead to improvements.

    I would like to think the poor application is a lack of understanding but I'm thinking with the amount of feedback that has been provided regarding RoadTests it is hard to not be critical when someone submits an eleven-word test procedure.


  • I'm guessing part of the problem is that some applicants are simply not putting themselves in the shoes of the reader! 

    I sometimes wonder what sort of information presentation skills colleges/unis churning out, but also what skills to take a very new, perhaps partially undefined situation, and devise a plan to work through it. An 11-word test procedure sounds bizarre : ) but now I think about it, sometimes even with graduates from great uni's, I sometimes have to 'kick start' them by writing a suggestion or two, until they get the idea of what sort of content or kind of thinking is expected!

    A kind of similarish specific situation that is top-of-mind for me, because I'm currently having to deal with it, is that academic papers are in a specific style which is great for a self-study deep-dive into a technical topic, but one would never present such a document in 99% of work-related activities. Proposals, test plans, and knowledge transfer activities are all situations better handled in a different style/language.
    Sometimes there are blogs written like an academic paper, they look really unusual, because one can't shoe-horn an academic paper PDF into a blog post directly, and sometimes they are hard to read, with (for instance) references at the end, whereas the blog format allows for links to be embedded right at the location in the blog where the information is most useful. (References at the end are useful, but they are not a replacement for URLs).

    I've got to review some projects, and I know I'm going to have to work hard to assess one of them because the author has written the blogs very much like an academic paper, which is a great achievement, but an academic paper typically won't provide anywhere near as much information to replicate a project compared to normal blogs with links to schematics and so on, because an academic paper usually focusses narrowly on one specific area, and schematics (if any) are usually very high-level, and code is usually absent, so I'll have to scrutinize the text a lot more to see if it's more useful than other projects which provided code and more directly usable schematics.