Excel-ing At Honesty

This story reminded me of a time in the late 90s when I was looking for part-time evening work while I was a student.

I’d applied to an agency for a specific temp data entry job that used proprietary software, but the agency wanted to test my MS Word and Excel skills anyway. I’d been entirely honest with them – my Word skills at the time were OK, but I’d barely ever used Excel.

But I’m good at working things out, and of course I wouldn’t want to be placed into a job I was unsuited for, so I started the Excel test.

The test was separated into three parts: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. The Basic test was indeed quite basic, and I did reasonably well.

During the Intermediate section, I was initially very much out of my depth, but then I worked out how the test worked. If you clicked on any wrong menu item for the task you were asked to perform, you failed that task straight away. But it only registered as a completed click when you released the mouse button. I found that by holding the mouse button down, I could navigate all the menus and sub-menus, only releasing the mouse button when I’d worked out how to correctly proceed in the task.

So my score in the Basic section of the test was 75%, in the Intermediate section I scored 50%, and in the Advanced section? 100%.

Of course, as soon as the test was over, I told them what I’d done. After all, I didn’t want to be placed in a job that required skills I didn’t actually have, and I wanted to demonstrate my honesty. But I also wanted to emphasise a valuable ability I do have – the ability to work out how things work.

I don’t think an employment agency specialising in providing admin staff to businesses cared or even understood about this, but it’s been invaluable in my thirty years in IT.