In my current, new position, I have been asked to look into the possibility of finding out if there exists some good tests available to test how much skill someone has with Access.

Do you know of any existing tests or websites that do testing like that? If not, I may have to create one for us, but I didn't want to have to totally reinvent things if something good already exists.

Also, if something doesn't already exist, maybe we could get some people here to contribute to a thread with potential questions to ask.

Would certification tests be overkill?

Would certification tests be overkill?

Yeah, we don't want to go that far. It has to be either fairly cheap or free as we don't want to spend much, if anything, ourselves on the tests for prospective contractors, but we also don't want to burden them too heavily as well to pay for it.

So, it might really come down to creating our own. If we create one on the forum here, we could all use it.

Test #1: Does the person have the ability to break down overviews into smaller steps? I.e. can a person "change viewpoint granularity" at will? Can the person look at the engine and see the parts? Can the person look at a skeleton and see the person?

If not, that person has no aptitude with modules or macros.

Test #2: Can the person put at least five picture frames on a wall and make them look balanced, not too cluttered, but not so far apart as to lose sight of the picture group as a whole?

If not, that person has no aptitude for forms or report design.

Test #3: Does the person understand geneaology (sp?) as applied to the royal families of Europe in the 1700-1850 time frame?

If not, that person has no aptitude for complex relationships.

Test #4: Does the person know how to use a spreadsheet REALLY well?

If so, it will take you longer to "un-learn" that person about Excel and to then teach him/her about Access, usually by a factor of 1.25 to 1.5 times longer.

Test #5: Can the person beat the computer one out of five tries on the old Windows game of 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe?

If not, the person will never understand multi-tiered relationships.

On the other hand, if the candidate uniformly fails ALL of the tests, you have the makings of upper management on your hands. :p

Supplemental tests:

#6 - does the person play music?

No: 0 points
Yes, picking at it by ear: 1 point
Yes, by reading the musical notation: 2 points
Yes, by hearing it in his/her head once and playing it: 3 points

#7 - how does the person see a 16 oz. class with 8 oz. of beer in it?

Half empty: Not that good
Half full: better
It's empty 2 seconds after s/he sees it unattended: If you like opportunists who take advantage of every situation, high marks for this one.

#8 - ask the person to identify any of these people, -1 point for each.

John Carmack; John Romero; American McGee

All developers or former developers at Id Software, a major gaming co.

#9 - ask the person to identify any of these people, +1 point for each.

Larry Ellison, Bill Gates; Steven Jobs; Dave Cutler; Mary Grace Hopper; John von Neuemann;

Persons having much to do with development of various companies or major operating systems or compilers.

#10 - Ask the person to keep a straight face while you prattle on regarding the built-in, power-deployed cup holder on most modern computers. See how long before they bust out in hysterical laughter. The longer the better - unless they don't realize you are talking about the CD drive.

The person might not be a good access programmer but if they go longer than about a minute, they might be good material for your trouble desk.

My humble suggestions:

I'd refuse to ask anybody to show me how they create/make/manipulate whatever. Rather, I'd ask them to describe how they would design something in abstract.

If they can diagram out a good layout after being presented with a set of data and hypothetical company's need for this set of data, the better.

Ask them to demonstrate how they will program something they *don't* know how to program. If they can find the answers themselves by consulting the help files, googling, forums, and apply it, high marks.

I'd then ask them to design a database knowing that Access is completely unable to support (e.g. the database requires a n-tiered architecture). If they can correctly answer, "It can't be done with Access, but we could..." that's good, too.

HTH.

I'd simplify it somewhat -

I'd ask them how they would do - what you want them to do.

If necessary give them a simple sample db - and get them to do some simple stuff.

I know its really difficult finding the right people - I had a DBA, who had a 1st IT degree, all kinds of MS DB qualificayions and 8 years experience of being a DBA in a similar company.

He literally couldn't do the most basic join in a query, couldn't undertand a combo box - and couldn't understand the concept of PK codes used to store data rather than how it would be in a spreadsheet. Yes he knew precisley nothing.(oh he had never coded anything either - in access, SQL or anything else)

He lasted 2 years - as no senior manager could even recognise that he knew nothing, in the end all he did was data entry and not much of that. Truely he didn't know what a decent novice 16 yr old could pick up in 1 week.

He was given 70% pay rise in the same org , and was given the job of advising others the best use of IT.(his general IT knowledge was of the same non existebt level as his db skills)

This is no exageraation at all! So good luck - I would go with a practical test.:)

Ask them for an ERD for a genealogy database.

Okay I know you would just go out and buy a programme but you really need to understand Normalisation and Entity relationships to get close to a good design

L