http://www.pither.com/articles/2006/09/15/how-to-not-get-a-sysadmin-job en-us 40 by Simon Pither, freelance developer and systems administrator <p>Following on from the last post, here is my favourite failing answer (so far)...</p> <pre> Details of how I formatted test.csv Highlight I1 -> Insert Function -> Proper -> Text A1 -> Highlight Col I -> filldown Highlight J1 -> Insert Function -> Proper -> Text B1 -> Highlight Col J ->filldown Copy and Paste Special Col I into I using values Copy and Paste Special Col I into J using values Sanitise manually and then provided with an empty Col H Copy and paste Col D into H Copy and paste Col E,F and G to Col L & M Delete columns D-G Don't know how to do the last comparison </pre> <p>Apart from the "fixed" CSV they attached that was the complete response!</p> <p>What's wrong with this answer...</p> <ul> <li>it doesn't tell us what application to start clicking around</li> <li>it (by self confession) doesn't answer the entire question</li> <li>"sanitise manually" may work wonderfully for our small sample file, but we sepecifically state it's a sample from a larger file - I'd like to see someone manually sanitise a 6 million line logfile</li> <li>we don't specifically ask, but do hint at wanting a script to solve this task (that is infact it's entire point, to test the candidates scripting abilities), even if we hadn't though, surely the fact that you're applying for a Linux sysadmin role should strongly suggest a scripted answer over a point and click one?</li> </ul> Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:44:00 +0000 urn:uuid:a99ccf1c-638f-4e94-a5dc-cb0c390157a0 Simon http://www.pither.com/articles/2006/09/15/how-to-not-get-a-sysadmin-job work