NNG

NNG Interviews

1. Apr 25, 2022

   Technical Author / Requirement Engineer Interview

   Anonymous Employee in Budapest

   No Offer

   Negative Experience

   Difficult Interview

   Application

   I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at NNG (Budapest) in Mar 2022

   Interview

   This was one of the most messiest, disrespectful experiences I've ever had for multiple reasons:
   1. The HR person at the company forgot to forward my test for an entire week, and had to be reminded in writing AND through a phone call to actually send my completed test assignment to be evaluated
   
   2. The HR person did not get back to me with my evaluated test after another week, so I had to call, again, to ask if they're even still considering me. I did not get a full evaluation with feedback, only vague pointers, through the phone. Still haven't gotten the written feedback about my application.
   
   3. The test itself was a bad joke, they gave me a 6 page long text, that was in incredibly broken English. I assume it was originally written in Hungarian, then put through at least 3 layers of machine translation. This led to a text that was complete gibberish at points, about a fairly technical subject. I was given no pointers, a style guide, a glossary of terms. The only instruction I got was that "its language, both writing and editing style needs a serious review." It was not clear if they wanted me to edit the text, do a complete rewrite, two completely different tasks.
   
   4. I got 3 points of feedback about my test:
   -Some of the style choices, mainly the grammatical person used in the text was "unfortunate"
   -Some of the text remained difficult to understand
   -Some of the deliberately left in, pointless sentences were not removed
   I had responses to these, but since I only ever talked to the HR person, these responses fell on deaf ears:
   
   -I did not receive a style guide, or any pointers about this. It is pretty odd to deduct points for this. If this is a truly important, you should tell your interview subjects that you expect to follow a set style for the text, unless you are recruiting mind readers.
   -The text was hard to understand to begin with, and it was a fairly technical subject matter, it is unreasonable to expect people to write comprehensible text from a 6 page machine translated mess. The skill to understand broken English is also not the core skills that are required from a technical writer, more so an English teacher
   -Again, the text was about a very specific, technical subject matter, expecting your writer to be able to decide what is pointless fluff is unreasonable, as an interviewee has no idea.
   
   5. In general, I do not think that this test was a good one, as it did not measure skills that are actually expected from a Technical writer. Having applied to other Technical Writer positions in the past, and even creating Technical Writer interview tests before, I can say that this was the worst test I ever had to take. It was akin to handing an architect a blueprint, drawn on napkins with crayons, then expecting the person to "fix it". If I, or any competent technical writer, would receive such a text on the job, it would be rejected. Fixing this text, trying to decipher it takes more time than just doing a complete rewrite. Not to mention, that if the workflow in place produces such quality material, there are other, way more severe issues in the entire workflow that should be examined by management.
   
   6. I only ever talked to one person from HR. We never talked about what the job entails in detail, I never talked to a fellow technical writer team member or manager. I think it is bad practice to just hand someone a test with a deadline without discussing the job itself, and then "forgetting" to actually send the test in for evaluation for weeks.