Date:         Fri, 20 Oct 2000 12:19:38 -0400
Reply-To:     Peter Flom <peter.flom@NDRI.ORG>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Peter Flom <peter.flom@NDRI.ORG>
Subject:      Re: You know it or you don't?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Sarah G. wrote

>In my experience, SAS you either know it or you don't.  How do you test
>someone if they know what libname , procs, filename, infile, set, merge,
>log, pgm, etc.? You either know it or you don't.

I don't know much about SAS other than the SAS-STAT, although I've written a couple of small macros.  *i* have been using SAS for about 10 years.  I know a tiny portion of it quite well, a portion moderately well, and a huge portion not at all.

I don't think there's ANYONE who knows ALL of SAS.

One thing I *DO* know about is testing people (my PhD is in Psychometrics).  Depending on the tasks you need someone to perform, I can think of a number of ways you could test if they knew how to do them.  At the very least and most simply, you could, at some point in the hiring process, ASK people what different PROCs or whatever do.  When I came for an interview at my current place of employment, they did exactly this.

On a slightly more complex level, you could either ask someone to bring in sample code, or have them actually write code at the interview, to do something.  Or, if this would take too long, you could ask them to debug some code.

There are other possibilities as well.





Peter L. Flom, Ph.D.
Principal Research Associate
National Development and Research Institutes, Inc.
2 World Trade Center
16th floor
New York, NY 10048

(212) 845-4485
(212) 845-4698 (fax)
Peter.Flom@ndri.org