I really liked the thoughts posted by Nicolas Burlakoff on this.

I don't think that you can use just one critera to evaluate potential hires -
and I disagree with the viewpoint that the one with the "least mistakes" wins.

One applicant may look very stong on their resume or C.V. and be totally
lacking in the interpersonal skills necessary for many positions in the musuem or
cultural heritage fields. Another applicant may appear very strong in a
personal interview but have abysml writing and communication skills. And still
another candidate may be very strong on their C.V. and writing samples and have a
great interview but they may have poor motor skills and tend to drop or bump
into things....

One thing I have done in the past, as an applicant,  has been to submit
writing samples from real life - either a memo, a report, or even a published
article (no, not 400 some pages!) if I felt that it illustrated my approach to a
project, addressing a problem or a situation, or encapsulated several skills
such as research, interpretation, and education. There have been times that I
have submitted such samples when requested, and, times when I have provided them
unsolicited if I felt that the risk of sending the sample made my abilities to
contribute to the potential employer ever more apparent.

So it all really depends on the nature of the position and how much writing,
thinking, verbal, manual, or visual skills are necessary and primary to the
job.

And I think that this thread also intersects with the recent one on
interships in this regard. When I have had interns, both undergraduate and
post-graduate, I always stressed that they have projects that were just their own beyond
the daily flow of tasks, and that researching and developing effective writing
skills was very important. I often used a writing task (such as an object
condition survey) as a teaching tool to really refine an intern's way of "seeing"
an object or artifact. I found that their ability to describe an artifact was
often directly proporation to their perceptions and impressions of it. So that
the development of one skill (writing) reinforced another (seeing).

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Artifacts
2930 South Birch St.
Denver, CO  80222
303-300-5257
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