The test I used to give was to talk with the potential drafter for about 15 minutes, just general conversation about CAD, then hand them a simple sketch, sit them down at a vanilla R14 station and tell them I'd be back in 15 minutes.
When I came back, usually only 5% of the people would actually be "done" (their words). Then I would send them on to my supervisor to have an additional chat.
I'd sit at the station and look at the drawing. I'd look at the intersection of lines, I'd look to see if the person used the most basic tools like ortho and snap. I'd check out how they created their layers and whether they used "bylayer" or not in their drawing. I'd check to see if they corrected the intentional spelling errors on the sketch.
This was my goal: See if they used the basic 'good practice' methods that makes life easier on everyone like snap and ortho. See if they struggled to make sense of what the drawing was, or if they would just draw what was on the paper. See if they had the ability to think for themselves.
Because, the way I see it, every company has their own way of doing things. As long as the person trying to get hired has a general working knowledge of AutoCAD and has the ability to think for themselves when it was obvious, I could teach them anything else they needed to know. In fact, in those instances, it's sometimes easier to take some young punk fresh out of school, who has a decent amount of drafting ability, and train them to do things
our way than it was to take a veteran who sometimes
refused to do it any other way than how they'd been doing it for years someplace else.
I don't care if you spend your evening reading the help manual and you know about all those special commands that might shave a half second off of your time (I actually had a guy who did that)... I care about your ability to think for yourself and your ability to draw.
Funny story: I had one guy I gave the test to, had to be the worst dressed, most unkempt person I'd ever interviewed. I gave him the test as a courtesy, really, because I really had no intention of hiring him. After his 15 minutes were up I came back he only had about 25% of the drawing done. This surprised me because he seemd so 'on top' of AutoCAD in our previous discussion. He saw the look on my face and said "Hey, sorry I didn't finish it all. The mouse was broken so I had to do it all with the keyboard."
I checked. The mouse really was broken.
The guy had a notebook and a pencil and was keeping track of his coordinates. He did that 25% of the drawing using only the keyboard and polar coordinates.
I went to my supervisor and he asked me how his test went. All I told him was
"Hire this guy."
"Seriously."
That guy turned out to be the most dedicated drafter I've ever had the privelege of working with. The guy worked more overtime than anyone I've ever known. He was so freakin' talented that my company ended up sending him out on contract to one of the local oil refineries. He replaced their 5 man drafting department
by himself.
