7 years ago, you might have found yourself in a server-room fiddling with pcs and servers. The next minute you were answering a marketing manager somewhere on the other side of Europe, about how to get his page to show up on the first page of a google search. As a webmaster you’re Jack of all trades, master of none.
Marketing mixed with IT, design and coding, all these things are part of a webmaster’s job.
At least they were.
I am not a server administrator, but 7 years ago that was still part of the webmaster job. This is impossible in todays world and most webmaster jobs nowadays focus on the communication side. Communication and marketing, usability and user experience: these are are all the hit words of 2011 and you have to have them on your CV.
One thing is very clear about what a webmaster does: handle communication between business and IT. You have to be able to talk to a programmer/sysadmin as well as talk to one of the board members.
Can you handle a sentence that consists of nothing but acronyms?
Can you say one that a business person doesn’t understand, but IT does?
Can you do the same for the IT person?
Hiring people is not my job, but I am a webmaster and I was asked to create a questionnaire to check the technical knowledge of the webmaster candidate.
The questionnaire focuses on 4 areas:
- Marketing / SEO / Communication
- Web development, client side
- Usability / Accessibility
- Web development – server side
The 4 fields are a bit crammed together, I know, but you need to limit the number of questions a bit. Below are the questions and answers with some remarks. Candidates took between 45 minutes to 1 hour to answer all of them.
The questions are both specific and open. Not everything (definitely no server setup questions anymore) is covered but it is a good start to measure the technical knowledge of you webmaster candidate.