Interview - Help!

[plainlazy84]

I've got an interview on Tuesday for a job I'd very much like to bag. The official post title is 'Website Communications & Development Officer' - basically this involves writing content, updating, and marketing the website. Nothing too complicated then, I won't be redesigning sites from scractch or anything like that.

Slight problem: I got the interview based on my experience running Trials sites many moons ago (Bashguard.com et al) and I dont actually have any commercial experience in web monkey based antics. So I really need to get up to speed with how this lark works- the last time I touched a website was in 2002!

If there are any webmasters out there (and especially those doing it commercially) then please, please, please could you bestow me with as much of your web authoring knowledge as possible? I'm confident that I'm up to the job but I really need a refresher so I know what to expect. A few questions that I have:

• Industry standard software these days?
  
• The difference between running a personal site and a commercial site?
  
• Industry jargon/ lingo that I should know?
  
• The level of coding knowledge I'm likely to need at this level?
  
• Any other advice would be great to!
  

The website is a government/ grant funded organisation who's aim is to increase sports participation levels in my County. A lot of the work will involve producing press releases and articles on upcoming sporting events.

Cheers guys

[NicP]

I've got an interview on Tuesday for a job I'd very much like to bag. The official post title is 'Website Communications & Development Officer' - basically this involves writing content, updating, and marketing the website. Nothing too complicated then, I won't be redesigning sites from scractch or anything like that.

Slight problem: I got the interview based on my experience running Trials sites many moons ago (Bashguard.com et al) and I dont actually have any commercial experience in web monkey based antics. So I really need to get up to speed with how this lark works- the last time I touched a website was in 2002!

If there are any webmasters out there (and especially those doing it commercially) then please, please, please could you bestow me with as much of your web authoring knowledge as possible? I'm confident that I'm up to the job but I really need a refresher so I know what to expect. A few questions that I have:

• Industry standard software these days?
  
• The difference between running a personal site and a commercial site?
  
• Industry jargon/ lingo that I should know?
  
• The level of coding knowledge I'm likely to need at this level?
  
• Any other advice would be great to!
  

The website is a government/ grant funded organisation who's aim is to increase sports participation levels in my County. A lot of the work will involve producing press releases and articles on upcoming sporting events.

Cheers guys

*Insustry standard for creating and maintaing websites, i think everyone will agree is Adobe(macromedia back in the days) Dreamweaver

*Comercial and personal differences, money, more people visiting the sites, more chances of complaints if somthing dodgey is placed on there.

*Html(learn some basic tags etc), CSS (learn how to just sort the style sheets)

*as above

*Be friendly, general intreview stuff really (im 15 i'm not really prepped for this stuff )

NicP

Edited June 28, 2008 by NicP

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

*Insustry standard for creating and maintaing websites, i think everyone will agree is Adobe(macromedia back in the days) Dreamweaver

*Comercial and personal differences, money, more people visiting the sites, more chances of complaints if somthing dodgey is placed on there.

*Html(learn some basic tags etc), CSS (learn how to just sort the style sheets)

*as above

*Be friendly, general intreview stuff really (im 15 i'm not really prepped for this stuff )

NicP

Sorry, but it goes a lot deeper than that...

Dave, Simon might be able to sort you out with ze relevant knowledge. if not one of the other chaps could fill you in. *ahem*

But on no uncertain terms are you to make the interviewer smell your cheese.

[MadManMike]

Industry standard is not Dreamweaver. People like me use that, but larger companies will often have their own custom-made stuff. It totally depends on the application, for example you'd not use Dreamweaver to make a massive online shop...

[Simon]

Industry standard is not Dreamweaver. People like me use that, but larger companies will often have their own custom-made stuff. It totally depends on the application, for example you'd not use Dreamweaver to make a massive online shop...

Hm, i know of no company that uses custom software to code websites in. You use what you know, basically. The trend lately seem's to be in using IDE's, an Integrated Development Environment which is basically a Dreamweaver but much more towards code development rather then visual. Code highlighting, function shrinking, custom function hinting, function relationships, OOP support and so on. I use Eclipse when doing large PHP projects, or text based code highlighters when doing smaller ones. Personally i use PSPad, other's in company use Textpad, E-Editor and Notepad++.

To be honest, if you're not editing the sites themselves, you shouldn't really need to know them.

Start by answering your questions first, makes it easier.

Industry standard software these days?

Industry standard is personal standard, use what you know, usually freeware and open source to keep overheads down. Otherwise Adobe is very much the leader these days, especially after taking over Macromedia.

The difference between running a personal site and a commercial site?

With commercial sites, it's all about "the ratio", which refers to how many people hand over the cash compared to how many people visit the site. It's all well and good if a million people visit your site, but if only 10,000 of those buy something, you must be doing something wrong.

We could develop some mean arse looking sites but would in the end scare users away. The way we are currently storming through the market at moment and winning some quite large projects is showing that our sites get the return on the boards investment, and believe you me, that's all they care about. The site could be made out of tables and work f**king shite, but if the board get their money back, they very rarely care. It's changing now though with company's actually taking pride in their sites and the way they are produce, especially when we show them that good code in fact means more money, related to other sites being able to search it and so on.

With commercial sites you are also identifying a target market, whether it be single 25 year olds, or married 50 year olds, the way you write and develop the IA (way the pages relate to each other and the basic way the site is put together at a page by page level) will vary completely.

Industry jargon/ lingo that I should know?

Wanky management terms are what we call them, as thats what they are, one long ass statement for something that could be explained in a 1/3 of the brain power, management just use them to feel above their employees.

I don't pay attention to them personally so can't really help here.

• Project life cycle
  
  • research, design, build, aftercare etc
    

  [*]Information architecture

  • clear structure of site from home page, down a tree diagram to every page
    

  [*]Project brief, deliverables

  • what the client is expecting, make sure you don't under deliver, and hell, don't over deliver too!
    

  [*]Project scope

  • making sure a feature isn't out of scope, or that a request isn't out of scope either. If so, advise client to be charged extra for it or advise that for this phase of development, it just isn't right time.
    

  [*]Semantic's

  • Harder to explain, but for example you wouldn't have a heading 1 followed by a heading 3. You'd go down 1, 2 then 3, then back up to 2, then maybe another 2, then to 3 again. Logical thinking basically.
    

The level of coding knowledge I'm likely to need at this level?

WYSIWG Editors usually take care of this, but you may need to know the basics like

<p> Paragraphs

<strong> Bold

<em> Emphasized (italic)

<br /> Line break (enter)

<h1,2,3,4,5,6> Heading tags, 5 and 6 are rarely used

Any other advice would be great to!

Can't think of anything right now to be honest, but best of luck. Just be confident and answer their questions, if you don't know the answer, don't spend 5 minutes trying to guess, just say you currently don't know the answer to that.

Research the company, ask about training, ask about progression within the company.

So yeah, good luck and if i think of anything more i'll post up.

[nc7r]

Just saw the topic on my iPhone and went to a computer in my hostel in Croatia to give you a reply but Simon's got there first

I'd say exactly what he does. Be confident and I think that your current knowledge will suffice in as much as to start you off in that career path. All you need to know is that for your wording you need to be pin point and have good grammar for statements etc. Web content needs to be concise and accurate while giving the 'right' amount of information.

Basic HTML should be absolutely fine as Simon said

I think that any kind of input for the website by you will be done in a pretty easy to use form, either as an online web form using databases or maybe an application which is fairly opensource. Either way, it isn't hard for program developers to make it easy to use for you.

In regards to marketing I think that maybe you should look in to the company that your interview is with. Knowing a lot about them looks very good for you in the interview and you can give good examples of when you think your personal attributes can contribute to their long term strategies, usually making lots of profits!

Then last I guess just relax, be yourself. A lot of employers much prefer you to say 'I don't know the answer to that', followed by you actually enquiring in to it and discussing it. Just because you don't know the terminology which might be most common, doesn't mean you are below the whole concept. My managers at work are happy if I don't know something,and just suggest us to admit we don't know, and suggest to customers or clients that we'll find out and get back to them. They can't expect everyone to know everything, and it's much easier to teach an employee some basic web editing / content scripting / etc skills than it is traits like focus, drive, honesty etc.

Hope you found this helpful, I'll go back to my holiday

[plainlazy84]

Thanks for the responses it's all useful info. It is a non profit organisation so unlike most e-commerce sites the aim is not sales based, merely to promote sports participation in the county. So their motives will be very different. I think I'm more confident based on what you have said, as it doesnt look like I will need to know anything too complex coding wise. I can remember most of the HTML basics and anything else is easy enough to look up. I think what they will be looking for will be based more on ability to produce quality content, so I'm going to practice writing short articles and press releases. I have read up on copy writing and writing for the web and learnt some nice buzz words like A.I.D.A (Attention, interest, desire, action). Keep it concise, short paragraphs, get all the key info in and think from the readers perspective, and other such guff.

Once again cheers for the responses up to now. If anyone else has anything to add please do!