Microsoft Skills Assesment

So today we were talking at work about need some more certified developers because Microsoft have changed the requirements on the partner program.

So this evening I’ve been reading about the 70-536 Technology Specialist exams.

On one of the pages is talks of Take a Skills Assessment so I click through.

I completed the Developing Enterprise Windows®-based Applications with .NET: Rich Client–Visual C#® .NET test. 30 minutes later, I press the Score Assessment button.

Back to the main page, what about a results page??.

I could see results of one other person called vpak, who’s high score was 67%, but I didn’t see my score.

At this point I noticed the Passport Sign In icon, so clicked this. Once I got through the questions I got back to the main page to find no test result. Grrr.

I note that this has all been done with Firefox 1.5, so I promptly looked in the back button history, and went back to question #30. I can click the Score Assessment again, but nothing useful happens.

It’s just so painful spending that time to think each question over, and have the effort evaporate. Because it looks like a useful site, that could add value, and all it has done is waste my time.

So ten minutes later:

I started the test again, this time I got to question #3 where the question is the same as one I did last time, but last time it used a checkbox list, this time it uses some useless selector control where you move items from the right to the left to select them. The control rendered at such a skinny width, that it was REALLY hard to use. Add to rub salt in the wound the next button wouldn’t respond.

So I’ve now loaded IE 6.0 to see how it fares…

50 minutes after that:

Eek, 67% 20/30 – I’ve got some studying to-do.

I really got bored with the process, so was watching the TV while the pages loaded…