Applied here after seeing an opening posted online for a staff "Transform Operator" position, which would involve encoding and transcoding (basically importing and converting) video content. This is more or less what a media manager, transcoder or assistant editor would do for a TV/film post-production company (although those 3 duties all tend to be done under that latter title), and having a background doing freelance assistant editing, it sounded similar to what I'd done before Even though the pay was fairly low, I felt it'd be nice to have a steady paycheck with benefits for a change.
A few days later I got a response from a recruiter asking if I wanted to come in for an interview. I agreed to, and one of the first things they did the day of was sit me down in front of a non-linear editing program (I believe Premiere, but it could have even been Final Cut) to perform some fairly basic tasks. No big deal I thought, they'd understandably want to see if I knew my way around NLE software.
They then however sent me out to the lobby to take a written test (probably around 7 pages) which went into an absurd amount of detail asking about technical specs, frame rates, video formats and containers, etc. One such example involved taking a list of various film and tape stocks dating as far back as the 60's-- most of which are no longer in use, and likely wouldn't be used on this job based on the hands-on test I'd just done-- and putting them in chronological order. It's important to note that few if any of these questions were multiple choice, and were all expected to be answered without the use of a smartphone/the internet. While I understand that in principle for a written test, considering that most people on the actual job often have to Google things when they come across an error message or something they don't know, it's a little unrealistic to think that a 20-30-something candidate who's applying for a $15-16/hr. job-- when most other companies would pay quite a bit more than that-- would somehow have 50 years worth of technical information committed to memory (and frankly even if the test was easier, there's still no guarantee that I'm going to get the job!)
Nonetheless, I did the best that I could, turned in the test without expecting much, and left (they didn't validate my parking, although the recruiter had already told me not to expect that). Didn't bother following up, because at that point, it just felt like the level of expertise they were expecting and the amount they were actually willing to pay for that expertise wasn't worth it (and would've actually devalued that expertise). Fortunately a few weeks later I landed a better paying job which-- although freelance-- gave me the hours needed to qualify to join the freelancer's union (where I now have benefits). So it ultimately worked out, but for those who don't know any better, this place definitely was-- and based on other reviews I'm reading here, likely still is-- expecting a lot for relatively little pay.