How to assess · For hiring teams
How to Assess Technical Writing Skills When Hiring
The test formats that actually work for Technical Writing, what a strong answer looks like, sample questions and a scoring rubric you can use as-is.
The short answer
Assess Technical Writing with a task, not a conversation: write from an expert dump, edit exercise, ai-scored assessment (e.g. cohesyve) or instruction test. Score it against written criteria you fix before you see any submissions, and weight the criteria that the role actually depends on.
- Identifies the reader and their goal before writing, and writes for that
- Structures content so a reader can find what they need and follow it in order
- Is precise: correct terms, exact steps, no ambiguity
- Is clear: short sentences, plain words, one idea per paragraph
Paste a job description; Cohesyve generates a role-specific assessment and rubric. Ten candidates free, no card.
Technical writing is the skill of making complex things usable by the people who need them, and it is assessed too often by grammar and too rarely by whether a reader could actually do the task afterwards. The skill is understanding the reader and their goal, structuring information so it can be found and followed, and being precise without being dense. This page covers how to assess technical writing for technical writer, documentation and developer-education roles: audience judgement, structure, precision and clarity, and working with subject-matter experts.
Why Technical Writing is worth testing
Weak documentation costs support tickets, onboarding time and lost users, and it is hard to see from inside a company where everyone already knows how things work. A writing test on real material — an unclear feature explained by an engineer — shows whether a candidate can extract what matters, structure it for the reader and write it plainly, and that predicts whether documentation helps.
What strong Technical Writing looks like
- Identifies the reader and their goal before writing, and writes for that
- Structures content so a reader can find what they need and follow it in order
- Is precise: correct terms, exact steps, no ambiguity
- Is clear: short sentences, plain words, one idea per paragraph
- Extracts what matters from experts and asks the questions they did not think to answer
- Uses examples, and tests instructions by following them
- Maintains consistency across a documentation set
Ways to assess Technical Writing
Write from an expert dump
Provide a rambling engineer explanation of a feature with gaps, plus a stated reader. Ask for the documentation page and a list of questions they would ask the engineer. Sixty minutes.
Pros
Cons
Best for Any technical writing role.
Edit exercise
Provide a dense, disorganised page and ask for a rewrite with reasoning.
Pros
Cons
Best for Screening.
AI-scored assessment (e.g. Cohesyve)
Generate a technical writing task from the job description — a documentation page from an expert source, an edit of a dense page, a structure plan for a doc set — with a rubric. Each candidate receives a different variant; the work and the reasoning behind it are scored together.
Pros
Cons
Best for Screening an applicant pool fairly before interview time is spent.
Instruction test
Ask them to write instructions for a small task, then have someone follow them.
Pros
Cons
Best for Any level.
Cohesyve
Run a Technical Writing assessment on your next opening
Cohesyve generates a unique Technical Writing task per candidate from your job description, with the scoring rubric attached. Questions are different for every applicant, so they cannot be shared or looked up.
What to test
Audience
Whether writing serves a reader.
Structure
Whether content can be found and followed.
Precision and clarity
Whether it is right and readable.
Working with experts
Whether they get what they need.
Sample Technical Writing questions
Before writing documentation, what do you need to know?
EntryLook for Who reads it, what they are trying to do, what they already know, where they will be when they read it.
What is wrong with "Configure the settings appropriately"?
EntryLook for No specifics; the reader cannot act; state which settings, which values, why.
An engineer's explanation skips a step they think is obvious. How do you catch it?
MidLook for Follow the instructions yourself, ask what happens between steps, test with a naive reader.
How do you structure a page so people find what they need?
MidLook for Headings as questions or tasks, most common first, scannable, consistent with the set.
Documentation exists but support tickets on the topic keep coming. What do you do?
SeniorLook for Read the tickets, find the gap, test the docs with users, restructure or rewrite, measure.
Red flags
- Writes for the expert, not the reader
- Vague instructions
- Dense paragraphs
- Does not test instructions
- Cannot say what questions to ask an expert
Scoring rubric
| Criterion | Weight | What strong looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Audience judgement | 25% | Written for a specific reader and goal. |
| Structure | 25% | Findable and followable. |
| Precision and clarity | 30% | Exact and readable. |
| Expert collaboration | 20% | Gets what the reader needs. |
Mistakes hiring teams make
- Judging on grammar
- Not using an expert-dump source
- Rewarding completeness over usability
- Skipping the instruction test
- Assuming engineering background equals writing skill
Roles that need Technical Writing
Common questions
Should the test use our product?
A described feature with an expert explanation works and avoids research. Real material is better if you can anonymise it.
What is the best single technical writing question?
Show "configure the settings appropriately" and ask what is wrong. Precision instinct shows immediately.
How long should a technical writing assessment take?
Sixty minutes for a page from an expert source; thirty for an edit.
How do I assess for developer documentation specifically?
Include code samples in the source and ask for them in the output. Correctness and clarity of examples matter as much as prose.
Cohesyve · Skill assessments for hiring
Test Technical Writing before the first interview
Generate a role-specific Technical Writing assessment from your job description and see who can do the work before you spend interview time on them.
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assessments completed
50%
faster time-to-hire
90%
completion rate
5 min
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