unusual hiring requirements?

What's the most unusual requirement during the recruitment / hiring process for a sports writing job you've encountered? Are background checks pretty much standard these days? What about checks on driving, credit, etc.?

 

Somebody on the jobs thread was talking about one paper that wouldn't hire anyone with traffic tickets...and it wasn't like it was a place that could afford to be picky....it was far removed from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. I mean, it's one thing if a guy ran over a Girl Scout while he was tooling around drunk...but to write off someone who went 60 in a 45...wow.

 

Back in the early 1990s, there was an E&P ad from a Kansas paper for a daily sports editor who "must be able to operate (a particular brand of Goss press, I forget)"

That took the cake for me.

 

Any of you guys ever take that Knight Ridder test?
Talk about Cruel and Unusual.

 

I've taken it like three times, each for a new job (two I took). Pain in the ass.

 

I took it once. They said I did OK on the test, but didn't hire me . . . musta been my sparkling personality that threw them off or something. It probably turned out for the better. I remember the test sucking.

Anyway, does anyone know if the old K-R papers still use that test now that K-R is a thing of the past?

 

That must have been a test for an editor gig, huh? I didn't have to take one when I was a lowly scribe. Which is good, because I don't do well on those personality tests. I bombed the Books-A-Million one twice.

 

The old K-R places aren't using those anymore. I didn't have to take one when I got my current gig.

 

Yep. It was, at the time, for an ASE gig.
It was the copy editing test that was "altered" a bit. Which was brutal for me, because I'm not a champion copy editor.

 

Nor did I, and I'm at a former K-R.

One place had me take three hours' worth of psychological tests. Three hours. Swear to God. And none of the questions had anything to do with editing copy (or page design, for that matter).

 

I did that when I got hired by Lee. Bleech.

 

i had to pee in a cup. which sucked.

I thought everybody in this business (at least my age [the]) smoked the left-handed Luckies