CONTENTS FEATURE: Rate communication skills in job interviews GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding your questions FINDER'S FEE: Recommend a friend—and earn up to $500 FEATURE: Rate communication skills when interviewing job applicants      Conducting job interviews is critically important in the hiring process. Applicants may enlist the aid of consulting services or acquaintances to help them compose resumes, fill out job applications and cover letters. When applicants show up for the interview, however, they arrive without their protective armor. What you see is what you'll get, so you must be a discerning observer and listener.      As a result of abuses in previous years, government regulations have restricted the kinds of questions that interviewers may ask, as well as the types of tests that they can administer. Questions about age, religion, marital status, birthplace, accents and other topics that could form the basis for discrimination are prohibited.      If you pose your legally permissible questions carefully and deliberately, however, you may be able to elicit responses that reveal information not only about applicants' education, job experience, teamwork and leadership skills, but also about their proficiency in spoken and written communication.      Here are seven indicators that can help you score an applicant's ability to organize thoughts and express them clearly, concisely and intelligently. 1. Courtesy      Thank the applicant for appearing on time for the interview or for elaborating on a previous answer. Listen carefully to the response. Score points if the applicant answers, "you're welcome" or "my pleasure" or "certainly." Detract points if the applicant answers, "no problem." On the contrary, such a curt, flippant, colloquial response is problematic. Your organization's customers should be able to expect more courtesy and respect than that. For more about that, please read the June 2000 edition of EditPros News . 2. Misuse of personal pronouns      Ask the applicant to describe past participation in a project that required teamwork, and listen carefully for use of the personal pronouns "I, "me" and "myself." Score points if the applicant says something like, "The sales manager, Bill Clark, and I attended a conference to help us learn how to collect from past-due accounts more effectively" or "the company president gave the assignment to Bill Clark and me." Detract points if the applicant says "Bill Clark and me attended a conference..." or "the president gave the assignment to Bill Clark and I" or "...gave the assignment to Bill Clark and myself." Such jarring abuse of language is indicative of lack of sophistication. You can read more about that in the December 2002 edition of EditPros News. 3. Specificity      Ask the applicant to describe prior work experience and achievements. Score points if the applicant replies, "I was manager of the contracts department, and I composed binding agreements with about two dozen consultants." Detract points if the applicant replies, "I was involved with contracts that established relationships with vendors" or "I was responsible for contracts." In what sense was the applicant involved or "responsible"? Such vague terminology could reflect an attempt to inflate importance; perhaps the applicant had peripheral rather than pivotal involvement. Ask for greater specificity. 4. buzzwords      Make sure the candidate can express thoughts in plain English, without resorting to "buzzwords" or arcane jargon. Suppose you ask an applicant to identify emerging trends in your industry. Score points if one applicant responds, "Although electronic commerce constitutes competition, it also is a means through which to expand the company's geographic territory." Detract points if another replies, "Electronic commerce is among the issues impacting companies in this business." Electronic commerce isn't an issue; it's a process or marketing channel. And used as a verb, the word "impact" is imprecise. Does the applicant mean impede or benefit? Other bothersome buzzwords and fatuous phrases include "mission-critical," "codify," "transparency," "skill set," "traction," "repurpose," "leverage" (as a verb), "effort" (as a verb), "transition" (as a verb), "negative growth" and "core competencies." 5. Imprecision      Notice the ability of applicants to choose words that precisely explain their responses to experiences or conditions. Score points for an applicant who describes an experience as "fulfilling" or "distressing," a business executive as "perceptive" or "abrasive," or an article as "captivating," "influential" or "alarming." Detract points for an applicant whose descriptive vocabulary appears restricted to vague adjectives such as "great," "OK," "cool" or "bad." 6. Pretension      Listen for clear, concise, unembellished responses. Score points if the applicant says, for example, "I'm now looking for a position..." or "the results were unsatisfactory" or "I met the governor...." Detract points for applicants who inflate their speech with pompous expressions, resulting in declarations such as, "At this point in time, I'm looking for a position..." or "the results were unexceptional, if you will" or "I had the opportunity to meet the governor...." (Did you take advantage of that opportunity?) Be suspicious of excessive reliance upon trite, pompous expressions. 7. Colloquialisms      Take notice of the use of slang terms and other colloquialisms that should be excluded from business-level conversations. Listen for exclamations, for example, in reaction to your description of job attributes and benefits. Score points for applicants who respond by saying "that appears promising," "I'm encouraged," "that appeals to me," "the position sounds rewarding" or similar expressions of approval. Detract points from applicants who exclaim "awesome" or "cool," or who say "gonna" rather than "going to." Also take notice of applicants who habitually use "like" as an interjection throughout their speech, or who use "go" or "like" as part of an idiomatic expression in place of the verb "say" (as in "so he goes, 'it was your idea'" or "she was like, 'we've never done that before.'"      Linguistic proficiency is less critical for some jobs than for others. But supervisory, customer service and leadership personnel should be able to express ideas and instructions articulately and explicitly. As you listen to what job applicants say, pay equal attention to how they say it. GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding your questions 1. Vonnie D. wrote:      "What is the final word on quotation marks within or without punctuation?" The grammar coach replies:      American and British styles differ in the placement of quotation marks with other punctuation. For American usage, the Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press Stylebook and other style guides specify that commas and periods should be placed within closing quotation marks, while colons and semicolons always should follow closing quotation marks. Examples: 1. Loudly singing "I Walk the Line," Earl offered his impression of Johnny Cash. 2. Earl offered his impression of Johnny Cash by loudly singing "I Walk the Line." 3. Earl knew who was famous for singing "I Walk the Line": Johnny Cash.      The placement of question marks and exclamation points, however, depends upon their function. That's true in both American and British conventions. If the quotation itself is a question, the question mark should appear within the quotation marks. Here's an example: Eric asked, "What time is it?"      However, if the writer is asking a question about a declarative statement, the question mark should follow the closing quotation mark; that's because the question mark applies to the entire sentence, and not just to the quoted matter. Here's an example: Did Jane say "It's 10 o'clock"?      British style for placement of quotation marks in relation to commas and periods follows the same logic as that for use of quote marks with question marks and exclamation marks. That is, a comma or period should be placed within the closing quotation mark if it is part of the quoted matter, but should follow the closing quotation if it pertains to the sentence as a whole. Examples: Loudly singing "I Walk the Line", Earl offered his impression of Johnny Cash. Earl offered his impression of Johnny Cash by loudly singing "I Walk the Line". 2. Bob M. wrote:      "Is this phrase correct? 'The Department of the Public Advocate's responsibilities includes...' Or is it 'include'? I think it should be 'include.'" The grammar coach replies:      Your question concerns subject-verb agreement. You can resolve uncertainty by distilling the questionable sentence or clause to its essential subject-verb elements. The subject of your sentence is "responsibilities," so that is the word with which the verb must agree. (In this sentence, "Department of the Public Advocate's" performs an adjectival function, modifying responsibilities—identifying which responsibilities are under discussion.      At its fundamental level, your example phrase says "...the responsibilities include." Therefore, as you said, the proper verb form is "include" rather than "includes."      Are you perplexed by some aspect of grammar or word usage? Don't be shy! Ask the "grammar coach" at EditPros and we'll try to help—at no charge, just for the sport of it. FINDER'S FEE: Recommend a friend—and earn a finder's fee of up to $500      Do you know of a friend or colleague whose office can benefit from EditPros services? If you do, EditPros may reward you with a "finder's fee" of up to $500.      EditPros, established in 1993, performs writing, editing, proofreading and publication management services for newsletters, brochures, Web sites, annual reports, research studies, business proposals and other informational and marketing materials. Our office is in Davis, Calif., between Sacramento and San Francisco.      Our clients include educational institutions, private corporations, health-care organizations, trade associations, scientific research institutions, Web site developers and government agencies. We have worked with some of them for more than 10 years.      If you recommend our services to a friend or business colleague, and that introduction leads to an assignment for EditPros, we will award you a "finder's fee" equaling 10 percent of the amount we earn on the first assignment for the new client, up to a maximum finder's fee of $500. Naturally, the finder's fee is applicable only to clients for which we have not worked previously.      This offer will remain in effect until further notice. YOUR TURN: Ask the "grammar coach" or subscribe      We invite you to submit your questions to the "grammar coach," and we welcome you to subscribe to this monthly newsletter—which we'll send to your e-mail address at no charge. We respond to all "grammar coach" questions personally, but delays may occur because we must place top priority on assignments from our clients. We appreciate your patience and your interest.      You also can change your e-mail subscription address. For an address change, please indicate your existing AND your new e-mail address. Thank you. OUR PRIVACY POLICY for e-mail newsletter subscribers:      We do not use any commercial e-mail lists or automated mass-mailing programs, and we do not allow access to the list by anyone else for any reason. 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