>>>John- tsk tsk. Want to know somebody's competence level, ask them as technical question.
>>
>>How about "what was your highest score on either of the the VFP 6 certification tests?"
>
>Then you are guaging test-taking ability. Which is maybe as close as you can get, I guess...

I wouldnt be so sure. I know people who passed that exam that do very little hands on developing in VFP nowadays... they just studied hard. The way I always judge competency is "How many applications have you *completed* and put into production, and what is the lifespan of each?"

Works pretty good actually for a nutshell test of competency. Say you got Joe Blow who taughts "Oh I have 10 years experience in fox and I KNOW what I'm doing, I'm a pro". Ask him the magic question and you come to find out he's only completed & distributed 1 app that's been up & running a few short months. Summation... we have a hotdogger here who's a master of bluffing.

Now the flip side of that is Sally Smow who humbly says "I've only been working in VFP for a little over 3 years". Ask her the magic and question and lo & behold she's rolled out 5 decent sized apps, gone back & done major enhancements to one and completely rewrote the another once she discovered commercial frameworks... leaving her with 4 out of the 5 still running.

I dont know about you, but if I was looking to hire a developer... Sally would look way more promising & definitely much more competent than Joe.