Monday, October 26, 2015

Develop These Mental Qualities to Increase Your Success with Leapforce

People ask all the time for tips on how to pass the entrance exam.  I can’t tell you the answers or give you a formula to follow that will help you pass, but I can give you some ideas of the way Leapforce wants you to think about webpages.  They are looking for people who can follow detailed instructions, turn off their own biases and analyze webpages based on the guidelines you are given.

To be successful as a Leapforce agent you can’t look at the internet the same way as a casual user; you have to try to understand what the user wants to see when they issue a query, you then have to try to understand what the creator of the webpage intended to convey, then analyze how well the webpage served the user.  To do that well you have to dig deeper and think more critically than the casual user.

Here are some of what I believe to be the most important mental qualities for a Leapforce agent:

Understanding – ability to get inside the head of the user.  Probably the hardest part of evaluating search results is figuring out what the user wants when they type in a query.  Some queries are straightforward and easy to understand; others are vague or outright impossible to grasp.  How do you interpret something like this (a query I actually had to rate): “Knuckles when I was young”?  How about: “je”?  Or: “anchors tow”?  Your job is to figure out the most likely interpretation of these queries.  Sometimes it’s an individual thing and you can’t figure it out, sometimes if you play around with words a little you can find something online that is similar and may be what the user meant.  You have to use your imagination and understanding of people to try to work out these puzzles.


Skepticism. Don’t trust everything you read on the internet.  You have to be skeptical about every website you visit.  Does it really have the authority to make its claims?  For instance, I was rating a page by a “Dr” about uses of an herbal supplement.  I tried to find out what kind of doctor he is, there was nothing on the site stating his qualifications or even if he really is a doctor.  If you can’t find that information, what does it say about him?  To me it says he’s not the kind of doctor we would want to take advice from.

Attention to detail.  Does the page give the user the latest information or is it outdated?  Is it about the latest version of the software or device the user is asking about? Is there something else with a similar name that is not showing up on the search results, but may be what the user wants? If the user gave very specific details in the query, do the results match exactly?

Curiosity – willingness to dig deeper to understand the query, willingness to go beyond the search results that are given to see if there is something even better.  What would happen if you search for it a slightly different way?

I hope this will help those of you about to take the exam, or those thinking about applying.  This is the way Leapforce hopes you will be thinking when you work for them.  Good luck in your efforts.

5 comments:

  1. Hello everyone, today I retake the test.
    Today in the morinig to retake the exam I had to do the 3 parts that is full examination.
    PS: I am sorry my English, writing from Spain

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  2. Hi Janice,

    Thank you so much for writing about your Leapforce experience, I have really appreciated the info. I am posting here out of a bit of desperation that you or someone somewhere will read it today and be able to help me out:

    I am ready to set up my phone for part three of the exam. At the beginning of the instruction video, he says "When you log into Leapforce from your desktop, you'll see this page." The video shows a Leapforce homepage with many menu options, such "Yukon Home" and a prompt to register a smartphone.

    My page does not look anything like this, It is just a message saying that my Yukon qualification is in process. What else do I need to do?

    There is also a really confusing message in the video that says you do not have to register your phone until after you pass all parts of the exam. Are adding the device and registering two different things?

    There appear to be tasks waiting in my raterhub, but I am afraid that if I click anything it will start the test and I will not be able to answer any questions without the phone. Am I crazy? Do I just need to wait for something to upload? I sent them an email 12 hours ago and have not heard back. Thanks kathrynsilvaconway@yahoo.com

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    1. Some people have commented that they didn't have to do anything to register their phone for the exam. I took the exam a long time ago so things were different, I think the video is old instructions, not the way they do it now. If you don't hear back from Leapforce, give it a try without registering. You don't have to complete all of part 3 in one session, if the phone doesn't work you can come back and finish it later as long as you don't run out of time to complete the exam. Good luck!

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  3. Janice,

    How should comments on part 3 of the exam be structured?


    Thanks!

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    Replies
    1. When I took the exam, the email they sent me said that comments would not be read, so its not really important for the exam. However, when I tried to leave the comment out, the system told me it was required so I just put in a simple statement about why one side was better. Don't stress about the comments. Good luck on the exam.

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