The Markdown test is an employment assessment designed to evaluate the knowledge and skills of entry-level to mid-level programmers in writing, understanding, debugging, and maintaining files written in Markdown, serving purposes of pre-hire selection, employee development, and promotion selection within the Information Technology field. The test measures four key areas: Basic Syntax and Text Formatting; Links, Images, Lists, and Tables; Code Blocks, Blockquotes, and Special Syntax; and Reading, Debugging, and Maintaining Markdown Files. Coverage includes headers, paragraphs, line breaks, bold, italics, strikethrough, ordered and unordered lists with nesting, links, images, inline and fenced code blocks, tables, blockquotes, horizontal rules, character escaping, comments, and cross-platform rendering differences across environments such as GitHub and static site generators. The assessment also tests the ability to read raw Markdown source without a renderer and to identify and resolve formatting errors in existing files. Questions are presented in multiple choice, multiple correct answer, and essay composition formats, and are drawn from a large pool to reduce the risk of cheating. The test further incorporates AI-assisted scoring on select questions and applies time limits to specific questions to both discourage cheating and enhance the predictive validity of results.

The specific attributes measured include:

Following completion, the test produces a Candidate Selection Report that includes an overall score and detailed scores for each attribute.

The Candidate Selection Report also provides expert interview questions that help you probe critical or low-scoring areas, along with a guide for noting your evaluation of the candidate's responses. Consistent use of an interview guide is an important part of gaining better candidate insights and making better hiring decisions.

Note that while the Markdown assessment is a useful and efficient instrument for confirming a base level of skill or knowledge about this important topic, it is not intended to pinpoint the exact level of candidate or skill. We recommend that skills tests, like this one, be used in parallel with other measurements, such as cognitive ability, job fit, and behavioral history. Each different type of test provides a valuable piece of information you can use when evaluating potential job performance.