NIC Support Staff Testing Criteria
Testing is required for some positions to ensure that candidates have the necessary clerical skills for
administrative positions at North Island College. The following tests have been designed to evaluate
knowledge, skills and abilities of all potential candidates. Each position at the College has specific
testing requirements. In addition to the tests outlined below, candidates may be required to take
individual position specific tests to ensure competency in the specific program or area. A minimum of
75% must be achieved as required under Skills, Knowledge and Abilities criteria as posted for each competition.
Microsoft Word Version 2013:
This is a series of timed functions to evaluate your word processing skills in the application of Microsoft
Word software. Please refer to the table below for an outline of functions you will be tested on at each level.
The level required for testing will be determined by the requirements for each position.
The following is a guideline to inform candidates of the type of tasks that may be asked in each level of the
Microsoft Word testing. All tasks may not be listed. Candidates are advised to review all functions of the
software in order to perform tasks efficiently.
Basic Skills - This level of skills include the abiltity to:
- Open, create, save and modify documents
- Format fonts, margins, bullets, paragraphs, align text
- Insert pictures, charts, columns
- Cut, paste, insert cover page, spell check, track changes, sort
- Format for printing, print layout
Intermediate Skills - This level of skills include the abiltity to:
- Format pages, numbering, breaks, tables, draft & final documents, styles, themes
- Insert tables, header/footers, bookmarks, date, table of contents
Advanced Skills - This level of skills include the abiltity to:
- Insert comments, hyperlinks, equations, symbols
- Work with macro’s, readability statistics, equations, multilevel lists
- Protect documents, mail merge
Microsoft Excel Version 2013:
This is a series of timed functions to evaluate your skills in the application of
Microsoft Excel software. Please refer to the Excel testing criteria for an outline of
functions you will be tested on at each level. The level required for testing will be
determined by the requirements for each position.
The following is a guideline to inform candidates of the type of tasks that may be asked
in each level of Excel testing. All tasks may not be listed. Candidates are advised to
review all functions of the software in order to perform tasks efficiently.
Basic Skills - This level of skills include the abiltity to:
- Open, paste, spell check, hide columns, select cells
- Format text, margins, cells, page orientation & breaks, text alignment & wrapping, styles,
themes, columns & rows, charts
- Print setup, area, orientation and breaks, visible columns
- Data filter & sorting
- Insert and name worksheets
Intermediate Skills - This level of skills include the abiltity to:
- Inserting and formatting charts, header/footer
- Formatting, borders, freeze panes, use paste special
- Name cells, data filters & sorting, pivot table filters
Advanced Skills - This level of skills include the abiltity to:
- Conditional formatting, concatenation, cell reference
- Custom lists, macro’s
- Functions and statements, pivot tables & charts
Keyboarding Skills:
This is an on-screen timed typing test to assess your typing speed and accuracy. The level
required for testing will be determined by the requirements for each position.
