Elsevier interview questions

I was told my a recruiter that an assessment was needed, but she couldn’t tell me what was on the assessment. I went into it blind, which I don’t think is very fair especially to those with learning or language disabilities. Anyway, the assessment was held via Zoom. A supervisor for the job had me stay on Zoom, but turn off the camera and sound, and do an assessment he emailed me minutes before. It involved some questions/quality control about a sample manuscript, and you type your answers into a word document. Then there was an assessment in Excel. You needed to make a table, pivot table, answer questions via pivot tables and the DAYS formula. If you are not familiar with these things, as I was, brush up before the assessment because I was only given 20 minutes to complete it. I had no idea what a pivot table was, and it was not a requirement for the job, and I had no warning, and 20 minutes is not enough time to teacher yourself something while on a live zoom call. I dont know in what setting you would have to do this while working at Elsevier. It takes an hour or two to learn a new excel skill, it is easily coachable. Needless to say in 20 min I wasn’t able to finish the whole assessment, but I did my best. You had to send the assessment back to the supervisor for him to assess it. It was awkward, a negative and very stressful surprise experience, that I didnt appreciate at all. I have had over 20 interviews in this same industry and this is the only employer that gave a surprise Excel assessment without letting me know what was on it. Since I had other offers I wasn’t worried about this interview, but I was definitely peeved by the awkward process and unimpressed. If someone has high anxiety, has not taken a test in decades, has a language barrier or learning or vision disability, this surprise assessment would have been even more difficult. Elsevier, tell inteviewees what they will be tested on. Allow them to study and perform successfully rather than stress them out. Allow them to showcase their ability to learn and their commitment to doing well. Don’t make them struggle for no reason. It’s not a good look. Also btw an Elsevier journal lost an entire board of editors in April because they charge over $4000 for open access articles. Elsevier makes authors jump through extraordinary hoops, and it seems they make journal interviewees do the same.