The new software engineer on your team doesn’t need to be a poet, but she does need to have the writing skills to communicate her work clearly and simply. Some tips on evaluating a candidate’s writing skills:

• Is his resume concise? If someone rambles on a document as tightly-formatted as a resume, it’s likely he can’t recognize and communicate the meat of other matters, as well.
• Is there a central idea in each paragraph in her cover letter? Knowing how to group and rank information is a powerful skill in any arena — from organizing a to-do list to writing an annual report.
• Do pay attention to the details of punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Clients and business partners will notice unprofessional mistakes, even if you don’t.