Technician/engineering training

[tggzzz]

...and to address the OP's question... That's not your job to fix the PhD culture.  Get out of academia while you still have a soul.

Perhaps you need to mix with more PhDs. All sorts of people become PhDs. Working with the really smart ones is easy, and satisfying.

My experience with researchers and academic people has always been the best possible. Perhaps because my relationship with them has most of the time been the result of me being hired to turn their work into a practical product.

The respect has always been mutual. They've never interfered with my approach to their technology, and I've never told them how to do their job. While I was busy trying to build a product to comply with regulations, standards, cost constraints, form factors, etc., etc., etc., they were free to give their next step.

Yes indeed. Mutual respect for each others strengths/weaknesses is the key.

[HalFET]

One which allows the candidate to say what they've achieved previously, then to press them to find the limits of what they actually know and/or are prepared to claim. At that point the bullshitters are obvious.

Next move onto technical questions that are relevant to what we want them to do, and stretch them to see how they think and approach problems - especially how they learn the new skills that you will require. If they can learn new skills, good.

The main thing I notice at that point is how folks deal with being unable to answer a question. The good engineer always seems to go "I'm not certain, but I think it might be like ...", the bullshitter will make up stuff, and the idiot will go "derp".

Avoid fruitlessly interrogating them about things outside their skillset, avoid "trick" questions with single correct answers.

There's an important part of the job interview you're forgetting. "Am I talking to a normal person?" I usually find that one quite important.

[james_s]

In the good companies I've worked for, interviews work very well. Of course the right people must be involved, and you must know what you are/aren't looking for, and it takes a lot of time and effort - but hiring the right people is absolutely essential. One necessity (I've seen it several times) is to prevent HR from filtering out CVs they think aren't suitable.

That's the truth. I don't even know why, but HR people everywhere seem to be universally hopeless at selecting viable engineering candidates. They are remarkably adept at filtering out all the really good ones and collecting together all the bullshitters who have shamelessly seeded their resumes with all the keywords. The only way I've ever found good jobs is by knowing someone that enabled me to bypass HR and get my resume in front of the hiring manager.

[tggzzz]

One which allows the candidate to say what they've achieved previously, then to press them to find the limits of what they actually know and/or are prepared to claim. At that point the bullshitters are obvious.

Next move onto technical questions that are relevant to what we want them to do, and stretch them to see how they think and approach problems - especially how they learn the new skills that you will require. If they can learn new skills, good.

The main thing I notice at that point is how folks deal with being unable to answer a question. The good engineer always seems to go "I'm not certain, but I think it might be like ...", the bullshitter will make up stuff, and the idiot will go "derp".

Yes indeed.

It is always worth trying to provoke a negative answer, since only then can you begin to trust positive answers. Works in both directions in interviews, in both directions in sales/clients meetings, with politicians...

Avoid fruitlessly interrogating them about things outside their skillset, avoid "trick" questions with single correct answers.

There's an important part of the job interview you're forgetting. "Am I talking to a normal person?" I usually find that one quite important.

Yes, but...

There have been a small number of cases where I and colleagues have explicity asked ourselves, "if we had been interviewing X, would we have recruited them?". We have had our doubts, even though we knew X was an extremely competent, imaginative and shy engineer. In one case X booked 25 hours to a project one day, since he came in at 9am on Saturday and left at 10am on Sunday; the fun and zany company accepted that He also came into the lab on a Christmas day, because a problem was knawing at him.

[tggzzz]

In the good companies I've worked for, interviews work very well. Of course the right people must be involved, and you must know what you are/aren't looking for, and it takes a lot of time and effort - but hiring the right people is absolutely essential. One necessity (I've seen it several times) is to prevent HR from filtering out CVs they think aren't suitable.

That's the truth. I don't even know why, but HR people everywhere seem to be universally hopeless at selecting viable engineering candidates. They are remarkably adept at filtering out all the really good ones and collecting together all the bullshitters who have shamelessly seeded their resumes with all the keywords. The only way I've ever found good jobs is by knowing someone that enabled me to bypass HR and get my resume in front of the hiring manager.

I've done that too.

You need to understand HR. They are paper shufflers whose primary job is to prevent the bosses from accidentally breaking employment laws. Their main motivation is to avoid any blame that could settle on them by hiring an awkward employee. It doesn't matter (to them) if they also avoid extremely competent employees.

[HalFET]

It is always worth trying to provoke a negative answer, since only then can you begin to trust positive answers. Works in both directions in interviews, in both directions in sales/clients meetings, with politicians...

The only position you'd hire a politician for is spokes person, simply to see which sort of BS you can feed them before they realise they're speaking BS.

There have been a small number of cases where I and colleagues have explicity asked ourselves, "if we had been interviewing X, would we have recruited them?". We have had our doubts, even though we knew X was an extremely competent, imaginative and shy engineer. In one case X booked 25 hours to a project one day, since he came in at 9am on Saturday and left at 10am on Sunday; the fun and zany company accepted that He also came into the lab on a Christmas day, because a problem was knawing at him.

I'm not too worried about shyness, but I am talking about really dysfunctional personalities. We had some people who were so paranoid that they password protected all their project files on network drives, refused to socialise "because we might steal ideas", and things like that. Their behaviour was an active nuisance towards everyone else to the point that it made it entirely impossible to work together with them. While I do like colleagues that I can go and grab a beer with after work, I don't consider that a requirement!

[tggzzz]

It is always worth trying to provoke a negative answer, since only then can you begin to trust positive answers. Works in both directions in interviews, in both directions in sales/clients meetings, with politicians...

The only position you'd hire a politician for is spokes person, simply to see which sort of BS you can feed them before they realise they're speaking BS.

Very old observation: can't buy Pathan fighters, but you can rent them.

The same is true of politicians, and that's the only sense in which I would hire them (For non-native English speakers: "hire" can mean rent or employ)

There have been a small number of cases where I and colleagues have explicity asked ourselves, "if we had been interviewing X, would we have recruited them?". We have had our doubts, even though we knew X was an extremely competent, imaginative and shy engineer. In one case X booked 25 hours to a project one day, since he came in at 9am on Saturday and left at 10am on Sunday; the fun and zany company accepted that He also came into the lab on a Christmas day, because a problem was knawing at him.

I'm not too worried about shyness, but I am talking about really dysfunctional personalities. We had some people who were so paranoid that they password protected all their project files on network drives, refused to socialise "because we might steal ideas", and things like that. Their behaviour was an active nuisance towards everyone else to the point that it made it entirely impossible to work together with them. While I do like colleagues that I can go and grab a beer with after work, I don't consider that a requirement!

Once upon a time, the company I was working for was taken over and we were to be moved to another site 15 miles away in a revolting "new town". When interviewing us (i.e. engineers) individually, the new HR and CEO told us that we could go out with our co-workers in the evenings. We were all surprised by that concept - while we got on well with each other, we all had very different interests outside work.

I prefer to keep work and play separate, since when (not if) one goes wrong, there's a high probability the other hasn't

[james_s]

I've met quite a few of my long term friends through work, guys I'm still hanging out with >15 years and several jobs later. I don't typically hang out with my whole group of coworkers outside of work but in most jobs I've had I've met at least a handful of people that I have enough in common with that they make good friends.

[HalFET]

Very old observation: can't buy Pathan fighters, but you can rent them.

The same is true of politicians, and that's the only sense in which I would hire them (For non-native English speakers: "hire" can mean rent or employ)

I list them as consumables.

Once upon a time, the company I was working for was taken over and we were to be moved to another site 15 miles away in a revolting "new town". When interviewing us (i.e. engineers) individually, the new HR and CEO told us that we could go out with our co-workers in the evenings. We were all surprised by that concept - while we got on well with each other, we all had very different interests outside work.

I prefer to keep work and play separate, since when (not if) one goes wrong, there's a high probability the other hasn't

Mhhh, maybe. I enjoy grabbing a Friday evening beer with some colleagues. I don't necessarily hang out with them at other times (though with a select few I do), but it's nice to have that occasionally.