| General > General Technical Chat |
| "Training out the stupid" |
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| The Soulman:
--- Quote from: Syntax Error on December 14, 2020, 09:45:35 pm ---1) Pass candidates through a lengthy selection process including practical real world tests. For example, get the torque wrench out the toolbox and tighten the engine bolts to 20 newtons. (If you ask, "what's a talk wrench?", do not proceed) --- End quote --- Newton what? Inch,feet,yard,meter?? Would be the correct response. Someone who would ask that in return would be raised a few points on my list. And if that person after that starts talking about thread lubrication or the lack there of impacting the accuracy of the torque, or any alignment/calibration interval of the actual torque wrench and thermal conditions you now you are dealing with an autistic autodidact. |
| CJay:
--- Quote from: Cerebus on December 14, 2020, 02:40:28 pm ---Elsewhere, Cjay said: --- Quote from: CJay date=1607931196 ---Through the years I've bumped into one or two like him who survive on ignorance of management and have been sent on so many training courses to try and educate the stupid out of them [my emphasis] that, on paper, they are the best qualified in the business and as such are flameprooof. --- End quote --- When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics. --- End quote --- Problem is that these days, unless you're in a position to find and hire directly, the chances are you're going to have to deal with an HR department and agencies that have no clue about the role or suitability of candidates so they will take your job spec verbatim and you'll find that people drop through the net because they don't have "Frobnitz certified" on their CV. I've been on the receiving end of agency and HR department rejections for that reason and I've also known people who were perfect for roles I've needed to fill but I wasn't the person offering invited to interviews, just the person doing the interviewing. |
| GlennSprigg:
--- Quote from: Cerebus on December 14, 2020, 02:40:28 pm ---When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics. --- End quote --- Hi Cerebus. Just few bits from my past... When ever I was interviewing people, (including apprentice reviews etc), I always acted friendly, and tried to put them at ease, because I know it was a stressful time for them, and so feedback may not reflect their true abilities/capabilities/knowledge. And when talking to apprentices & new trades-people, I would always do so in an informative & helpful manner, to improve their knowledge and understanding. All too often, I've found trades-people just using apprentices for very mundane tasks, for which I would berate them! Often they had voiced concerns that if the new ones learn too much, they may loose there job!!! I, on the other hand, had always taught everyone everything that I knew!! :) Re: Specific questions/answers about knowledge in an interview... I once was in an interview myself with a major Govt dept, and two of them grilled me for ages, about some specific types of control systems, unsuccessfully getting the right responses from me. (They were using 'foreign' in-house terms, that were NOT used in the 'outside-world' in the industry...) They were about to dismiss me from the interview when a light came on in my head! I said... "Oh, you are talking about 'Proportional/Integral/Derivative' action!!", so I went on to explain it in detail, verbally & diagrammatically!! 8) They realized I knew all they wanted, and more, but THEY used different wording. Later that day, I refused their offer as by then I had accepted an offer from Honeywell Security. Was interesting though... ;D Last point... I've found on many occasions that 'some' so-called engineers have certain technical qualifications just out of school/uni etc, but have NO people-skills or real-world experience in the field. I always much preferred & had respect for those who had come up through the proverbial ranks as well. With such hands-on experience, they truly understand how to address people, talk about problems in a constructive manner, and appreciate how much 'work' is often required to complete certain tasks! :palm: Anyway, have a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!! Glenn. :-+ |
| bd139:
Interesting thread. I was going to comment earlier but I thought I'd see how it would progress first. A couple of points I'd like to make. Firstly, on qualifications. A monkey can pass certifications. This is something I am living proof of. But I did gain significant experience and common knowledge from the certification process. This has enabled me not to step on a few landmines and piles of dog shit. It also opens up common communication ground for working with technology platforms which genuinely does help collaboration. And it allows you to gate staff tentatively based on motivation. With great confidence I can state that a lot of people don't end up with them because they can't be bothered to do a job to completion. On hiring, you really have no idea what you're hiring until you've worked with them for a bit. I had to let a guy go a few weeks back because while in theory he had all the boxes ticked, he was a complete half arsed dick. To be effective you need to be skilled, have decent interpersonal skills, rigour and be engaged with what you are doing. So keep a trial period open :) A good thing I found to do in interviews is ask questions which there are no good outcomes for and get them to walk through to a compromise. That's a big decider. The one I always do at the moment is this one: "So it's 2AM, an alert just woke you up with latency alerts and all the scale-out jobs are failing. You find out that our instances are no longer scaling out and the cloud provider we are using has no node capacity left. How do you resolve this issue?" My favourite answer for this is was "add it to the status dashboard and go back to sleep as there's fuck all you can do" :-DD |
| S. Petrukhin:
--- Quote from: bd139 on December 15, 2020, 12:23:01 pm --- "So it's 2AM, an alert just woke you up with latency alerts and all the scale-out jobs are failing. You find out that our instances are no longer scaling out and the cloud provider we are using has no node capacity left. How do you resolve this issue?" My favourite answer for this is was "add it to the status dashboard and go back to sleep as there's fuck all you can do" :-DD --- End quote --- A long time ago, I applied for the position of head of the call center. I was asked: "what task do you consider the main one", I answered: "tell the customer to go to hell so he doesn't call again." I was denied a position... People don't like the truth in the face. :) |
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