In the past 3-4 years, I was asked to interview number of people.
Personally I don't like ****y guys who think they 'know it all',
I like much better fresh kids willing to work hard and build their
experience on what they learned in school (that's the way I did, do
and always will).
To make things more simple, I've created small list of SIMPLE
questions for just about anything our candidates would say
they know.
We are smaller company, so if you work for us you better know more
than one thing...(Ohms Law, PLCs, HMIs, Networking, VB, Database,
CAD, CEC, Safety, Motion, sensors etc.).
It is shocking how many have no clue about most basic things.
For example, just few weeks ago, there was a guy who says he is
an EE with Masters degree from XYZ and although didn't have ANY
experience in anything else, he was a professional programmer.
I didn't like the guy on first sight, I didn't like his long
greasy hair, big shot lazy posture with one leg over another
and cigaret in his hand, masive gold rings on just about any finger
(or are they really gold?), bad breath and he could really learn
that there are stores in town that do sell deo and shampoo
(I was about to be the one to inform him but wasn't sure if this
would be considered harasment...).
So ALL he did in past 12 years is program AB PLCs for major
automotive plant, single handedly troubleshoot the most complex
equipment etc. My boss was really interested to hire him.
I brought him one limit sw. (AB 802T-AP) and one proxy switch
(Omron E2E). He couldn't recognize any of them (my WIFE can do that!).
So I ask him to calculate series resistor for LED to be powered
from 24V circuit. I help him draw the circuit, specify source
to be 24V and correct polarity, LED has 2V drop and I wanted
current of 22mA (just to make it easy to calculate in head).
I even give him calculator... Not a killer for an electrical engineer, don't you think?
He spends 15min writting something elaborate and then asks for
more info. He says if he sees resistor he would know to pick the
righr one. All right, I bring him three resistors and one capacitor
(one resistor with correct resistance and power rating) and I
even give him digital multimeter so he can measure them all and
at least guess result.
Guess what? He didn't know how to use multimeter (so much of a
troubleshooter). Interestingly, my boss pulls me to side and suggest
to hire him anyway so "he can start one or two projects" and
I would have to finish them (yeah right, just what I needed...!).
I say no, the guy hears it and jumps yelling that he is
a programmer and wants to prove his proficiency by answering ANY
posssible question about AB PLCs (before ControlLogix off course).
No problem, so I ask him answer ONE thing correctly:
- what is S:1/15 or
- what is TON or
- what is N7.
He was scratching his head for 10 minutes and his face was changing colors (at that moment I did enjoy it, I don't get that oft to just
sit and do nothing...).
Finally he erupted in rage saying that he is an experienced programmer
and that he wouldn't work with me even if we wanted. (YESSS!!!! I already tought hed never say that...
).