Wanted: Short yellow guy with suspenders July 22, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, research, work.Tags: hiring, minion, students, supervising
trackback
I may have some funding coming in for a project soon, and it looks like I will need to hire a student to help me with some work. Despite the fact that I have supervised students here and there, this will be my first time hiring my own minion. It has me a little worried. I have seen enough students come through to know that not every student will be as useful as the Minion was.
The easy answer is, obviously, to clone the Minion. Sadly, I lack the ability to do so. Even if I could, I’m worried I’d end up with the guy on the right:
Well, let’s be honest…I’m a bit worried I’ll end up with the guy on the left, too…although he has a lot more potential than Mr. Purple.
Some advice given to me by a more senior colleague (well, that’s pretty much all of them) was to come up with some really good questions. That is an excellent suggestion, except that I will probably want a student early on in their career who doesn’t necessarily need to know a whole lot in the field yet. I fully expect that, even if they were a senior, they’ll need some training to use our equipment (which they wouldn’t get in classes), and so it’s best if I find one who will be around a while.
No, I think I’m going to put together an obstacle course/logic test and check to see if they have the tenacity to get through it.
Can you imagine it? “Crawl through this tunnel carrying this PCB and, at the other end, hook up the impedance analyzer and provide me with the reactance at 2.5 GHz.”
I hope HR doesn’t mind…and I hope I can find an empty office so I have a place to do it. And I appreciate suggestions my readers may have for additional suitable obstacles.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
You can take a page out of Microsoft’s book. Ask them hard technical questions and then, out of nowhere, ask them why manhole covers are round.
That’s a good thought…some reasoning questions might be good. Or logic puzzles.
Of course, it’d also be nice if they know how to bake really yummy chocolate chip cookies. ;-)
I like the cooky thought.