On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 4:58 PM, Vitaliy wrote: > Chris Smolinski wrote: >> >This is completely off topic, but may I ask how you came to that >> >conclusion? >>>I'm an engineer and a manager, and I've interviewed close to 100 people >>>over >>>our 7 years in business, using interview questions and tests that we >>>ourselves put together. And yes, many of the questions came from the books >>>I've read, on hiring and management. >> >> One company I worked for, we had a test that we gave to prospective >> engineering and technician candidates. It contained mostly "basic" >> material. I still remember one of the questions, it concerned diodes. >> It had several figures, each containing a diode and resistor, and a >> sine wave input, you had to draw the output. Really basic stuff. But >> you'd be amazed how many people didn't know the correct answers. We >> found that it was an excellent way to filter out duds. > > Same here. A while back, I posted an old electronic technician test here, > and many people commented that it was "too easy". However, out of all the > applicants that we administered the test to, only one candidate got 100%. > > If someone cannot apply Ohm's law to a resistor network, it is a good > indicator that they will not understand more complex circuits. Moreover, we > found that people who spent more time on the test, generally did poorer than > the ones who finished it quickly. > > Tests are a great supplement to interview questions. Some people can breeze > through the interview, only to fail the test. My company recently hired a contract programmer to do a project that we didn't have time/resources to do. So we did several interviews. One candidate wasn't doing very well, but tried to hide it by talking a lot. So, I asked him a "nonsense" question. He did not realize that it was nonsense, and tried to B***S*** his way through it. Needless to say, someone else got the job. Bill -- Psst... Hey, you... Buddy... Want a kitten? straycatblues.petfinder.org -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist