Has anyone a link to a basic technican test for job application screening that they have used and found to work OK? I can find some but would like one that is a little proven. If you can't tell, I am not using head-hunters at all for this.
Purpose is for a technician to find production faults on hand soldered assys, and assist service with repairs. Industry is scientific with high voltages, RF and sensitive analog.
Geoff wrote in news:Xns9FB3E401690E5Geoff@88.198.244.100:
edit heading
"Geoff"
** Are you after a written test, some kind of practical test or a series of questions ?Do you want a non-technical / incompetent person to be able to tell who is the most competent of the applicants ?
Do you want to buy the Sydney Harbour bridge ?
... Phil
"Phil Allison" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:
Written test with series of questions, 1 hour or so duration. The test reviewers will be 2 reviewers, one technical experienced engineer, and one manager with broad scientific competence. The test will be prior to the interview, and the test is expected to cull a list of 50 applicants to about 5. The test is not intended to be a final answer as to the applicants suitability, but an indicator of knowledge, thinking process and communication skills.
Nah, one hurdle at a time.
"Geoff"
** If your people cannot come up with the relevant questions themselves - then they will never be able to asses the answers.Also, many production techs who would be good at your job may not be good at written tests or the delicate art of self praise, making it likely that the best candidate will NOT end up in your top 5.
I think you are still in line to buy the Sydney Harbour bridge.
Better to come up with some practical examples of the kind of fault finding you need done and give candidates a go at them - then talk about the results with each.
... Phil
Yeah, I was about to say "Failed" ;-)
geoff (the other)
I got work at Marconi Instruments (Service Division) in the UK in the '70s. The interview consisted of me saying that I had my Amateur (Ham) Radio Licence, and describing what a circuit diagram did. (A signal generator, TF801)
Colin
I dont have any hard info, but my observation is that fault-finding in a newly built product is a totally different skill to doing a repair on a failed ( but previously working ) device. And very much harder, since almost anything can be wrong, often there can be several faults.
My usual question with anybody though is to ask "Where would you start ?" If the answer is not "the power supply" then they fail.
"Adrian Jansen"
** In an assembly operation, examples of PCBs and finished products that DO work are available for comparison with each non working example. After a while, techs can get very "hawk eyed" at spotting wrong parts and parts in backwards etc.I once had the job of de-bugging analogue audio processors from the USA that looked like they had been assembled and tested by Mexican children. There were ICs installed backwards in sockets, wrong value resistors all over the place, bad soldering and even a few that tripped my ELCB soon as they were plugged in.
Turned out screws that held the lid on easily punctured the primary winding of the AC tranny !!
When new AC trannys arrived to solve the above, they had been engineered for
60Hz operation and ran at over 100C on 50Hz !!! ** The hardest of all is when an incompetent has been there before you and you have only the one, faulty unit to look at.Then all bets are off, you can assume nothing and must check every resistor cap and semi against the schematic to see if it is right and round the right way.
Servicing kits is pure hell.
... Phil
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