ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Business Related Discussion How do you find a good employee?

I would include military in that "cred" thing but they may have a problem with a lack of innovation and independent thinking.
A lot would depend on what they did in the military.
We had lots of military guys at IBM. Some could take the ball and run with it, others were just great at doing exactly what you told them to do.

Lots of people lack innovation and independent thinking. I'm not sure military training changes that.

The guys I am talking about will do what you tell them to do and be very conscientious doing it but they don't think well outside of that box. If you are a micromanaging sort of guy or you have a mid level manager who is, it could be the perfect employee. These are usually "lifers" in the military.
The guys who do think outside the box, usually did their hitch and moved on.
The military does teach responsibility and a certain maturity that you don't see from your typical college grad.

Wait a minute....

The vast bulk of our trade consists of routine craft.

Clever designs and schemes are the ambit of foremen, project managers and the head honcho -- not the journeymen.

If one is so lucky as to find a clever j-man -- then he's a candidate for foreman. (junior grade)

To use a clever man -- merely to craft his own builds -- is a waste of talent.

Such men are so rare that you can't 'hire them' -- you have to get lucky and promote them when discovered.

(Running an ad asking for for clever electricians lusting for financial abuse does not draw out talent. Such cannot be discovered in any hiring interview. Simply, talent will out, of its own nature. Whether management can bear to recognize such talent is another matter entirely.)

Tesla, I don't disagree entirely; but, I want to be surrounded by the best. It's better than being surrounded by idiots.

Anyway, asking for examples of disagreements with the boss would at least give the interviewer an idea of how disruptive the interviewee is. How the interviewer uses that information is another matter.

There is something to be said for hanging out with ugly friends. You get to be the good looking one.

Here is a hiring practice that eliminates the over-intelligent.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/too-smart-to-be-a-good-cop/#.UWQW1aDXZv8

They were using the Wonderlic test....

You take the test score, double it; then add 60 -- to arrive at a decent approximation of IQ.

That's how a score of 22 became an 'IQ' of 104.

It tops out at 140 -- which would be a perfect score.

It works because it's timed -- and the questions get tougher and tougher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderlic_Test

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As for craft smarts: they're given away by personal tools. Admittedly, it does take some smarts on the part of the interviewer to recognize whether they are poor, average, very good or outstanding tool sets.

No man treats company property better than his own tools.

As Sherlock Holmes would put it: they tell a story.

The Science of Persuasion by Cialdini provided some ideas.

If a person who you intend to hire is told that you expect something from them, they might actually make no commitment to do that. For example, If you say, "We expect our employees to take only 10 minute coffee breaks", when they are caught taking longer breaks, they will feel no shame in that. They never said they wouldn't.

However, if you ask them if they will take only 10 minute coffee breaks, and wait for the answer, they have made a commitment to do that. Then, when they are caught taking longer breaks, they can be shamed with, "you said you would take only 10 minute breaks and you didn't live up to your promise".

Are there trade-related questions that should be asked?

So is this your way of saying "I'm never wrong and I don't make mistakes?

Seriously... you're you... and you're not part of the huge clout of dumb bosses out there. One was more than enough for me, a complete clown that was only a boss because someone put him there, not because he got himself there.

My dad works in a factory where the bosses are thrown out as frequently as the employees, for one reason or another. He's seen more than a dozen in his ~15 years there.

After implementing substance screening the turnaround decreased in half, it's worth paying a bit more and not having a headache.