Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Phone Interview Thoughts

There's a blog by a programmer that many readers here probably don't have much experience with, but he tends to make a lot of sense about things related to programming in the real world. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that he has some perspective on the phone interview as a filter of applicatnt. It might benefit those on the physics job hunt. In particular, I was very happy to see this quote:

During this stage, you should be looking for evidence that the candidate is a problem solver: the kind of person who gets things done.

That's one thing I find separates good physicists from bad. Not how smart they are, but whether they get things done. The worst offenders don't have any clue that they get nothing done.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Science is empirical. The future lays hidden under our work boots. Know the fear, do it anyway.

If you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen into Management.

Anonymous said...

I worked in a physics lab many years ago. The most important interview question for prospective graduate student research assistants was "when your car needs repair, where do you go to get it done?" The correct answer was "I do it myself, of course." That done, the second question was "do you really think you can pass the qualifying exams?"

Maybe now graduate students make too much money or cars are too complicated.

Angry said...

Or maybe an oil change is just so cheap! Oh yeah, and it's tough now to dispose of oil responsibly.