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Interviewing the Employer

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Rich2001

Mechanical
Mar 23, 2001
896
With no product going through the shop, my former employer laid-off 59 for the shop, staff and management. I guess I am one of the lucky one being a Welding Engineer my phone has not stopped ringing.

Questions to ask:

Some of the things I learned, though the hard way, to look for when evaluating a potential employer:
[ul]
[li]How many different product are being produced? - in this case only one product though variations for different customers.[/li]

[li]Available of skilled workers that need only minimal amount of training - In this case, there was not a pool of experience SAW welders, they had to be developed in house; due to the layoff the company has lost some highly skilled trained workers that will be not return.[/li]

[li]Where are the customer sites they are providing product for? Is the manufacturing plant is in the wrong location with respect to customer's job sites? Shipping costs can quite high for oversized loads.[/li]

[li]Are the sins of the earlier management teams? Any skeletons in the closet?[/li]

[/ul]

What else to ask or to find out about?

Vita sine litteris mors est.
 
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Most jobs that are open, used to be filled.
It can be informative to ask "What happened to the person who used to do this job?".

Don't expect a straight answer... but do closely observe the body language, and listen to what's _not_ being said.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
 

Ask them what they believe differentiates them from the competition. Do some homework first; it often leads to unexpected insights. Take heed to MikeHalloran’s advice.
 
Although you may not be able to do it at every interview I would recomend asking if you can talk to some of the employees who will be your peers/co-workers. You can ask them what the day to day work actually consists of, questions about the company (stability, culture, etc.), and maybe most important questions about the manager.

Since you will be talking to an inidividual who may have an overly rosey or glum opinion about certain things you'll have to have your BS detector on, but I think it can give you some real insight into what your potential employeer is really like.
 
Get an org chart. Ask questions about qualifications of the people on the chart in your immed vicinity [bosses, immed co-workers]. You should then have a good feel for the company you might be keeping.

The worst case for me was finding out that I reported to a HS grad who had some training in CAD. His boss was no better. The chief engr was a QC type, no engineering training. [The company closed down recently.] By the way, this was a QS9000 approved company.
 
I keep ending up in places that don't distribute their org charts... probably because sheets of silly putty gum up most copiers.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
 
One thing I have recently decided is important is where the balance of work comes from. If you are looking for long term stability, a company which receives a fair amount of business from both the public and private sectors is a good fit. This is something I would research before going for an interview.

I know of many people who have been laid off lately, but those of us who are in firms where much of the work is government funded have seen little change in workload as infrastructure spending has been accelerated.
 
What is your turnover rate at this company?

I've worked a couple places that had about 100% turnover annually for engineering staff. Really good indicator of a place not to work.
 
When I left aviation at the end of Vietnam, I went thru a cultural shock in industry. I found unqualified co-workers, figurehead bosses without tech backgrounds, unethical bosses [used contractors on retainer to do personal construction projects for executive row], and insanity in privately owned firms.

One brother formed a competing company against another brother. I got out when the crazy one hired a 'spoiler' to cause drain of talent. The company is now on the skids.

The antidote is going to reputable larger firms with depth of engineering. Spend time finding one.
 
plasgears: the OP's results may differ. I've found quite the opposite. Large firms that have terrible turn-over, which treat employees as "resources" to be exploited, and which expect you to subjugate your entire life to their fickle "needs"- even expecting you to uproot your family every few years.

Larger firms tend to be publicly traded, which means that their shareholders are idiots with no basic understanding of the business, and who have a very short-term approach to their decision making. They only care what the value of the stock and the dividends are- they don't give a rat's @ss about the employees or the business itself. Management are only to happy to dump employees to satisfy the idiots, regardless of what this will mean to the long-term viability of the organization.

Larger firms also tend to have "human resources" departments, which should be read as a sign that the company is too big to treat you like a human being.

An ideal situation (like my own!) is to get yourself into a firm with a successful business model- hopefully after most of the suffering of getting the business started is over with. A business which will treat you as a partner in the business and which will share the profits with you in a meaningful way. Firms that are hiring while others are going bankrupt are one set to investigate. Firms which don't need to advertise to meet their staffing needs are another (they're tough to find though- you only find these through networking).

What to ask? How much turn-over do you have, in this position and in your entire engineering department? What kind of profit do you make, how consistent is it, and how is it shared? What industries are your customers in (ie. as a gauge of how recession-resistant the business is)? And what's your strategy regarding growth of the business- how much has it grown, and where do you see it in five years (beware too much growth too fast)?

This presumes you have a choice: with a deep recession coming on after years of boom times, there will be a lot of beggars out there who can't afford to be choosers. It's going to be a rude awakening for a lot of people who thought they had it made, having never worked through a recession in their entire careers to date...
 
moltenmetal

You have some very valid points, but I don't entirely agree. I have worked for small, medium, and very large companies and had some good and bad experiences.

I worked at one small 'family' style company where the owner acted like the 'dad' but he turned out to be an abusive father. Everyone that worked there hated seeing him. The ones that stayed long term had no self esteem and required earning someones approval to feel normal. Needless to say I didn't last very long. (I guess my dislike for that job is shining through so I will say I have also worked at smaller places and had great experiences)

I currently work at a very large company and have all the things you describe.

The key is to find the type of culture you are looking for. I don't think it has a lot to do with the size of the company.

But in these times a bad job is a lot better than no job.
 
JakeAdkins: yeah, we all have biases based on good and bad personal experiences- I'm not free of them by any means.

We agree that working for a private company or a small company is no recipie for happiness on its own. Clearly it is also not impossible to find a public company which treats its employess properly either.

We also agree that any small company with a family component is going to represent very risky employment for a non family member.

My argument is that the very nature of a public company makes it less likely to treat its employees properly. Public ownership introduces a systematic bias into the employer-employee relationship: if the shareholders are idiots, the management will need to behave idiotically every once in a while to satisfy them.

As others here have quite correctly argued, it is frequently beyond the individual managers' power to deal fairly with the employees in such organizations. The larger the company, the more likely some overpaid stuffed suit in mahogany row is going to slay 10% of the workforce arbitrarily in order to bump the stock value higher for a moment (and keep their own bonuses and options and incentive payments rolling in).
 
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