The manager's job

Recruiting, developing and motivating the people

Recruiting: Let us look at this #1 task of a manager. The most important ingredient of a workplace is PEOPLE because they are like the blood in a human body which nourishes every organ of the body 24/7. ITC had an excellent practice of recruiting at the campuses driven by the respective functional heads actively in selecting the people considered by them to be most suited for the job on hand.  When I had to recruit engineers we set up a sequence of steps to screen the candidates 

• Take the names of the students who scored 80% in their finals

• Conduct a written test of technical questions for the above candidates and rank them. 

• Conduct an oral interview for the top 20 candidates from the above list. Select the top 10 from them after my oral interview.

• Interview the above 10 by the Managing Director. I don't remember any candidate rejected at the MD level. 

I prepared a series of questions like the following samples, to ask the candidates during my oral interview to assess their grasp of the Engineering concepts

• Can you explain how the bicycle pump works?  We know that the air enters the pump when the piston is pulled up and gets pushed down when the piston is pushed down.  

(A) Why doesn't the air escape back into the atmosphere during the downstroke of the piston when the pressure inside the pump builds up?  

(B) Why doesn't the air get back to the pump during the upward movement of the piston when the pressure inside the pump is low?

• Why does the cross section of  cantilever beam  decrease towards the free end? Why is it not kept same as at the supported end?

• When you move a bicycle pedal forward, the cycle moves forward. But when you turn the pedal backwards, the cycle does not move backwards. Why?  

• There are two electric heaters - one is 1000 Watts and another is 500 watts. Which heater element has the higher resistance?  

Developing: I think developing an Engineer consists of making the expectations clear, holding him accountable for the results, welcoming his feedback and acting on it and providing the needed interdepartmental support. Some examples are provided below. 

• Every morning I received the reports of previous night's breakdowns from the nigh shift Engineers of different sections of the plant so that I would have prior information before going to the office.  If a shift engineer reported a bearing failure, I would ask if he had any observations  about that bearing: 

  •  was it dry or well lubricated?  

  • was there any water inside the bearing housing? 

  • Did he observe any unusual noise during his inspection rounds? 

Being very smart and hard working people, very soon the shift Engineers learned that I would be asking many such questions to arrive at the cause of failure and devise preventive measures. At my retirement farewell party, some of the young Engineers told me that before they picked up the phone to call me, they  would write down their observations so that they won't cut a sorry figure during my pone interview!  Gradually their inspection and observations improved to find the root causes for failures and helped in taking the preventive measures.  Here is an article related to this approach. Did it happen suddenly?