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L
Student
Woodbridge, Virginia
7
Questions
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I have been a technician for thirteen years. Tomorrow you walk into work and I shake your hand, I'm the new guy at your job. What forward qualities would you want to see from me in your work environment?
I have worked mainly on electrical, HVAC, and enterprise IT equipment as a technician. What qualities would you want to see me have in your work environment? I am hoping for answer from professionals in fields not related to the work I have done. Which skills I might have would be a match for your field? And please, I can fix your printer and the garbage disposal in the kitchen, I'm not there to do that!
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1 answer
Joseph Neilson
Radiation Detection Physicist
273
Answers
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Updated
Joseph’s Answer
That's a massively broad question - and depends on how much of a change you're going for in this hypothetical situation - that's hard to judge from the question as written. Are you coming in as the new guy in my role specifically, or do you just mean shifting into a different industry sector but still as some sort of electrical, IT, or service technician?
The former (you're starting as a junior radiation scientist), I'd be looking for a few things like:
- a clear, believable and justified story about the reason for the change of career and the scaling back of career level. Is this a particular passion or something?
- evidence of sufficient qualifications for the role (maybe your original qualification was in nuclear engineering, or maybe you've been taking part-time classes)
- the right attitude:
- eagerness to learn
- recognition that you're starting from scratch and shouldn't expect to fast-track seniority through age or unrelated experience
- safety-conscious focus
- willingness to utilize your previous knowledge and skills where relevant. You've hinted at this, but are sending mixed messages with "I'm not here to fix the printer" part. Although I see where you're coming from, it's a bit of a red-flag comment. We do have a minor degree of technical troubleshooting to do on occasion, things like network connectivity to instrumentation and that sort of thing; and I'd want a new starter with prior experience to step in and help with that rather than wanting to opt out as an "escaping from that" attitude.
In terms of the other situation - there are indeed a bunch of electrical engineer, service engineer, and IT or HPC engineer roles which touch on aspects of my work in radiation measurement - both in my specific field of fusion energy physics research, but also in nuclear power generation, or medical physics settings. In these sorts of roles, I'd be looking in more detail at which of your exact technical skills carry over - are we making systems interfaces with PLC or API programming? Are we wiring up a control cabinet? Board and component-level circuit-board testing? Getting into the nuts and bolts of vacuum systems, high voltage supplies, motors and pumps?
We'll be teaching you everything you need to know about the exact radiation detector components and how to stay safe around radiation, but the more of the surrounding systems and how to manage those other industrial hazards that you've already got, the better.
I'm still looking for a similar attitude around eagerness to learn, safety oriented, etc - but I'm also looking at what specific technical competency you're bringing to the table and where we need to spend more or less time training and retraining aspects of that.
Consider slightly narrowing the parameters of the question to clarify quite what sort of answers you're looking for
The former (you're starting as a junior radiation scientist), I'd be looking for a few things like:
- a clear, believable and justified story about the reason for the change of career and the scaling back of career level. Is this a particular passion or something?
- evidence of sufficient qualifications for the role (maybe your original qualification was in nuclear engineering, or maybe you've been taking part-time classes)
- the right attitude:
- eagerness to learn
- recognition that you're starting from scratch and shouldn't expect to fast-track seniority through age or unrelated experience
- safety-conscious focus
- willingness to utilize your previous knowledge and skills where relevant. You've hinted at this, but are sending mixed messages with "I'm not here to fix the printer" part. Although I see where you're coming from, it's a bit of a red-flag comment. We do have a minor degree of technical troubleshooting to do on occasion, things like network connectivity to instrumentation and that sort of thing; and I'd want a new starter with prior experience to step in and help with that rather than wanting to opt out as an "escaping from that" attitude.
In terms of the other situation - there are indeed a bunch of electrical engineer, service engineer, and IT or HPC engineer roles which touch on aspects of my work in radiation measurement - both in my specific field of fusion energy physics research, but also in nuclear power generation, or medical physics settings. In these sorts of roles, I'd be looking in more detail at which of your exact technical skills carry over - are we making systems interfaces with PLC or API programming? Are we wiring up a control cabinet? Board and component-level circuit-board testing? Getting into the nuts and bolts of vacuum systems, high voltage supplies, motors and pumps?
We'll be teaching you everything you need to know about the exact radiation detector components and how to stay safe around radiation, but the more of the surrounding systems and how to manage those other industrial hazards that you've already got, the better.
I'm still looking for a similar attitude around eagerness to learn, safety oriented, etc - but I'm also looking at what specific technical competency you're bringing to the table and where we need to spend more or less time training and retraining aspects of that.
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Thank you so much for answering this! I understand the question wording was vague but you gave me a great answer! Thank you again!
L