On Paper

During the dot-com boom, there were a lot of rich people on paper. But when the bubble burst, these folks were back to their regular middle-class selves. Similarly, there are a lot of people I've interviewed over the years that look great on paper, but the bubble they've created for themselves almost always** burst when meeting them in real life.

** I say almost always because if you're a woman of a certain visual quality and you come to the interview dressed a certain way, being exposed for your padded resume may not matter. Case in point: The Siren.

This past week, I interviewed what appeared to be a very promising candidate for a contract position. He graduated from the top private high school in town, has a master's EE degree doing phase-locked loops, and has five years of experience doing analog IC work. In previous posts, I wondered where all the locally born engineers are as every analog designer that I work with in my local office are immigrants. But now, here's what appears to be a locally bred specimen, with seemingly great credentials. When I greeted him at the front door on the day of the interview, he looked vaguely familiar, like an ex-colleague but with much less hair. It then came flashing back that we had worked at the same company before when he was still a student (same company as The Siren).

So, we went to our big corporate conference room, pulled open a few shutters and sat down. We exchanged a bit of small talk before I scanned his resume in a bit more detail and asked him to follow me to the white board located up front. I asked him to draw a few things for me, some of the circuits he's designed. He had trouble. Some circuits he was only able to draw partially, some he wasn't able to draw at all. Red flag! But OK, give the guy a chance. Let's dial this interview down a notch and ask him about some basic questions. I moved on to the transistor.

The transistor is to analog designers what the brick is to masons. If you're an aspiring analog designer and you can't answer a few simple (what I consider simple) questions about transistors, it's going to be hard for me to hire you. And if on top of it, you can't even recreate some of your very own circuits from memory, either from your previous job and your very own Master's thesis, then I question your sanity in seeking an analog IC design position in the first place. After an hour interviewing -- him hemming and hawing, me giving leads and hints -- it was clear to me that his sanity was indeed in question.

Needless to say, he was a big disappointment. It's like getting all excited after having watched a great movie trailer only to find out that the trailer was the best part about the movie.

In my next post, I'll discuss in a bit more detail just what basic transistor questions he was unable to answer and a few other circuit basics he got wrong. If you're a new or almost-new grad thinking about a career in analog IC design, I suggest you play close attention. You will be asked those questions in an interview.