How did I get that Job? Nobody can be more amazed than me. How could I pass a test using a CAD program that I have barely used? Did I A-cheat, B-lie, C-conspire or D-it is written? All of the above!Claire rescheduled her dental appointment so that she could come to Somerset with me on Friday morning. We decided to try and leave before 5am so as to miss the M1 and M25 traffic and give ourselves a chance of getting there with time for a breakfast. I was dreaming all night about the 
interview. When I say all night, until about 2am when I woke and couldn’t get back to sleep again. I had alternate dreams and nightmares about my interview / test. All this was very good practice and I was well prepared for my day ahead when we set off. My biggest fear, before I went to sleep, was if it all went terribly wrong as it could have been a most embarrassing situation. I knew that wouldn’t happen as my sleep had prepared me for that event; I was still no better at using the program only well prepared for the situation.
We started with a Little Chef (or big chef) breakfast at about 7.30am near my new job. Good old Hesston, it was lovely, and just the power breakfast I needed to improve my confidence. I was taken around and shown the entire factory and introduced to everyone until about 11am from 8.30am. Really nice people and a proper old fashioned engineering company, just like they used to be. They even still have official tea breaks where everyone stops what they are doing for tea. There are about 150 people working there and the factory, offices and stores are spread around like a rabbit warren. I worked out who would be assessing me and worked on him. I always get on with his type anyway; the ones with long hair, tied back in a pony tail. I asked lots of questions about him and he took great pleasure in explaining most of his life story while I looked interested whilst working out the best way to approach telling him about my lack of experience before taking the test. I managed to find the perfect time to explain my concerns about taking a couple of days to get used to the program again as I hadn’t used it for a long time and that I had not actually used the drawing side of the package before. I also explained that I had used lots of other similar CAD packages and it doesn’t normally take me long to pick 
anything up.
I was very lucky as everything just seemed to happen perfectly; situations arose naturally that I just happened to know about. Unusual things that wasn’t common knowledge, so after a while it must have seemed to him, that I almost new as much about the industry as he did. In actual fact, it had been 25 years since I had worked in that industry. At one point, when my assessor was talking to the new MD, the MD expressed his concern that they had little knowledge of the new tray filler machine that would be coming into the factory in a couple of weeks. I joined in by asking which tray filler it was, as I had worked on tray filler design before at Molins. He said it was a TF3. I couldn’t believe my luck as that was the only tobacco machine that I had ever worked on. I explained that I was part of the team that originally designed the TF3 and maybe I could help.
All this time Claire was walking around Chard looking for a suitable bed and breakfast establishment for me in the unlikely event that I passed my days trial. Little did she know how luck I am sometimes, especially when in these sort of difficult situations. She found the most suitable one and said that Chard is a lovely little “oldie worldy” town in the highest part of Somerset with lovely views but still only a few miles from the coast. Apparently some of the beaches are great, especially as Somerset is not a normal tourist area so the area is still natural.
My test had started, and I was expected to “reverse engineer” some of the parts taken from a cigarette packing machine assembly. Reverse Engineering, is the term for copying someone else’s design by stripping it down, measuring the parts and drawing up your own drawings of it; effectively legal piracy. The only thing to beware about is if there are any parts or assemblies that have patens outstanding. I managed to fumble my way through modeling the simplest part and half do a drawing of it but got stuck with not being able to find the right tools in the program. Rather than waste too much time, I started modeling the next simplest part which I had just finished when my assessor came back. I explained that I couldn’t find the correct tools to finish the first drawing and he showed me where they were. I showed him the second model and that I was temporarily stumped with this too. He took over to help on the model just as my computer crashed. Thank goodness it was him and not me, and at least he could see that I had done quite allot before it was lost and he didn’t have to take my word for it. He decided to install some updates while he was there which took us well into the afternoon by the time they were done leaving little time for my test. I only just had time to remodel the lost part and no more time for the drawing part that I didn’t know. The home time bell rang and he was over just in time to watch me complete the model that he had lost. Passed – see you Monday!
interview. When I say all night, until about 2am when I woke and couldn’t get back to sleep again. I had alternate dreams and nightmares about my interview / test. All this was very good practice and I was well prepared for my day ahead when we set off. My biggest fear, before I went to sleep, was if it all went terribly wrong as it could have been a most embarrassing situation. I knew that wouldn’t happen as my sleep had prepared me for that event; I was still no better at using the program only well prepared for the situation.
We started with a Little Chef (or big chef) breakfast at about 7.30am near my new job. Good old Hesston, it was lovely, and just the power breakfast I needed to improve my confidence. I was taken around and shown the entire factory and introduced to everyone until about 11am from 8.30am. Really nice people and a proper old fashioned engineering company, just like they used to be. They even still have official tea breaks where everyone stops what they are doing for tea. There are about 150 people working there and the factory, offices and stores are spread around like a rabbit warren. I worked out who would be assessing me and worked on him. I always get on with his type anyway; the ones with long hair, tied back in a pony tail. I asked lots of questions about him and he took great pleasure in explaining most of his life story while I looked interested whilst working out the best way to approach telling him about my lack of experience before taking the test. I managed to find the perfect time to explain my concerns about taking a couple of days to get used to the program again as I hadn’t used it for a long time and that I had not actually used the drawing side of the package before. I also explained that I had used lots of other similar CAD packages and it doesn’t normally take me long to pick 
anything up.I was very lucky as everything just seemed to happen perfectly; situations arose naturally that I just happened to know about. Unusual things that wasn’t common knowledge, so after a while it must have seemed to him, that I almost new as much about the industry as he did. In actual fact, it had been 25 years since I had worked in that industry. At one point, when my assessor was talking to the new MD, the MD expressed his concern that they had little knowledge of the new tray filler machine that would be coming into the factory in a couple of weeks. I joined in by asking which tray filler it was, as I had worked on tray filler design before at Molins. He said it was a TF3. I couldn’t believe my luck as that was the only tobacco machine that I had ever worked on. I explained that I was part of the team that originally designed the TF3 and maybe I could help.
All this time Claire was walking around Chard looking for a suitable bed and breakfast establishment for me in the unlikely event that I passed my days trial. Little did she know how luck I am sometimes, especially when in these sort of difficult situations. She found the most suitable one and said that Chard is a lovely little “oldie worldy” town in the highest part of Somerset with lovely views but still only a few miles from the coast. Apparently some of the beaches are great, especially as Somerset is not a normal tourist area so the area is still natural.My test had started, and I was expected to “reverse engineer” some of the parts taken from a cigarette packing machine assembly. Reverse Engineering, is the term for copying someone else’s design by stripping it down, measuring the parts and drawing up your own drawings of it; effectively legal piracy. The only thing to beware about is if there are any parts or assemblies that have patens outstanding. I managed to fumble my way through modeling the simplest part and half do a drawing of it but got stuck with not being able to find the right tools in the program. Rather than waste too much time, I started modeling the next simplest part which I had just finished when my assessor came back. I explained that I couldn’t find the correct tools to finish the first drawing and he showed me where they were. I showed him the second model and that I was temporarily stumped with this too. He took over to help on the model just as my computer crashed. Thank goodness it was him and not me, and at least he could see that I had done quite allot before it was lost and he didn’t have to take my word for it. He decided to install some updates while he was there which took us well into the afternoon by the time they were done leaving little time for my test. I only just had time to remodel the lost part and no more time for the drawing part that I didn’t know. The home time bell rang and he was over just in time to watch me complete the model that he had lost. Passed – see you Monday!
1 comment:
Congratulations Phil, its not luck matey, its experience. Something you've got in spades. Well done.
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