I’m passionate about recruiting. There are few decisions that a manager makes that are more important than hiring decisions. Your philosophy and standards for recruiting are a key driver for the improvement of the capabilities and long-term growth of your group. As my boss recently told me, “The talent of your staff is one of the caps on your performance.”  I started working with our internal recruiting team in 2007 and have never stopped since. The main reason is that I see it as a key responsibility to the organization. The great fringe benefit, though, is getting to know a large group of incredibly talented students and an only slightly smaller group of incredibly talented professors.

Back in March, I had the privilege of being on an impromptu panel on careers in industry for physicists at the APS meeting in Baltimore. What struck me was that my colleagues from Dow, DuPont, and other companies had very similar views about recruiting to what I had learned. The students in that session asked us great questions about how to get hired for an industrial position. Inspired by this, I wrote a short piece on the plane ride home, which the great folks at Physics World published in the September 2013 issue.

I’m hoping that in the near future, my colleagues at Science on Google+ and I will be hosting a Hangout on Air for science and engineering students at all levels to ask a panel of industrial scientists questions about their careers. Keep an eye out for that in the near future.