Recently, I became the new controls lead at McMaster Rocketry. In the team’s biggest year with the upcoming launch holding the most difficult part - our own engine. I have loved rockets and space my whole life. But this was also my major leadership position. Managing a team of over 26 takes effort. Many projects and DTEG rules. This position has shown me a lot so far: admin tasks take a lot of time, tight budget constraints (previous co-ops/work did not have set budgets for most engineering tasks), and how to make a team work more efficiently.
The single most influential part of this role has been my experience actually interviewing people for the controls team. There were hundreds of applications for Rocketry, with the highest bracket being controls. Hundreds of resumes, from 1st to 5th year. It was an incredible position of power. I could see the resumes of hundreds of students, all with different abilities and experiences. There were many types of candidates in the first resume and q/a screening.
Many students were older than both the controls co-leads, and far more experienced in terms of co-ops. The downside with older students is that the mass majority have too little relevant experience to justify training them for 1-2 years of work in the club.
Going in, we ended up thinking the 3rd year students would make up the workforce (PCB makers, CAD, and firmware). We interviewed many - and found no matches. Many 3rd years simply could not explain their own projects. Context: in the interview emails, we asked interviewees to bring a project to show us. A lot of candidates (especially 3rd year students) could not answer simple questions. We saw flight controllers, but the candidates could not explain the purpose of a capacitor beside an IC. By third year, many of these students should have learned the purpose of a capacitor in school as well, furthering my bewilderment.
The first years and second years may be the youngest, but turned out to be exceptionally skilled. Many of these students brought in a project in the shortest notice - due to needing to double our original interviews after meeting the candidates. I saw applicable stuff, built properly. Another huge frustration: many upper years brought in incomplete projects (not fabricated or finished), and show no outcome. It is simply better to bring a breadboard project than an incomplete PCB on your laptop.
All in all, I feel like being the interviewer also helped me for interviews and job positions for my own co-ops. We ended up hiring 2 seniors, and 7 1st/2nd years. It is exceptional the candidates we got this year: fast learners, actually enthusiastic people (one guy founded a rocketry team at his college), and experienced people (4th year worked at mda space).