Interview Story - Accomplishment

As a project engineer, I was managing a team of equipment maintenance technicians and a Probe Card Repair Center. As a manager, I wanted to keep my workforce engaged and ensure that we retained our talent.

My Probe Card Repair team was comprised of “operators” that were trained to perform very precise and accurate repairs under a microscope to hardware known as probe cards. To better understand their work, I asked them to show me their work and proceeded to attempt what they were doing on a scrap probe card. It was quite difficult. This was enlightening. and I better understood their skills and how they applied it to their daily routine.

This led me to look at their pay scale. My Probe Card operators were on the same pay scale as regular operators which had much less complexity. The training time for a probe card operator was also higher, a couple of months before they could be fully trusted. Further, the fine motor skills required meant replacing these operators could be quite challenging.

To better retain this talent, I proposed to my management that since the Probe Card Repair operators have such a specialized, and required skill, that they needed to have their pay scale adjusted to allow for the added complexity and accuracy. After going through several iterations and assessments with HR, the new pay scale was approved. The operators were grateful for their pay bump, and I didn’t lose one team member in the following two years that I stayed in this position.