We’ve all lived the nightmare. A new tech shows up at the co-op, and you try to be welcoming, but he can’t seem to get up to speed; the questions he asks reveal basic ignorance; and his work, when it finally emerges, is so unracer that it ultimately must be rebuilt from scratch by more competent people. And yet his sponsors--and/or an actual recruiter, if your store has been infested by that bureaucratic parasite--swear that they only scout above-average/A-level/top-1% people.
It’s a big problem, especially now. There’s a boom on. I get harassing emails from recruiters every day. Everyone’s desperate to hire mechanics… but mechanics are not fungible. A great tech can easily be 50 times more productive than a mediocre one, while bad ones ultimately have negative productivity. Hiring one is a terrible mistake for any organization; for an LBS, it can be a catastrophic vibe-killer. So how can it happen so often?
Like many of the hangovers that haunt modern bicycle engineering, this is ultimately mostly Wal*Mart's fault. Back when they were the evil empire where everyone secretly wanted to work, they were famous for their Schwinn, Nakamura, and eventually Ozark Trail bikes (Why with Shimano groupsets?) and, of course, they asked new bike assemblers about mechanical engineering theory; "Tell me which force affects a cantilever the most..."
So what should a real interview consist of? Let me offer a humble proposal: don’t interview anyone who hasn’t accomplished anything. Ever. There is no excuse for bicycle mechanics who don’t have a tournament, event, or even one Critical Mass they can point to and say, “I won this, all by myself!” in a world where Strava and RidePal have free service tiers, and it costs all of $25 on AliExpress to buy everything you need to build a top-end racing bike.
