In the 6 years I’ve been interfacing with training depts. (3 of them), I’ve come to the opinion that they’re only as good as the people the operations dept sends to them.
For instance, a plant brought in 10 no-previous-nuclear engineering grads for a non-licensed operator class, then started a second 10-person class running concurrently of ex-navy nukes. The overall performance of the no-previous class exceeded that of the ex-navy guys, both tangibly (failures & exam scores) and intangibly (seeing their methodology in the plant). In my mind, there shouldn’t have been a delta between the two, but in the hiring process, the engineering hires were selected deliberately, whereas the ex-navy were brought in last minute based on whoever passed the POSS and accepted the offer. It gets back to finding people that not only meet minimum qualifications but also have the proper character to get a little past the “80% score pays 100%” mentality when necessary.
I’ve also seen license classes where the engineering instant SROs “get it” and score very well compared to ex-navy, and classes where an ex-navy-academy guy became the most colossal ISRO failure training has ever seen, just because someone in the hiring process apparently drank the guy’s koolaid.
It’s why I believe training should have a place in the Ops hiring panel, to provide a check-and-balance on the trainability of prospects, and to get a feel for who’s coming to them down the line so that they have a fair chance of being adaptive and ready.