Interview Preparation
“the act or process of getting ready for something”
You’ve successfully navigated your way through the application process and you have secured an interview, congratulations! Few things feel better than securing an interview.
A job offer does, so let’s prepare!
Preparing for your interview will increase your chances of being offered the job. In order to prepare there is three key areas which you need to research -
The Company
The Job
You
The Company
In general, gaining an understanding of the company is important. This shows the interviewer that you have done your background reading and also shows that you are interested in the company who will be employing you. Finding the information and developing your knowledge about the company couldn’t be easier nowadays with easy access to company websites and social media platforms. Most company websites have a section named “About Us”, “Our Purpose” or “Who We Are”. This is a good starting point. Within this section the company's mission statement, strategy, corporate governance and history should all be readily available. From this, you can navigate through the website to understand if the company is the subsidiary of a larger parent company. Identifying projects the company has delivered and are currently working on will provide you with knowledge and appreciation of the different types of engineering it delivers. Information such as the number of staff members the company employs and where the headquarters are located is good information to take note of. Finally, you can also look at the recent performance of the business, as most businesses usually display their profit and revenue information on their website.
In summary, when researching a company use the list below as a guide -
Mission Statement
Strategy
History
Subsidiary
Previous/Current Projects
Type(s) of Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Civil etc.)
Number of Employees
Headquarters
Profit/Revenue
The Job
After carrying out research on the company, you need to turn your attention to the job itself. Before submitting your job application you will have read the job advertisement. In the article “The Dos and Don’ts of a Strong CV”, it recommends that you highlight the key requirements of the role. Why is it important to be aware of the job requirements? During the interview the interviewee is likely to want to know why you have applied for the role.
Using the job requirements, create example questions you may be asked during your interview -
- Manage projects from the concept to delivery
- Tell me a time when you managed a project from concept to delivery?
- Lead the design stage of projects ensuring the design meets the clients requirement.
- How would you approach leading the design stage of a project, while ensuring the design meets the clients design requirements?
Work with team members to develop and substantiate engineering solutions, generating innovative and technical solutions to add value for our client.
Have you worked in a team to develop an engineering solution, generating innovative and technical solutions which added value to the client?
The final section of this article will focus on your skills and experiences. Using your skills and experience you can develop detailed evidenced based answers to answer the example questions.
The other half of The Job preparation, is identifying why you want the job. There are many different reasons as to why you may want this job; it may be a graduate position in the renewables sector which allows you to be part of the journey to Net Zero, it could be a technical role giving you an opportunity to use and further develop your computational analysis skillset such as conducting Finite Element Analysis, it may be a design related role using software such as Autodesk Inventor or an engineering management role such as a project engineer position. Why you want the role is subjective, but nonetheless you need to prepare for the inevitable question asking you “why?”.
You
You have researched the business, you know what the job is and the skills required for the job, its time for you to reflect and build a bank of information about you.
Before you begin to reflect, remember that you have managed to get to this point, achieving an interview means that the hiring manager wants to know more about you. That is an achievement and something to build your confidence from. You don’t need to be the loudest person to succeed in an interview. Building confidence is a big element of pre-interview preparation. Try and use this section to sit down and recognise the value that you will bring to the company you are applying for.
Some of the key skills of an engineer are below -
Team member
Good communicator
Leadership
Problem Solving
Using the skills above, think about examples from your past, this could be school, college, university, part time/full time jobs or volunteering. Focus on what you did and how you demonstrated the skill.
As part of your self reflection, ask yourself “What are you passionate about?” Is it the type of job? Is it the sector? The company? Only you know what drives you. The interviewee will be keen to understand what your aspirations are, therefore preparing for this type of question will allow you to have a stock answer.
Questions
It’s important ahead of your interview to prepare questions that you wish to ask. While it is for you to determine your own interview questions, this is a reminder to prepare some.
It’s likely that you will get the time to ask two or three questions, therefore a good way of working out what to ask is using the section headings above. For any job you interview for, it’s important to understand what level of support the business will give you as you develop. A common target for most engineers is to achieve professional registration, such as Incorporated or Chartered Engineer.
Below, are a few example questions that you may use -
“Achieving Chartership status is one of my career goals, do you support engineers working towards this status?”
“Will you provide a mentor to help me work towards professional registration?”
Overall, you will increase your chances of being offered the job if you prepare. Building your knowledge of the Company, the Job and You, will allow you to create evidence based answers to example interview questions.
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