How your first engineering interview is going to work

Intro
I was reading a post about finding a job and I thought people who are just about to go on their first real world technical interview might be interested to know how it works at least in my experience. Background I’ve been a hardware/software engineer for 20 years hired at least 50 people into my various groups, been in the interview loop for at least 100 or more and interviewed I don’t know how many people. I've also run coop or intern programs at many of my jobs. Most of my work is startups or the occasional very small company so the process is different than a giant company you might want to work for. We’re usually less formal for starters.

Getting found
If you apply through our website you're pretty likely to get through. We don't have a big pre-screening program like a larger company might. Someone may find you through a job site or linkedin but you may very well get unfairly filtered by someone before you even get to me because we will get hundreds of resumes for a junior position. Sorry I don’t like that part either but it happens.

Resume
You resume is going to hit my desk because someone handed it to me, and I’m going to look at it for about 15 seconds. If I see something I’m interested in I might read it longer to get more details. It’s just that I see so many of these and I’m crazy busy all the time… What am I looking for? Experience and it doesn’t have to be work experience. Right away I’m scanning did you do any interesting projects, intern, coop perfect? Did you build anything? Write an app on your own get a raspberry pi working?
Getting a degree is not easy, but everyone that comes across my desk will have one. That’s the baseline, the entry-level model, I’m looking for evidence that you’re interested and you can do the job. I want to see more than that and there are candidates that have it.

Phone
I might phone screen you, I’d rather not. Someone from HR or a recruiter will likely call you to set things up but they only have a vague idea of what we’re after. It’s the technical people you meet next who are going to make the call to hire you or not.

Get ready
Expect to meet with at least 3-4 people for an hour each. We might cut it down to 30min if we’re interviewing a lot, and we might abort early if you're not doing well. Each person will be of a varying degree of difficulty. I’m probably medium difficulty, and there’s definitely a person in this group that is very difficult but we all know that when it comes time to compare notes.

Questions
I’m after a few basic things. How competent are you? Can you think? How motivated are you? Then what’s your personality like? Are we going to get along are you going to fit with the group? I don’t care about quirks, shyness, weirdness etc. Our team is very friendly but we work hard so I want to make sure you’re not an asshole and that you’ll be willing to do whatever we need you to do.

Experience
Yes I know you’re just out of school but past experience is the best predictor of future success. Coop/Intern is always interesting if you did relevant challenging work. Class projects are okay… senior design is more interesting but if I see that you say got a microcontroller dev kit on your own and made a little project to solve a problem that was relevant to you? That’s something I’m going to be really interested in talking about. Same for apps and software development you took on for yourself (not for class). The only time I’ve hired people with none of this kind of experience was as sophomore level interns, never for a full time position. Oh and don’t BS me here I will ask questions. I want to know what "you" did on that project.

White board
You’re going to the white board, you might be coding, or you might be designing a circuit. I’m definitely going to ask you how you would solve some problems you’ve never done before. My questions will be relatively easy and I’ll watch how hard it is for you. How you approach it, how you get over any stumbling blocks, and how long it takes you. Never tell me you can’t, if you don’t know just get up and try. Ask questions. If you’re completely stumped tell me what you don’t understand and I will help you get to the next step. I’m aware that you are probably nervous in front of me. I will also challenge you along the way looking to see if you standup for yourself and how you deal with criticism. Don’t roll over if you think I’m wrong but don’t be a dick about it.

Personality
Okay sit down now I want to get to know you. If I’m the one who is going to be your mentor I want to make sure we are going to get along. If not I want to know that you will get along with the team and that you can hold your own. Again I don’t care if you have quirks we’re all a little odd here. We’ll probably talk projects, I end up talking a lot about video games or other things you’re into. I’m looking to see if you’re passionate about anything. I’m definitely trying to find out if you’re passionate about engineering design.

Mentor you I will, balance we must seek
Okay if you come work for me I am going to teach you how to be a great engineer. I’m committed to brining up the next generation of engineers and I’m going to give you the experience, the opportunity and the freedom to do your own work. But, this takes a lot of time and effort from me. So in the interview I’ll be trying to figure out if you are a self-starter, if I can give you a task and you’ll get it done and more. I know you’re going to have 100 questions but if I suspect you can work independently I’m going to be much more interested.

Round up
Someone from HR or a manager will force all of us into a room after you leave and we’ll compare notes. It’s rare that we don’t all agree when we find a great candidate but it’s possible that someone has seen a flag. We’ll be comparing you to other candidates and to ourselves when we were junior engineers. Everyone is looking for the same qualities I talked about above. If you got along with most people and you have some interesting project experience you are going to be in good shape at this stage. Finally we vote. You’ll either end up hired, ranked in the pool of maybes, or turned down.

Hope this helps someone out there. If it doesn't work out and you don't get the job don't give up. I know on the interviewee side if you get rejected you think they looked at me and said, "they're not good enough." That may be so or you could have been edged out just barely or you might just have gotten lost in the noise of the hundreds of applicants. Either way take in stride and keep going.

Good luck out there.