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Interview Questions & Preparation

03-03-2022
Job seeker advice

So, this is the ‘make or break’ stage. You have spent hours putting your CV together, approaching agencies, Engineering / Manufacturing businesses and trawling through social media portals to find your new and exciting career opportunity.

You have the pressure of making a good first impression. With this in mind you still need to ensure this is the right opportunity for you too, so have questions prepared to find out more about the business, progression, training, their values, social activity etc.

Whether you are a CNC programmer, Service Engineer, Senior Software Engineer or Project Manager you still need to ensure you are prepared, informed and aware of the business you are potentially going to pursue a career with.

Interview preparation

  • Ensure you look at the business website – Look at the company history, meet the team, news articles to ensure you have an understanding of the business and possible talking points.
  • Research the company.
  • Google the type of business to see where they stand in the market against competitors.
  • Look at ‘companies house’ to obtain details about the owner / directors and finances.
  • Search social media portals such as LinkedIn and Facebook to get a better insight into the potential managers, directors or owners you could be working for.
  • Review your own social media portals to ensure that there isn’t anything on there you would not want a potential employer to see, like that picture of the last group holiday in Ibiza!
  • Revise your CV to ensure you can confidently discuss the full work history and qualifications.

Interview questions to be prepared for: -

In addition to your standard interview questions, which you should be prepared for, such as… tell me about yourself? What are your weaknesses, where do you see yourself in 5 years? Why should we hire you? La-di-da-di-da!

You should also be prepared for competency based questions…… you are better off having examples and not needing them, then needing them and not having them!! 

What is the most challenging engineering project that you have been responsible for in your current (or previous role)?
This is a good way for the client to get an idea or what ‘You’ consider to be challenging and how you have had to work under pressure, to achieve a target or deadline. 

Give an example of when you have had to demonstrate leadership skills?
This can be an example of working with and guiding a team of people or an individual. This is a great way for ‘You’ to be able to highlight and define your leadership skills.

Have you ever had to be involved with cost reductions?
In the current economic climate, cost reduction is key in many businesses, this could be in regards to allocating strict budgets or maybe a new competitor has forced you to look at the agreed rates or profit margins...?

There are of course thousands of different competencies based questions that could be asked, so best to have one example of as many situations as possible.