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A lower-skill, temporary position opened shortly thereafter and, because of his followup letter, I instantly thought of him and invited him to take that position. He accepted.

He impressed us so much on the job that after 1 week he was doing the same work as his higher-leveled peers, and had submitted several process improvement ideas. I hired him full-time, promoted him, apologized for not hiring him the first time, and gave him a raise. It turns out that his engineering experience was not from school, so his technical training was spotty. But his practical skills were immense — that explained why the technical interviews didn’t go so smoothly.

There are a number of other things that can add or subtract “interview points”.

The handshake can be a -5 pointer. It seems silly, but the handshake does make a first impression. It is pretty much assumed you will shake hands with some confidence. If you do it well, you get no points. But if you don’t, then that hurts you. There is no excuse for shaking hands poorly — it just indicates you are an idiot, have no confidence, or that you don’t care.

Being a leader is important, and it can be difficult to show your skills in this area as a new graduate. During school there are golden opportunities to be a “project leader” that you cannot let slip through your hands. These experiences (good and bad) are valuable during your interview. Examine internships, team class assignments, clubs, sports teams, etc. — be prepared to discuss any examples of taking a leadership role. How did you handle the lunkhead who didn’t do the graphs for the final report? What happened when the microwave antenna guy delivered his portion of the class project over budget, too large, and too heavy, despite the design reviews? These are all relevant since the real world has the same lunkheads. And they will probably make more than you.

Even if you don’t aspire to be a manager, being a leader shows that you have confidence and good communication. Engineering is rarely an isolated job and if you cannot stand up for your ideas and communicate them well you are not going to flourish.

Good lord, make sure your resume has no misspelled words and is nicely formatted.

"Don't call us. We'll call you."

We interviewers might be old farts who don’t text message well, but we invented the Internet damn it, and we know how to Google. Make sure you are happy with your “web presence”. If you are the winner of your fraternity’s “Loudest Beer Belcher” for 3 quarters in a row, you must know that we will see that photo of you with the toilet seat around your head on the web. This is not the image the most employers are looking for when hiring.

Personally, as a young NeoSprocket, one of the most difficult interviews I ever experienced was when the interviewer handed me the chalk (no dry erase markers back then!), showed me the board, asked me an hour’s worth of very simple technical questions.

“What is resistance?”, “What is reactance?”, “What is impedance?”, “What is an ideal op amp?”, etc – all things that I thought I knew well.  I did fine, and got an offer, but I realized from that experience that if you keep digging into the foundation of your engineering training, you often find that you are perhaps fundamentally confused about one of the basic concepts. This guy never once asked me about the details of my senior project, but was focused on my freshman and sophomore fundamentals.

I use this interview technique now, generally by picking some topic mentioned on the resume that I personally know little about, and asking dumb-ass questions to have the candidate teach me about it. This really shows how well the candidate understands his work — quite often the candidate simply puts down a lab project they performed without having any idea what it did, how it worked, or why the project was important. Make sure you put these conversation “trigger points” in there to draw out the questions. You want the interviewer to ask you about these experiences, so make them easily spottable. And either be prepared to teach it, or don’t put it down on the resume.

Knowing someone on the inside will help, but it REALLY helps if it is someone who honestly thinks you are good. Bonus points if the insider is in a position of authority. It only helps a little to have a casual acquaintance — they can make sure your application is on track and in the right hands. But I don’t know how many times I have heard this:

One interviewing technique that is difficult (for me anyway) is behavioral interviewing. “Tell me about a situation that made you feel like giving up”, “Give me an example of a person you had to work with that you did not get along with … how did you deal with this?” — these can be touchy-feely and often have lots of followup to explore. This is where having the teamwork and leadership experiences is valuable (ie. lunkheads) to draw upon.

"How's that White Russian comin' along, son?"

I put a lot of technical weight in g-jobs (garage jobs, hobbies, things you did on your own). For example, I find it hard to accept an electrical engineering graduate who never had the curiosity to solder anything together on his own. Or a computer scientist that never created his own experimental programs. Or a chemical engineer who never ruined his/her parents’ carpet with their chemistry set as a kid. Quite often these hands-on projects are a great predictor of engineers who are good producers.

Many companies these days make use of temporary or contract engineers – this might be a good way to get a foot in the door. One way to do this is to sign up with a temporary agency – where you can sometimes get insurance and some benefits. The agency is like an “engineering pimp” that gets you temporary work at the end-companies and they take their pimp-fees off the top of your pay. There are often agreements between the temp agency and the company regarding how to hire you full-time, if they like you. Hiring temps full-time has happened many times that I have seen.

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  Technical Interview Questions

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  The Front: a Job-Hunting Perspective

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  The First Job: Shotgun Approach

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  The First Job: Resume

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  Your Thesis = Free Vacation