How to Effectively Answer
Interview Questions

Answering Engineering Interview Questions

Answering Engineering Interview Questions

It is important you are comfortable answering questions about your abilities, your career and your interests. This should be your specialist subject – think about it – you’ve lived and experienced it and so possess all the answers. However being sufficiently relaxed and comfortable is paramount. This frame of mind will naturally enable you to open up and recall details quickly from memory.

The opposite is also true. The more anxious you are the more your memory will shut down. Considering the purpose of the interview is for you to communicate clearly how exceptional you are, minimising anxiety is key. And one of the best ways to achieve this is …. Preparation! It all goes back to being ready. In fact before interview consider preparing some answers to reasonably common questions, so you can answer smoothly and naturally during interview.

So read and know your CV and Covering Letter inside out. Be prepared to flesh out any evidence in these documents, with more descriptive stories concentrating on your personal contribution and what the greater impact was (on project, team or performance). 

• What are your key strengths and achievements? Ensure you have solid evidence, ideally quantified, to back these up?



• Likewise what are your key skills? Be prepared to assertively market yourself, ensuring the evidence is consistent with your Covering Letter and CV.



• On the other hand be prepared to talk about your weak points. Can you put a positive spin on these such as stating what training or development you are currently undertaking to improve in these areas?



• You should be prepared to talk about why you left your previous employer. As mentioned earlier, under no circumstances bad-mouth your old companies. Instead talk about what you learned and how you positively moved on, having gained greater experience and insight.



• What are your personal aspirations and plans for the future? Have you got a 5 year plan? Have you considered the next level of job you want to go for, or new skills or niche area? Have you thought about a deeper technical future or perhaps a more managerial corporate role? Whatever you decide, is there a potential route forward for you at the company based on your research? Be prepared to articulate this.



• Talk with passion about why you want the job. Go further by sketching out how you think you’d probably go about performing the role. Which teams or departments would you collaborate with and in which way?

There are various ‘standard’ interview questions commonly asked by employers. You may want to consider doing more research to become familiar with a few more. Once you’ve done this, it’s worth jotting down corresponding answers to focus your thinking on interview day. Ideally your answers should compliment details of the company uncovered in your more general corporate research.

 

Answering Engineering Interview Questions

---

Next...Asking Questions: Your chance to impress

---

Back to Engineering Jobs 

---