Interview Prep
If you've made it to the interview stage, your resume has already convinced the company that you're capable of doing the job. Now your goal is to demonstrate that you're someone they would enjoy working with and that you can apply your technical knowledge effectively.
One of the best things you can do before an interview is prepare several stories so you can adapt to different behavioral questions. Think about experiences that demonstrate leadership, teamwork, problem-solving, handling conflict, overcoming failure, managing multiple priorities, and learning from mistakes.
This is one of the reasons I encourage students to join design teams, engineering organizations, or undergraduate research early in college. Those experiences give you real examples to pull from during interviews. Instead of giving hypothetical answers, you'll be able to confidently talk about actual situations where you collaborated with a team, solved a technical problem, overcame a challenge, or took initiative. The more experiences you have, the easier behavioral interviews become.
Behavioral & Technical Interviews
Most engineering interviews include behavioral & technical questions to evaluate your communication skills, teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving abilities.
If you're looking for a structured way to prepare, check out the Your Engineering Sister Behavioral Interview Vault. It's a growing collection of interview questions organized to help you practice the types of questions employers actually ask.
I highly recommend using the STAR Method to structure your responses:
- Situation: Briefly describe the context.
- Task: Explain your responsibility.
- Action: Describe the specific steps you took.
- Result: Share the outcome and what you learned.
Before your interview, prepare stories that demonstrate:
- Leadership
- Teamwork
- Conflict resolution
- Problem solving
- Handling failure or setbacks
- Managing multiple priorities
- Working under pressure
Having these examples prepared ahead of time will make it much easier to answer behavioral questions confidently.
Example of a good interview answer
"Tell me about a time you had to work through a difficult problem on a team."
Situation: During my sophomore year, I was part of my university's Formula SAE team. We were preparing for competition, and during testing we discovered that one of our suspension components was failing under load.
Task: My responsibility was to help determine the root cause of the failure and work with the team to develop a solution before our next testing session.
Action: I reviewed our original design calculations, compared them to our test results, and worked with teammates to inspect the failed component. We determined that our loading assumptions were too conservative and that stress concentrations near one of the mounting holes had been underestimated. I redesigned the component in CAD, increased the fillet radius to reduce the stress concentration, and validated the new design using finite element analysis before we manufactured the updated part.
Result: The redesigned component successfully passed our subsequent testing without failure, and we were able to stay on schedule for competition. The experience reinforced the importance of validating design assumptions and collaborating with teammates from different disciplines when solving engineering problems.
Technical Interviews
Many engineering internships and full-time positions also include a technical interview to assess your understanding of engineering fundamentals. These questions often cover concepts you've learned in class, along with practical scenarios related to the role you're applying for.
The best way to prepare is by practicing technical questions before your interview, not by trying to cram the night before.
If you're looking for a structured way to prepare, check out the Your Engineering Sister Technical Interview Vault. It's a growing collection of technical & behavioral interview questions organized by engineering discipline, difficulty level, and specialty to help you practice the types of questions employers actually ask.