Applying for Engineering Job Roles

RE: Applying for Engineering Job Roles

dkibbey — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:24:39 GMT

This is a great blog on a subject I would love to cover more on our community. We have tried to do some regular webinars on the topic of careers and have repurpsoed some of the content into ebooks. This is much more in-depth and Covid has without a doubt changed the dynamic. A great piece of content that can help others. Thanks for creating!

RE: Applying for Engineering Job Roles

navadeepganeshu — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 16:09:44 GMT

This is cool and very invoking.

Thanks for bringing in all perspectives.

RE: Applying for Engineering Job Roles

three-phase — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 21:54:58 GMT

Interesting to read the different perspectives out there on recruitment and interviews.

[mention:b0bc65b9ecdc4307bd967592f00e340a:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] you make some interesting observations. I personally tailor make my CV to the job I am applying for and they are the type of CVs I like to read. It shows to me that the candidate has thought about the position they are applying for and what the work might entail. The length of a CV is always a grey area, I like to try and keep mine as short as I can, but when I am reading them, I will actually read the complete application / CV / covering letter.

I will always try and avoid salary discussion during an interview and I have never actually researched an actual interviewer before. I would probably be uncomfortable doing that. I do research the company I am applying for and I would also expect any candidate I am interviewing to have done research about the company, I have specifically asked before, what they know about the company or site they are applying to.

I studied the recruitment process for one company I worked for as part of my leadership / management studies. If I remember correctly it cost over 2 years salary to recruit and initially train a person for the technician role I studied. That is a lot of investment, so it was always important for me to obtain the best recruit. But the best technical or qualified applicant may not be the best for the role. There is also the need to understand how the recruit would fit into the existing team. This is especially important for smaller more niche engineering teams.

I would not have a problem with someone asking about training, it shows that they may be aware of their own limitations, yes there is a danger that they may give the impression that they are just coming to get specific experiences and then leave to go onto something better.

Over the years that I have interviewed I have learnt one thing - that I will never find the perfect applicant. There is always a compromise between qualifications, experience and personality. I take the view that an interview is a 2-way process, i.e. the applicant is interviewing me and the company as much as I am interviewing them. I will always start off an interview with some general chat and I have no problem with a bit of humour if it makes the applicant relax.

In more recent years HR have adopted a more softer skills approach to interviews, with asking the type of questions such as tell me about how you acted courageously, how you resolved an argument etc. I am not sure it works. In the last set I interviewed for I had some candidates that were very good and fast at answering these questions, almost to an extent that they had been coached in their responses. It almost gave me the impression of a staged / acted out interview.

The other aspect of applying for jobs is that you just do not know who the other applicants are. You can write your best CV and have your best interview, but there can always be someone out there with just that little bit better experience, or the extra qualification, or just creates a better impression of themselves in the interview. Asking for feedback for interviews that you both succeed and fail at is a very good point, not all companies do it, but I do always give feedback if it is asked for and try to keep it honest and positive.

My best interview I felt I had was for a maintenance engineering position at a manufacturing plant - two interviews, but never got the job. My worst is an even more memorable one that I do have a good chuckle about. Another maintenance role at a distribution centre, I was interviewed in the works canteen as no other room was available. I remember the buzzer going and the morning shift trooping in to get their meals, someone sits themselves down next to me with a plateful of scram, 'looks nice I say', 'yeah it does mate, you not having anything' was the response I got. `I looked across the table to the interviewer who remained in stone cold silence, so I turned back to the guy and said 'nah, I am just having a job interview actually'.

Never even got offered a cuppa during the interview either. Interviewer didn't want to show me around the pIace. I got offered a second interview, but I made my mind up walking out of the place at the end of the first interview, thinking no thanks.

Kind regards.

RE: Applying for Engineering Job Roles

dougw — Sun, 27 Sep 2020 12:09:39 GMT

Good pointers [mention:b0bc65b9ecdc4307bd967592f00e340a:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] .

The hiring process has been changing radically with HR relying very heavily on third party services or social media resume repositories to supply candidates. The applications themselves consist of a few bullets, barely more than single word answers to some on-line form questionnaire. The vetting process seems to have devolved into checking that some keywords are included in the meager text.

As a manager, I get involved at the interview stage, but the short-list resumes supplied in recent years have not been of very much use. In the last several batches of resumes I reviewed, there was a total of one resume that had even one complete sentence in the whole document. And not one cover letter. In the past, one could get a pretty good idea of who the best candidates were by reading the resumes. This is no longer true. For whatever reasons, well written resumes have just disappeared.

By the time someone gets hired the hiring company needs to know a lot about them - I don't get why anyone feels resumes are not a key part of this information gathering phase. They are like any proposal, you have to show enthusiasm and differentiate yourself from the other candidates. Simply ticking boxes on a form is not going to impress anyone.

With the current climate of social distancing and virtual interviews, resumes should be even more important.

RE: Applying for Engineering Job Roles

colporteur — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 21:45:13 GMT

Nice job Shabaz, the amount of writing alone in the post indicates to me there was considerable time invested.

At one point in my career, I was an instructor for a professional development course at a college. Part of the course was creating covering letters and resumes. I had interviewed a local manager that was looking to hire four IT System Administrators. The newspaper advert generated over 2K responses.

If you look at the first culling of applications as a simple math exercise, you can get a sense of what the applicants are up against. Let's say the recruiter spends 30 seconds per submission. Now that could be CV or cover letter or both.

30sec X 2000=60000sec=1000minutes=16.66hours The manager indicated, human resources got the 2K pile of applications to 400 and the panel doing the interviews was required to select 40 applications for interviews.

A student was upset during a class that I refused to read their covering letter. The opening paragraph was four fingers width long. I indicated, I didn't have time to read a four finger length paragraph. His response "but it has all the information you want." Again, I don't have the time or the energy to read a four finger wide paragraph. Taking the paper away his response "That is dumb! If you read it you will find all the information you are looking for." This was after providing my lecture on the scale of work for 2K applications.

My last comment is what I refer to as post board interviews. This is an interview after you failed to get the position. It would be what you are calling Take Failure Gracefully. They are easier to arrange, if the position you are applying for is within the company you are working but can sometimes be arranged if the interview is external.

If you can get a person that was part of the interview process to listen, the open line I have used is, "Do you have five minutes to conduct a post board review with me? My job is to find myself a job. I was really interested in the position your firm had open but I was not the candidate you selected. I have three questions I would like to ask. Your answers will give me knowledge that I can use improve myself for the next interview." I had more success than failures when I used this.

Oh yeah, you may not like the answers! Do not try and defend yourself. Try and get them to give you feedback you can use. "I didn't like the way you answered the questions." Can you tell me what you were expecting and how I might improve?

Listening to someone tell you what they think is wrong, is hard. Especially if you truly cared about getting the job. It can be about things you could have changed and it could be about things you have no ability to change. It is difficult to hear but rewarding (for me) none the less.

Ha, I have written almost as much as you. Sorry not my goal to move the spotlight. Great information. Well thought out. I am truly happy when I say, I don't require it now that I am retired.

RE: Applying for Engineering Job Roles

genebren — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 19:47:13 GMT

Great points! The one that resonates the most with me, as it was very helpful in several of my interviews, was "Research the Interviewers". Making a connection with your interviewers is very important. What better way to do this than to know a bit about them. When given a opportunity to describe an interesting project or assignment, finding an example that will touch on an interviewer experience will help you to stand out in their minds well after you are gone.