Job Interview 3

[SteelPE]

I don't quite know where else to post this so I apologize if this is located in the wrong forum

Due to the economic situation my current employment has started to become unstable. I have the opportunity to interview at another company the designs buildings for a different industry. I have the interview later this week and I am a bit nervous. I don't even know if I would even want the job but I thought I would give it a shot.

Now I haven’t had a job interview for over 12 years and I am quite a bit rusty (never really had it 12 years ago either which is why it took interviewing over 10 times before I landed a job). I am wondering if I should bring some samples of projects I have completed over the past few years that are similar to the projects this new company is designing? Is it proper to even bring examples to a job interview if they are not specifically requested?

 

[Maui]

Do NOT bring any project related documentation from your current employer to this interview. That information is the property of your current employer, and as such it is not appropriate to share it with another company that you are considering as a prospective employer. The interviewer may take a dim view of sharing this documentation, because it would incline them to believe that if they hire you, at some point down the road when the time comes for you to look for your next job, that you would share their project information with other potential employeers. You want to make the impression that you will not openly share potentially sensitive material.

Look at the interview as an exercise in improving your social skills. If they invite you in for the interview, they are probably already satisfied that you have the background and knoweledge to do the work. They just want to see if you "fit in" with the other employees. If you're a bundle of nerves during the interview, that comes across very quickly and is not generally desired. But if you can converse comfortably with the other employees, and make them feel at ease while also demonstrating that you have a genuine interest in the work and possess the technical capability to do it well, then they will want to hire you. Communication is key in this type of situation, and you want to make sure that you make the right impression. And having a relaxed attitude really helps.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[SteelPE]

That's an excellent point. Some people were just convincing me to not go in empty handed. I didn't plan on bringing anything other than a folder and extra copies of my resume.

 

[btrueblood]

If there is publicly available documentation that in some way shows part of what you did (i.e. product catalogs showing things you designed) I see no reason you can't point to the pictures and say "I done that" or "I helped with this part".

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Nothing wrong with bringing in some photographs/drawings of whatever projects you have worked on, as long as it's not proprietary. I do something similar... extra resumes, drawings, etc.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[SteelPE]

MacGyver

I'm a structural engineer I don't really deal with proprietary products. Unless someone wants to claim that the information contained in the AISC or ACI codes is proprietary. However, I do believe client information should be kept secret..... and the clients name is typically plastered all over the drawings so I guess I will leave them at home.

 

[mechengdude]

I see no problem bringing in some examples of your current work as long as it's not highly sensitive. I have a portofolio that has come in quite handy at interviews.

The point is you are only briefly showing the interviewer the work. You don't make a copy and leave it with them.

 

[weab]

Steel,

I agree with your earlier statement. I would bring a nice folder with copies of your resume and that's all. If you would be designing roughly the same stuff as your current job, then your interviewer knows what they look like! You are not doing graphic design - something unique and subjective. You are designing a tank or a platform or a retaining wall or some other engineering widget that we'll all seen before.

Maui is exactly correct. Any behavior now would indicate what you might do in the future such as divulge company confidential information even if you feel that nothing you show is particularly revealing. This also means that you don't trash your current employer.

I also agree that by interviewing you, especially in this job market, they already like you to some degree. You are up against perhaps 2 other people that are being interviewed. You need to look comfortable and knowledgeable.

Good Luck.

 

[jmw]

One downside is indeed that you interviewing skills are rusty.
You need to turn this into a positive.
Most companies are used to seeing a fairly rapid staff turnover these days.
They will probably be used to seeing people who interview well, perhaps because they interview often.... being too good may indicate some one always on the move.

What they like, or should like, is someone who is going to return their investment of time and training with long service.
That you have 12 years at your previous company is of course a mixed blessing so you may need to make sure they see it as a big positive.

Long service:
option: the candidate lacks drive and ambition and may be out of touch. A 9 to 5 person who puts in the days work but lacks the interest or drive to improve themselves.
option: the candidate is a dedicated worker who can be consumed by his work and loyal to his employers.

Hidden message to HR: this is someone who is going to arrive here form a job that is probably well underpaid by now and who will see our paltry salary offer as a good deal and who will take everything we throw at him - poor salary reviews, lots of free extra hours worked etc - for years and years before he gets fed up and leaves, if ever.

You need to anticipate how different aspects of your career can be seen as either positive and negative.
You cannot let these questions go unasked or unanswered because if they don't ask you they will ask themselves and fill in their own negative answers. So it is up to you in the job interview to make sure you cover these questions and ensure you present the most favourable interpretation. By addressing them you also show you have nothing to hide.

A job interview is not a one way street.
They are interviewing you to see if you will suit them and you are interviewing them to see if you would like to work for them.
They will want to see some one who does his share of managing the interview, who has his own agenda there and who goes after the answers he needs while providing them the answers they need.

Interviews have a structure.
There are also signs and signals to look out for.
If you get a lot of aggressive questions, it may simply be interviewing style and designed to see how you respond to pressure.
Preparation is all.
You have to anticipate they will look for all the negatives they can and see whether they are valid or not.
If you get a really aggressive and negative question or statement, designed to put you on the back foot, one trick is to use a restatement of the statement as a question or the question as a statement apparently as a ploy to think about a response but what you do is restate the question in a much less aggressive form and then answer your version of the question/statement your way. Do not be afraid to take time to think about an answer, even if you have an answer already prepared.

Find the most negative aspect of your job history and get it out of the way early on.

Build the positive attributes into the later end of the interview.
There will be negatives and positives. You need the negatives buried in the early part of the interview and the positives in the back end. This is another reason to identify what you think will be negatives and make sure they are dealt with early on. Anticipating their embarrassing questions and putting forward the answers yourself steals some of their thunder and takes away some of the sting. Doing so in a relaxed manner also suggests you don;t consider them to be negative at all, at worst neutral.

"you have worked for this company X for 12 years in pretty much the same position and now you want to leave. Why is that?"

Note, they may phrase this as if you want to or have to leave your current employer for some reason and not that you want to join their company for some reason. There is a difference.

In this case you may want to lead off with this one even if they don't, possibly in the chat gap at the beginning (the chat gap is the opening period where some general chit chat is designed to relax people. This is what sales men are trained to do. They usually know which football team their client supports and make some comment on them. Then they move onto other business.)

expect the chat gap and really do use it to relax.
But you might want to use the end of this chat gap i.e. the period before the interview proper, to say something like " It's been a while since I saw a job that interested me enough to apply for it so I should apologise that my interview skills are going to be a bit rusty." (this actually allows you control the end of the chat gap because you are now instigating the start of the interview proper).
They will then either ask what it is you like about their company or why you haven't applied for jobs more often.
This is asking if you have ambition and drive and if you are up to date. Many people manage to stay up to date by changing jobs more frequently. People who stay in one job for too long tend to get stuck in a rut of "we've always done it this way".

You also need to perhaps say that you like your current job very much otherwise you wouldn't have stayed so long and maybe you should have moved around a it more simply to get better money or more rapid promotion... but you were lucky to find a job you really liked enough to not worry so much about those things.
You may also want to suggest that one reason your company were happy to keep you in tat role was that you were always up to date and making sure they moved ahead with the times.

So anticipate a few questions like: why didn't you want to move on to more responsibility etc.
Didn't you feel the need to look for better paying jobs?

You need to think of some good answers to these and other questions you may expect.
Not lies, just favourable interpretations.
You may even want to concede some negative aspects if there is an advantage to them in it. "I guess one reason I am rusty at interviews is because when I found the job I started doing at my company, I liked it so well chasing after better job titles didn't seem so important."
Implied: even if the job title and salary don't seem to have improved, the job has continued to evolved with added responsibilities and importance.

Gain, why are you now wanting to leave your company is going to require a good answer and it should be answered whether asked or not.
Don't volunteer answers for questions you'd rather weren't asked or don't have a good spin on. Be prepared but don't volunteer.

Back to signs. If they continue to press questions about technical qualifications etc. work experience, why you haven't been on the job hunt more often or been promoted more often these are aspects that concern them some what and they need more answers.

Some times interviewers make statements that aren't true. These are usually framed as objections. Sometimes they are a statement of a decision but as often as not they are information seeking.
When they say: "You don't seem familiar with this technology." They are saying you haven't shown familiarity. tell us if you are familiar or tell us you are fully capable of learning new tricks.

If they move on to talk about the contract conditions, this is a positive sign even if they say something completely negative like "Well, I our contract conditions are quite a bit different to what you are used to."
Any time the client (the employer in this case) raises the question of price it means they want to buy.
If you get a longish gap toward the end of the interview it may be they want you to start the questions about terms and conditions.
And at the end you do need to ask how you did which you might do by asking them what the next stage is rather than asking them outright. (What salesmen call asking for the order. Don't ask, don't get). And you have to have a conclusion to the interview which is either the next step or a rejection or a positive.
Another really good sign is when they ask how much notice your company expects.

Oh gosh, I hope the other guys can provide some balance to what I've said, and some other insights.




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[SteelPE]

JMW

Wow, that was long. Thank you for the information. You are only making me more nervous.

Some of what you have discussed has been covered in my resume. My resume doesn't show that I have been stagnant for 12 years. I started out working for a contractor and after I obtained my PE I was moved from one company to another. This shows up on my resume and will hopefully mitigate the problem of being "Stuck in a rut".... but I do agree with you.

I'm truly not even sure I want the job. I have monitored the job situation for a while and have decided to start pulling the trigger now. This company has a very large amount of openings for a wide variety of people. The same amount of openings they had about 3 years ago. This makes me a bit nervous as to why 3 years later they are hiring the same people all over again. This is a question I unfortunately will need to ask them in a tactful way. Maybe I could ask them "I noticed you had many job postings for a wide variety of professionals, is it common for your company to search for so many people at once?"

At least I will be able to gain some experience from this. When I first came out of college I interviewed at about 10 different places before I was hired..... and this is when the economy was great.

 

[stanweld]

SteelPE
Be positive! You are currently employed and you are in a strength position; you are not desperate. You need to interview them as well as they interviewing you; initiate questions! Bring some pictures with you of some of the work in which you were involved but only take them out if invited to do so.

 

[SteelPE]

Well, I went on my job interview this morning. For some reason I am a little bit confused by the experience.

Everyone was nice and accommodating. I met with people from different departments and they all proceeded to tell me about the company. They asked me a few random questions but they were mostly interested if I had any questions. This seemed odd to me because I thought I was going to be grilled with questions. I already knew everything about the company, when they were formed, who owned the company.... just about any information that was available online I had (some of which is pretty scarey when you come to think about it). So I just ended up asking them a bunch of questions about how their design process works.

Now I don't know what to think. I met with so many people I wasn't really able to gauge how I did on the interview. I was there for just under 3 hours. I figure they either already knew who they are taking..... or just out fishing to see if they can dig up some good people.

Well, I guess I will have to wait and see what happens.

Thanks for the help guys.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

When they ask if you have any questions, don't ask about stuff on the website... ask about the people you might be working with, how long have they been there, is there much turnover, are people always busy or is there downtime, is the company supportive of their engineers, is the company in growth or shrink mode, etc.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[SteelPE]

Believe it or not all of those questions were answered by the people who did the interviewing even before I could ask. I knew how long every single person who interview me was at the company. I knew how many people they hired last year and specifically how busy the department I would be working in was. They even told me their bonus structure. Again, they were very specific with the information they were giving me and left little to question.

 

[MechEngr07]

These are some real questions asked by people being interviewed for a job. They might not help you too much in your next interview, but should give you a chuckle:

What is it that you people do at this company?

Why aren’t you in a more interesting business?

Will the company move my rock collection from California to Maryland?

What is the company motto?

Will the company pay to relocate my horse?

Does your health insurance cover pets?

What are the zodiac signs of all the board members?

Do I have to dress for the next interview?

Why do you want references?

Would it be a problem if I am angry most of the time?

Does your company have a policy regarding concealed weapons?

Why am I here?

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Would it be a problem if I am angry most of the time?

Does your company have a policy regarding concealed weapons?

Hopefully these two did not come from the same person ;-)

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[jmw]

In the UK a dress code has been announced for interviews.
This is the Job Centre who have now ruled that it is unacceptable for benefits claimants to come to their interviews wearing the pyjamas.
I tell a lie, it was in Ireland.
In the Uk it is Tescos that has banned customers shopping in their pyjamas.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Sad.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

But wherever the Mount Union High School is, it seems they have banned students turning up for lessons in their PJs.

SO I guess that job interviews will also require a dress code - but that has been discussed elsewhere.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[berkshire]

JMW,
Boy has that changed!
I remember showing up at a job interview in the UK wearing blue jeans, because I had come straight from another job, and getting reprimanded by the interviewer for not wearing an oxford shirt and polyester or flannel slacks.
I did get the job however.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

 

[SteelPE]

Update,

About a week after the interview I called the company to see where the process stood. I don't think the HR rep liked that as she could not understand why I was calling so soon and insisted that they would contact me.

Well, this came as a slight disappointment and with my current employment disintegrating around me I started making calls to some of my contacts (people who knew enough to get out while they could). I stated talking to them about the possibility of going at it myself and if they could offer any support (in the form of projects). To my surprise many of them were actually hoping this is the route I would take and I started to take steps in that direction (calling about insurance and acquiring the necessary equipment to run things out of my house). I am looking at 2-3 projects that are about 70% of what I currently make in a year.

As all this was happening, I was asked to come in for a second interview. I agreed to see what they had to say. The second interview was similar to my first, but with different people. I sent the interviewers out a thank you email with a statement that if they wanted to contact me they could. Well, they did want to ask a few additional questions... which I did over the phone. Once everything was done I got a distinct impression that they are going to offer me a position.

Now, here I am having to make a tough decision, go it alone or work for another company. I guess this is a wonderful problem to have but... ugh.... I guess it is all going to boil down to their compensation package.

Hopefully they are not on here reading this board.