Interesting Interview Questions
 

I am looking to hire a few mechanical design engineers.

Normally, one of my interview questions is, “Are you mechanically inclined?”

Almost everyone says yes.

My follow up is, “Tell me about a project you have taken on in you home life where you have built or repaired something.”

Today, after an incident with one of my senior engineers, I decided to change up my follow up question... it will now be, “Have you ever changed the tube in a grease gun?”

If they say yes, the follow up will be, “How did it go?”

Alternatively, I am considering bringing a new and clean tube of grease and grease gun and asking the applicant how they would install it, and how the grease gun works. Obviously, I wouldn’t let them get grease all over the place.

What are your thoughts? What weird questions have you been asked at interviews before.

This must be fate. I just bought a grease gun, loaded it up and greased my trucks front end after replacing everything last weekend.

Where do I apply.

I scraped the grease out of the tube and into the grease gun.

That said, while I am an IT professional, my hobbies have nothing to do with IT. My dad couldn't separate his professional life from his personal life and it was a factor in his death at 56. (He'd spend 16+ hours a day sitting in front of a computer screen.) If I got asked an interview question about my personal IT projects, I'd know I was interviewing in the wrong place.

High school school Psychology class: Had a female student that thought see knew everything in the world.

Teacher took me aside and asked if if I could bring something mechanical she would have to put together. I said: I have a motorcycle carb all apart. He said: Perfect, bring it tomorrow.......

Can still hear the class howling with laughter at her.............She didn't have a clue........

Yes a little strange but a friend of mine setup a bunch of gear for network candidates and said build me a network with these parameters for a mid level network specialist role, this was his interview...to my shock no one could do it, although all of them had excellent resumes.
I asked for his parameters and new I could have done it easy, so I thought it was an excellent “don’t tell me what you can do, show me” moment.

I say go for it

I know one company that includes assembling two fairly complicated Lego sets as part of their interviewing process. One using instructions, and one without.

Questions that I use during interviews for designers/engineers:

- Tell me about your best personal Magyver moment. How did you have to improvise a technical solution to get out of a tight jam with limited resources?

- What is the most complicated thing you've had to design without enough knowledge regarding how to do it? Was that project successful? Why or why not?

- What project are you most proud of and why?

- How do you deal with ambiguity in specifications and requirements? (When they inevitably ask "What do you mean by that?" the immediate reply is "What do you think I mean by that?")

^^^these are great!!!

Microsoft used to ask "why is a manhole cover round?"

All are very interesting. I am stumped with this. What did they expect the outcome from that one?

Because a round manhole cover cannot fall into the manhole.
a square, or oval manhole cover could and obviously eventually would
An even triangle could work fine, but more manufacturing cost + more hassle since it needs aligning to manhole.. a round manhole cover is always aligned with the round manhole...

Is boinking the cleaning lady on my office desk wrong? The interview process was usually "my" evaluation process before I selected my next "pimp" :(....

I sucked at it....but managed to get by just fine 'cause the interview processes were total "corporate shams" (three times)... the position was already mine if I wanted it ;)

Outta the "game" now... good luck boyz!

I'm thinking if you want to move up in the organization you should be banging someone higher up on the organization chart.

And shatter my lifelong dream of becoming a banker ;)?

....I don't have secretarial "skillz" either :)

A round cover has only one cross section dimension, therefore it does not have not "weak" spot.

All this speculation mebbe true....but my great-grandpappy is the real reason....

When prodded to get that whole design thingy "project :(" an update...

When I get a 'round tuit....just bite me :)

Light bulb went off ;)

These are questions I would not ask. I paint in pastels and I love art. I have been painting for years - taking on a mechanical project at home, not so much. I can use tools. I'm an ME and have been in manufacturing for over 45 years. You wouldn't want to judge my skill sets based on grades or if I can put a clutch in a car.

I don't believe in GPAs - everyone gets good grade and all that tells me is you studied hard.

Questions I ask:

I will ask "have you ever failed?" What happened?, did you recover? what did you learn?

"Give me 2 numbers that add up to 4?" When I get the answer, ex: 2 plus 2, I respond how about 3 plus 1 or 8 minus 4.

"Can you describe to me what a vending machine is if I have never seen one before?"

that's just a few - I'm looking to see if they have the ability to think, looking for creativity. I'm looking for a creative edge.

I like the questions, UB, fanaudical's as well. Edit: Missed the post above: Nice!

We have an intern program in the summer for both HS and College students, all types of engineering students or wanna-be engineering students.

The first summer we pair them with our composite manufacturing and assemble folks at different stages in the process, from lay-up, tooling, assemble jigs, etc.

The second summer they still work the floor but we get them more involved with design.

We also make our new engineering hires work the floor for three months...a little empathy for the shop folks is a very good thing and that only comes from working the floor.

Invariably the Interns tell us that their experience on the floor shaped how they viewed their CAD work, wiring schematics, tooling design, etc...designs need to be built with cost and schedule in mind.

They learn a lot about trouble shooting and repair, make mistakes and learn from them.

So I like the questions, the practical nature of working a problem.

The grease gun would be my Kobayashi Maru: I still, hundreds of tubes in my life, goon it once in a while;)

I am a injection rubber prototype tech/engineer for a top 100 global rubber company, and have to work closely with the product design engineers. They all seem to have more book knowledge, while I excell in "street smarts" in our approach to solving problems.

The motorcycle carb re-assembly wouldn't have been a problem for me, but I couldn't do the math behind designing it.

“Have you ever changed the tube in a grease gun?”

I'd reply I grew up filling them without a tube. On the farm we used a, lets call it a giant grease gun, held 5 gallons of grease. If you wonder why your grease gun has a nipple on it, that's what we reloaded through.