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.

I am in IT and for a while it was trendy to ask for your Facebook password. Had that question ever been asked of me I would have got up and walked out of the interview. That said, I have thought of asking that in an interview and if the candidate was willing to give it up, the interview would be over and if they said "no" then we could continue. The problem is, if they were like me I would have to catch the good ones as they tried to walk out.

We'd get along just fine.....

"Before I whore myself out to you guys....I just wanna know...ya got any hot daughters :)?"....

Then mebbe we can talk....

ImaFOS.....but it's raining ;)

I know I am weird, but since my first job at age 16 to now, I have had just one "interview" for a job.

My first job I was offered a job literately, as I sat in class at school. He asked if I wanted a job, and I said yes, he said come see me after school, and he handed me his business card.

At my second job, I walked in cold, no resume, just me. The business owner handed me a 4x5 color negative and pointed me to a small darkroom with an 100% manual color enlarger and he showed me where the paper safe was, he closed the door from the outside and waited. I stepped out a few minutes later and went to the back of the color processor, and loaded the print on. It came out very close to a good final color balance. He said see ya Monday morning.

At the subsequent jobs the owners approached me to hire me since they knew the other business were struggling due to the changes in photography industry from digital and the internet.

I had to do a lot of job interviews for potential employees over the years. It sucks to sit there and ask questions on their knowledge of photography, and try to get a feel if they will fit our needs. It was a good thing for us it was a small business, before all the political correct BS and new laws were put in place. When the business has just a handful of employees, they all have to be top people, and show up every day to do the job. I had to fire more than a few that just could not figure out an alarm clock or a clock at all, or they though taking a nap in the darkroom was OK. I miss all of that like a toothache.

I ask people to explain the difference between understeer and oversteer.

good^ Disagree. ..

All but the last one ask for recall and prioritizing of "best" or "most proud of"... I suppose that might be easy for those with one or two memorable Magyver moments or successful projects...

Anyway, the technical questions, like URY914's there, are very telling. --No embellishment risk, or risk that they are telling of some team member's "Magyver moment"

Oh, and grease gun Q . .?

Who's redesigning the Model T ?

[ducking]

Those and how much I've been drinking determine which end of the car hits first....you dumbazz.

When do I start ;)?

Understeer-when the car hits the gaudrail with it's front bumper (pUsh)
Oversteer-when the car hits the gaurdrail with it's rear bumper (lOOse)

The word understeer starts with a "U" which indicates push.
The word oversteer starts with a "O" which indicates Loose.

At a interview for a Mechanical designer position years ago I was asked to write down the procedure for changing a car tire, I got the position. They found that lots of people including Mec engineers didn't have a clew, and they believed that if you can't change a tire you should not be designing machinery.

That's our benchmark. 'Do you think he could change a tire?'. We have a guy that keeps forgetting you need a clearance hole for a bolt, face to face plates, both holes tapped. SMH.

I like to ask about hobbies. Car repair, engine rebuilding, renovating = good.

You serious?? they dare to ask your password?
So what if you answer "haven't got facebook"?

Yes, it was a thing for a while to ask for the password so they could check you out by your own account. Last week there was an article on the tech paper that said if you don't have social media you have a 30% less chance of even getting an interview.

I don't have any social media other than here really, but I wouldn't tell them that, I would just walk out. Good thing I am not looking for a job right now and I don't think I want to work for a place that relies on your social media for your qualifications.

No way would I give out my password to anything at all. I have a Facebook account, but I post very little, mostly I read the posts from friends. And I do mean real friends, not someone I met once. If they get political or into and BS, I just scroll past. If they get into the weeds with BS, I just stop following them, and that is rare.

They have canned pre-employment tests you can buy that measure math, communication skilz (reading, writing, en englais), and mechanical aptitude.

A candidate would have to do well on all three tests before I would consider scheduling an interview.

Then it's all about:

• Tell me about yourself
• What experience do you have?
• Tell me about your accomplishments at your previous place of employment

That should be enough to weed out the BS'ers.

I interviewed a mechanical engineer a few years back. On his rezoomay he listed 9 previous jobs, most with less than 1 year in duration.
RED FLAG!

In most places it takes almost a year to get rid of a new-hire that turns out to be a total zero.
That was him.
NEXT

I also look at social media: LinkedIn, FB and Instagram

I certainly understand looking at all social media. Lots of stuff on social media show the person doing the things that they do in the real world, and descisions they make. Good or bad.

Why is a manhole cover round?
My answer would have been because the manhole is round.
Next!

How does 8-4 add up to anything?

So yer great-grand-pappy worked with mine did he....small round orb we dance upon ;)

I also ask them, "When would you like to mow my lawn, Saturday or Sunday?";)