Preparing to Interview
Abstract
Chris and Fred discuss how to make a good impression when interviewing for a reliability engineering position. How do you prepare?
Key Points
Join Chris and Fred as they discuss what you can do to prepare for a (new?) career in reliability engineering. What can you do to prepare yourself to make a fantastic impression on your prospective employer?
Topics include:
- Relax. Remember that you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Not all organizations are ‘fun’ to work for when it comes to reliability engineering. And preparing yourself is one way to help you relax. Make sure you are ready to answer the question ‘what would you do?.’
- Value. Understand what it is your organization values (… and show how you can help)
- Ask questions. This shows that you are interested and an ‘enquiring mind’ that is all about the vital few and not the trivial thousands. If you are interviewing for a young startup company … then you should have already thought about what reliability challenges they are likely to experience and be able to talk about them during an interview. They are probably not interested in your ability to plan a military-centric reliability growth testing schedule!
- ‘Work upstream’. Are you the sort of person who wants to know why something broke, and what you could do to fix it? … you may be ‘born’ to be a reliability engineer! Always appear as if you are trying to arrest the problem as early as possible
- Have an answer for any questions regarding ‘standards.’ If you are interviewing for a military organization, you probably need to know all the military-specific standards out there. But also talk about how those standards should (or should not) be applied to whatever it is the organization is building.
- Have an answer for any questions above ‘statistics.’ But statistics that are likely relevant to your prospective employer. Which might not be a lot!
- Show that you can collaborate and influence. Reliability engineers need to work across lots of different domains and groups within larger organizations. Show that you can do that!
- Have an answer for professional development. Get some if you don’t have any. There are lots of ‘lower level’ certifications you can find. Find the one that works the best for your prospective job. Or simply complete one of the many courses you can complete through online learning service providers. Just don’t say ‘nothing!’
Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.
SOR 997 Preparing to InterviewChristopher Jackson
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