You might have recently graduated from one of the well-known mechanical engineering colleges such as MIT or Cambridge. All the years of perseverance and hard work have earned you great-looking test scores. You might even have a very impressive looking CV. But this is not going to be sufficient to get you into the work force, you will have to job hunt and pass that interview now.

Because of the lack of prior experience, you would probably not know what to expect at the interview. Getting through an interview successfully is something that most schools never teach you. Don’t fret though, as the following section is going to cover the standard procedure that most engineering firms go through, along with the commonly asked questions during the sit down interview.

First of all, most hiring managers will want to learn more about you, your character and your specialties and talents. Finding out this type of information is what the interviewer is trying to do. They want to know where you belong in the broad field of mechanical engineering. When asked what type of work you prefer doing, the worst thing to do is to say that you do not have any preferences. If you say this, you’re going to fail the interview for sure you.

The field of mechanical engineering requires specialization. As an example, some engineers spend time in the office doing design, while others spend entire days at a manufacturing plant. There are many other variants of this but you get the idea.

You will also be asked several questions about your engineering and design software knowledge. Although you would have already stated your software experience within your CV (ie. Solidworks, AutoCad, and so forth), they might still ask you what you like most about each package, as an example. Prepare yourself for some really in-depth questions here, and provide equally detailed answers.

You will be asked questions to determine how good you are in dealing with customers as well. Mechanical engineering is not just about freedom of expression and design, but there is a business aspect as well. Without clients, there is no business, and without business, there will be no revenue to pay your wages. Your ability as a salesman will definitely help improve your chances of scoring the job.

The interviewer will also want to know how well you work in team environments. In all disciplines of engineering, not only mechanical, working in a team is crucial and necessary. It goes without saying, interviewer will be trying to learn more about you. He or she will want to know if you have any problems getting along with other people.

Lastly, you should keep up to date with technology. This is important even after you graduate, since the chances that what you have learned at your time in college would have already been outdated, is high. The interviewer will probably be asking you many questions that cover the latest technological updates, to find out how well you’ve been keeping up.

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Today my Work from home schedule followed an unusual plan. Usually I work from home throughout the day, normally tied up with Online jobs of different kinds, often I am writing marketing copy for clients. Today however I had two customer meetings in my diary which got me out of the house for the best part of the day. It is a pleasant change whenever this happens but it works far better if it’s well organised.

In this instance there were a couple of writing tasks I had left to get out of the way in order to achieve a pressing deadline. It is temptation to organise this work for later on, once the meetings are done and upon return to base. However I have been doing work from home long enough to have learned that this is a mistake. Meetings take longer than scheduled, or start late, or both. Often this is somewhat draining, especially if they are important, say for example you are trying to recruit a potential new customer. You can find yourself getting home late and worn out and in no fit state to write properly. So today I set my morning call for 6 a.m. and completed a three hour creative effort before getting going.

An additional spin off of this was that it meant organising my meetings for rather later in the day, when the traffic had calmed down somewhat. It is a real advantage when you work from home that you miss the daily rush hour. Don’t ruin that by organising meetings early in the day and placing yourself back into the rush hour traffic with no good reason.

I concluded my first meeting by lunchtime and I had planned a bit of a gap before the next one. When the weather is nice it’s pleasant to undertake a little exercise, today that is a walk along the river in Durham, where my second meeting was to take place.

Arrived home before 5 p.m. again missing the worst of the rush hour, and the remainder of the day is my own.

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