I submitted my resume on a general job recruiting website. I was retiring from the military after 22 years.

I received a phone call the next day from a headhunter who asked a few questions about my current position, qualifications, and general information. A few days later, I received a second phone call, once again asking very general information concerning the type of work I was involved in (Avionics repair on helicopters), periodic maintenance, management experience, and education (high school graduate and some college).

After that interview, I received an invitation to interview at Chandler, AZ within the next week. I accepted.

There were approximately 50 other candidates interviewing at the same time. Intel calls this a recruiting rush.

We had an icebreaker at the hotel the first night where we had an opportunity to meet with some of the managers and ask questions. If you didn't want to ask questions, that was fine; it was more of a chance to get to know Intel.

The next day, I had two interviews. In each interview, there were two people conducting it. One person asked questions geared towards job culture, EO, and ethics, while the second person was geared more towards technical information.

Typically, they wanted you to give an example of how you handled different issues in the past. For example: "Could you describe an example in the past when you were under stress or time constraints while performing maintenance?"

Most were open-ended questions like that. If you have a lot of maintenance experience, be prepared to illustrate various things you did to make periodic maintenance better, how you dealt with stress, examples of being a team player, training, quality, and safety. All of these areas will be covered.

For the most part, there were very few actual technical questions.

I went through the interview on a Friday and got an offer on Tuesday of the following week, which I accepted.

The only technical question I had was a schematic that was placed before me. I had to analyze it and describe what was happening in it. It was a simple schematic of an emergency shutoff button.

Basically, when the button was pressed, it de-energized a relay that was sending 3-phase AC to the main module. That was the only technical question I answered, other than basic periodic maintenance questions.