It was fairly casual.

I had an interview with the technical director for the “Conductor Etch Productivity Solutions” group. He asked about my PhD research, which I explained to him. He followed up with some basic questions concerning the work (nothing too difficult).

The interviewer constantly emphasized how much pressure and how intense the job was, especially in solving problems for customers on site. Then, he pretty much said that there was a laid-out procedure to follow to troubleshoot issues, and it seemed actually fairly straightforward.

Mostly, it just seems like there is a lot of pressure to fix a problem a customer might be having within a really short amount of time. He said you might hear about a problem late Friday, then fly out Sunday to Taiwan or wherever, then work on the issue for a couple of days to troubleshoot, then fly back to propose a solution to the team or I am not sure who.

I asked him how much training would be involved, and he said it was basically trial by fire (maybe jokingly...?), but then he said 4-6 months shadowing and working with another person.

So, basically, during the whole interview the interviewer was not consistent with what he was saying, and it was difficult to get a good feel for what this job would be like. I got the impression he is not so happy with his job. Seemed like he was trying to discourage me from being interested or maybe make sure I would be able to deal with the pressure.

I told him I thought I could handle it fine, but I have not heard back.

Are you okay to work with customers who could be extremely mad at you and screaming at you?