Within a few days of applying online, I received a call back from a recruiter to schedule a phone interview with one of the senior structures engineers.

It was a fairly standard half-hour phone interview. We discussed the design and analysis work I had completed on a student team at school, as well as the analysis work I performed during one of my co-op jobs. For each topic, I explained the general scope, highlighted a few interesting details, and the interviewer asked questions about specific details or decisions I had made. Overall, it went quite well. At the end, he informed me that he would recommend the recruiter schedule me for an on-site interview.

Approximately 3.5 weeks after the phone interview, they flew me out for an on-site interview. They mentioned it was the earliest they could arrange for everyone they wanted to be present simultaneously.

The on-site interview was very engaging. My recruiter began with a 20-30 minute tour of the facility and factory. It was enjoyable; I got to see various pieces in production and gain an appreciation for the scale of operations.

Following the tour, I delivered a 20-minute presentation to about eight people on some of the work I had accomplished with the same student team. After answering and discussing questions, I excused myself to allow them time to confer before we began the one-on-one interviews.

Over the course of the day, I participated in around 10 one-on-one interviews. Each interview differed significantly in its discussion topics. I answered a few standard "interview" questions, but primarily, we engaged in discussions about technical aspects of my previous work on the student team. The topics covered included design and analysis decisions I had made, the assumptions behind them, the reasoning for those assumptions, and their implications, as well as how I could have performed my analysis differently to improve accuracy.

The "interview" questions I recall answering were (paraphrased):

• Tell me about a time a decision you made resulted in a problem, and how you addressed it.
• Why are you interested in our company?

They also administered a few standard tests and posed questions. There was a written test with five or six questions covering fundamental concepts such as shear and moment diagrams, section efficiency in bending, hydraulics, and free-body diagrams (FBDs). After completing the test, I was asked follow-up questions regarding beam theory and material selection for optimizing beam stiffness. If you understand the basics, you should find most of these manageable.

The other standard test involved a picture of a strut and a surface intended for its mounting. I was tasked with designing a mount, which required me to ask clarifying questions to understand its requirements and purpose.

In summary, the interview went exceptionally well. Everyone I spoke with was enthusiastic and deeply interested in their work. It was a long day, lasting about eight hours, but I did not feel as exhausted as one might expect by the end.

Tell me about a time something went wrong because of a decision you made and what you did about it.