I applied to many positions online, but did not get any callbacks. I decided to ask a friend for the email of an HR person and emailed her, asking if they had a position available.

To my great surprise, I got an answer from a manager a few weeks later, asking me to come for an interview.

Great! But the interview was less than 24 hours later, and the manager asked me to prepare a 30-minute presentation on a topic related to the position I was applying for and to study for a 30-minute written exam on thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. Well, I would love to work at Tesla, so I started and managed to be prepared on time.

The interview went pretty well. The people (2 engineers and the team manager) were friendly.

• I presented for 30 minutes and answered many questions (got one a bit off).
• I interviewed with the team for 20 minutes (I was asking all the questions, maybe this was a bad move).
• I took the test, with very back-of-the-envelope calculations. Overall, it was easier than I thought it would be, even though I got stuck on one that involved a psychrometric diagram (not familiar with those at the time) and had trouble giving a typical drag coefficient for a car (Cd ~ .3 to .5) to complete a rough estimate. A correction was made with the manager, so I got a chance to explain my thoughts on a couple of questions.

Cool bonus: While waiting for the interview, the manager showed me a bunch of car parts they were working on, which was pretty sweet!

The post-interview part was the only bad point for Tesla. I waited 7 weeks (I had to ask them 3 times for an update) before they finally told me they picked someone else. Apparently, I was the second choice to a more experienced candidate.

Thermodynamics/Fluid Mechanics test

Presentation on a technical topic