Interview preparation
The interview answers that quietly fail
Our evaluators sit a lot of mock interviews, and the answers that fail are almost never factually wrong. They fail in three specific ways, and a candidate who knows the three can hear themselves doing it.
7 min read
One: the answer with no number in it
"I improved the efficiency of the process" is not an answer, it is a claim. "I cut the reject rate from about nine per cent to under four over two months" is an answer, because it can be interrogated — and being interrogated is what you want. An interviewer who follows up is interested.
If you genuinely do not have the number, say what you measured and why it was hard to measure. That is still evidence of engineering judgement. What reads badly is the confident claim with nothing behind it.
Two: the answer that never ends
A good technical answer is roughly ninety seconds and stops. Long answers are usually a candidate searching, out loud, for the point the interviewer wanted — and every extra sentence dilutes the one that landed.
The fix is structural, not verbal: state the situation in one line, what you did in two or three, and the outcome with its number. Then stop and let them ask. Candidates find this much harder to do than to understand, which is why our mock interview sessions are recorded and played back rather than described.
Three: the answer about the team
Asked what you did, many graduates answer with what the project did. "We designed the heat exchanger network." The interviewer cannot hire the team. Say what you personally owned, including where it was small — owning one calculation well is a better answer than a vague share of something large.
The question almost everyone wastes
"Do you have any questions for us?" is not a formality and it is not the moment to ask about leave. It is the last thing the panel hears, and the strongest use of it is a question only someone who understood the role could ask — about the problem behind the vacancy, the constraint the team is working under, or what the first six months are actually judged on.
How to practise this alone
Record yourself answering three questions on your own work and play it back with a timer. You will hear all three failures immediately. Most people cannot spot them while talking; almost everyone spots them on playback.
- Does every claim have a number, or an honest reason it does not?
- Did the answer stop inside ninety seconds?
- Did I say "I" where I meant I, and "we" where I meant we?
Next step
Practise on a panel,
not on an employer.
Mock interviews with practising engineers who hire in your discipline, recorded and played back with the evidence.