In this article, we will go through the best mechanical engineer interview questions that you can ask, depending on the industry that you are working in. This is an essential step in your process in hiring a mechanical engineer. A normal interview generally includes mechanical engineer interview questions in three different areas:

• Personal
• Behavioral
• Technical

Personal questions delve into the candidate’s motivations, education, previous working experience and future goals in your field.

Behavioral questions analyze the candidate’s aptitude and attitude to deadlines, conflicts, pressure and other responsibilities and situations that mechanical engineers find themselves in.

Technical questions are to test the candidate’s technical knowledge relating to the job you are interviewing for. They will be centered around mechanical engineering, and will test the candidate’s compatibility and ability with regards to the specific role in question.

The Market

Fortunately for those who are looking for a job in mechanical engineering, there is not enough mechanical engineers in the market to fulfill the demand. Conversely, this make the job of recruiting mechanical engineers that bit harder as companies have to bid against each other for best candidates. This may change in the future, with AI (Artificial Intelligence) evolving all of the time, but for now and the near future this applies.

This means that you will most likely be interviewing just two or three candidates, or maybe a little more, for the role that you are advertising. This pales in comparison to business or advertising positions where there are plenty of applicants, and dozens compete against one another for one role.

Even so, if there is just one candidate, they must be ready for the job and fit the criteria. They must also have the right attitude and knowledge need for the role, hard to find in just one person but it is possible you can get lucky!

Lets go through some of the best mechanical engineer interview questions:

Personal Questions

Could you tell me a little bit about yourself?

This is the question that almost every interview (or at least every interview that I’ve every done) starts off with. It gives the candidate to speak about who they are as a person, their experience, passion for mechanical engineering and their background.

They will most likely speak about their education, how it applies to the role, and maybe even some hobbies in their personal life. This will help to connect you both and create a relaxed atmosphere.

Why mechanical engineering?

This is where you want the candidate to speak about their passion for mechanical engineering, their motivation for studying in this field and choosing it as their career. Try to lead them into explaining their engineering and design skills (depending on the role on offer), and find out what their real motivation is for becoming an engineer.

What are your goals as a mechanical engineer?

Do they want to develop their experience in the field, work in a certain sector or learn a particular set of skills? What skills are they interested in and why do they interest them? Does the candidate like the field? This is where you verify their passion for your particular role.

What were your favorite subjects in school, and why?

This is self-explanatory, they will outline their favorite subjects and why, and this will outline what they are interested in and what areas they will be strongest in.

What do you want to do with your life?

What are your salary expectations?

Ching-ching!

Behavioral Questions

What has been your biggest achievement to date?

The candidate will speak about their biggest achievement, where they have really shone and they feel represents their abilities well. This should be an instance where they carried out something unique or came up with a unique solution. This should not be something they had success with that would be in their day-to-day responsibilities. The candidate should aim to impress you here.

Describe a situation where you met your goals.

Similar to the above question, this will hopefully show a situation where the candidate followed instruction and met their goals as expected of them.

Describe a situation where you failed to meet your goals.

Honesty is the best policy here. An honest expression of their shortcomings is what you are looking for, everybody fails, it is those who can admit and face their failures that will improve in the future.

Failing to meet their goals because they are ” a perfectionist” is not an acceptable answer here!!!

Describe a conflict you had with your boss or colleague in the past

Hopefully just a misunderstanding or lack of communication that can be learned from, not anything sinister or illegal…

These questions can be asked in many different ways, the aim is to find out how the candidate works under pressure, their strengths, weaknesses in the work place and how they work as a team. Remember, an employee’s behavior and ability to work as a team is as important if not more so than their knowledge or technical ability.

As always, silence is not an acceptable answer to any of these questions. Just because a candidate may not have prepared the answer to some behavioral questions, they should be able to draw on a previous situation and walk you through it. They may be nervous, so give them some time to think.

Technical Questions

Due to the nature of the mechanical engineering field, there will be some technical questions asked during the interview. The difficulty of these questions depends on the role that you are interviewing for, and the level of you own knowledge. If you are a recruiter thinning out candidates in the first or second round of interviews, then you can keep these questions quite simple.

The technical questions will also heavily depend on the specific role and what industry that role is in. While we cannot give sample questions for every job and field out there, we can give some examples that you can base your questions off of:

• What computer programs do you use in your work? AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor and Fusion 360 etc.
• Your project is to make a new car. How would you start from scratch?
• Have you ever worked with torque?
• What type of bearings do you prefer for particular applications and why?
• Can you describe the various types of springs and tell us when we would use each type?
• What materials would you recommend for shafts manufacturing?

And so on. You may ask the candidate(s) to take an aptitude test which will you give you an idea of where their strengths lie. Some examples of aptitude tests are: the Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude, or the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test.

Conclusion

As mentioned previously, the technical questions will differ from company to company and from role to role. Aptitude test can also help to determine the level of skills a candidate has.

The personal and behavioral questions will always be similar to those mentioned above, as they are finding out who the person is who is interviewing and what their values are as a person.

Remember, some of the best employees are not those with the highest qualifications or most impressive experience (although these can help… a lot!), but those who are hungry to work and progress in your company. Sometimes it is worth it to give the candidate a chance that doesn’t have the qualifications, but has great communication skills and will be a pleasure to work with.

Thank you very much for being here – we appreciate you taking the time to read our content. So what do you think are the best mechanical engineer interview questions? What do you think is the most important quality to look for in a new employee? We would love to hear your opinions, and if you have had previous experience hiring, or just would like to add to the article, please let us know in the comments below! And sign up to our newsletter for more of the same!

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