Engineers are a necessity in society. They’re responsible for everything from our cars to our televisions to designing and making our dock lifts. The job of the manufacturing engineer is to ensure that everything works they way it should.
Any delays or imperfections can impact the advancement of technology and the increase of innovation. In order to be a professional in this field, one needs to be adept at analyzing productivity, allocating resources, and managing cost while maximizing production.
If you are interviewing potential manufacturing engineers for positions within your company, there are certain questions you might want to ask.
About the individual
These questions can focus on the candidate’s schooling if need be. Chances are you will have their resume in front of you, but it is never harmful to have them discuss their experiences as an engineering student.
- Did you prefer in-class or practical courses?
- What are your qualifying skills?
- Do you think you are overqualified or underqualified for this job?
- Do you work better on your own or part of a team?
- What motivates you to do your best on the job?
- What are your professional ambitions?
- Where you always interested in engineering?
About the profession
These questions will deal directly with the day-to-day and long-term life of the manufacturing engineer.
- What do you value most as a manufacturing engineer?
- Is there one thing you would change about the profession?
- What made you decide to become a manufacturing engineer?
- Was there ever an instance in your personal life where you had to apply your skills as an engineer to solve an everyday problem?
About past work experiences
These questions will help you identify if the candidate has previously worked in the field and had any success. Remember, failure is okay if the engineer used the negative experience as a learning tool.
- Do you have previous experience in this field?
- What challenges have you encountered in the past and how have you overcome them?
- Can you give an example of a positive experience you provided for a client?
- Can you give an example of a negative experience you had with a client and how you were able to get past it?
These questions are meant to be a useful guide. It is very possible that the manufacturing engineer you are interviewing will be fresh out of school and have no experience working in the field. In that case you may have to slightly alter the questions to be appropriate for the interviewee.