Interviews are one of the most stressful parts of job hunting. Yet, while it is a common notion for candidates that interviews can be challenging, it’s rarely discussed that interviews can also be stressful for interviewers.
As a recruiter looking to hire for a niche job function such as a product design engineer, you will often find that preparing for the interview can be very challenging. This is especially true if it will be the first time you will include product design engineers in your team.
If you are unsure what to ask and how to discern who the suitable candidates are for your product design engineer post, here are seven interview questions you can use for starters.
1. What brought you to this line of work?
One best way to understand the foundation of a job applicant’s career is by knowing how they got to where they are. Whether you are interviewing a fresh graduate, a seasoned professional switching to a new career, or an experienced product design engineer, this question can help shed some light on why they are pursuing this job opportunity. This will also allow you to understand how much they value their line of work.
By learning more about their professional growth, you can better understand where they are headed and foresee how this can impact your company if you decide to employ them.
2. Explain a time you had to use logic to solve an engineering problem.
Logical reasoning is a vital skill for product design engineers. It shows their abilities to solve problems based on the current situation and what they know about their work. Moreover, design engineers need to demonstrate logical problem-solving skills when designing a product—be it software, a household item, or a gadget.
Through this interview question, you will better understand how your applicant applied logical reasoning in a real-life situation, especially the one relevant to their line of work. In addition, this is a good chance for you to analyze further how well the applicants truly understand the job they are applying for and how their way of thinking can impact the tasks they will handle once they join.
3. What processes do you follow to catch any mistakes in your work?
Quality is critical to every type of work. Every professional is always expected to deliver quality work. With this question, you can uncover how your job candidate can help you meet your company’s quality expectations from its employees. Most especially product design engineers, expectations for them are they will be more calculating of their actions. One mistake can significantly impact any product they are designing. Knowing what quality assurance process they are familiar with, you will learn how much value they put into providing quality output.
4. What engineering skills have you learned or improved upon in the past six months?
A professional is always willing to learn new things in their line of work. If you want to hire serious product design engineers, you will consider working with one who values continuous learning. Professional growth requires a constant thirst for knowledge.
So if you want to work with a professional product design engineer, hire someone who constantly aims to grow their skill set by learning new trends in their industry. An intensive workshop, a free online course, or a book about product design or the likes—learning from all these can be considered forms of self-development and ways of professional growth.
5. What’s the biggest engineering project you ever got involved in?
If you want to hire experienced product design engineers, this question is key in helping you understand the professional background of your candidates. It would also be a good idea to add some follow-up questions to this to help you deeply understand what role your applicant played in that project, such as “What was your involvement in this project?” or “What did you bring to the table that made this project a success?”
Chances are, they have already included some details of the biggest engineering project in their resume. If you saw this ahead of the interview, it would be good to look into it online and learn more about your applicant’s involvement in the project. This way, you can anticipate how this success can impact their expectations and demands for the job opportunity they are trying to get through your company.
6. What product design you have worked on are you most proud of and why?
Another good fundamental question to ask aspiring product design engineers is the product design project they are most proud of doing. Anyone applying to be a product design engineer will indeed have experience designing a product, be it as a student, as an intern, or as part of a professional product design team.
With this question, you can better understand what aspect of their product design work keeps them driven and motivated. It also gives you a glimpse of what inspires the applicants to achieve project goals and take pride in their work. This might seem trivial, but someone who takes pride in their work is more likely to be passionate about it. By employing people who love what they do, you can guarantee good results from their job and a high satisfaction level at work.
7. What will be the biggest challenge for you in this position?
Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. To help you understand your candidates’ room for growth and identify if they are the right fit for the job, you must know what your candidates foresee as their challenge when they handle the role of a product design engineer.
Be it a weakness, a new process or tool, or an ingenious product design, anticipating product design engineers’ challenges can help you decide whom to hire, what to do next after onboarding, and how to empower them to be productive team members.
Hire Topnotch Product Design Engineers
No matter what type of business you are in, having a very competent product design engineer in your team will help you transform your product visions into reality. Moreover, product design engineers play a huge role in helping you succeed in creating products that sell to consumers or businesses.
If you have yet to hire a product design engineer for your business and are unsure how to go about your hiring process, let Agile Workplace Staffing (WPS) help you. At Agile WPS, we have helped multiple companies of varying sizes across different industries source the best product design engineers in the talent market. By partnering with us, our specialized recruiters will connect you to the right professionals who can help you achieve your business goals.
Talk to us today and find out how Agile WPS can help strengthen your workforce by finding the best talent to add to your roster.
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