Job Interview Questions – IT and Engineering Positions

Here are all the job questions that I tend to ask during specific IT Positions and other related roles. Take a look and practice.

General Job Interviewing Questions

1. Tell us a little about yourself.
2. What are your most difficult/challenging classes or classes you didn’t like?
3. Give an example of something you’ve done at work or school that demonstrate your willingness to work hard.
4. What sorts of things have you done to become better qualified for your future career?
5. Describe how your position on a group project contributed to your team’s goals. What were the team goals?
6. Talk about your role in a team project?
7. Describe the most significant written document, report or presentation which you had to complete.
8. Describe a work situation in which you had to take a risk. What was the outcome?
9. Has anyone ever asked you to do something unethical? What did you do?
10. Tell me about a time you had to confront a peer, customer or colleague.
11. What do you do when you are faced with an obstacle to an important project? Give an example?
12. Give me an example of when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty to get a job done.
13. Tell us about a time when you took responsibility for an error and were held personally accountable.
14. What experience do you have in this field?
15. What do your co-workers or classmates say about you?
16. What have you done to improve your knowledge in the last year?
17. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
18. Why should we hire you?
19. What is your greatest strength?
20. What is your greatest weakness?
21. What would your previous supervisor say about you?
22. Tell me about your ability to work under pressure.
23. What motivates you to do your best when at work?
24. What qualities do you look for in a boss?
25. What position do you prefer when working on a team project?
26. Describe your work ethic.
27. What do you expect of the workplace/culture?
28. Describe a situation where you were on a tight deadline and how did you handle it.
29. Are you comfortable taking on a leadership role?
30. What is your best quality?
31. What is your worst characteristic?

 

Job Interviewing Questions for Computer Science/ Software Engineering

1.  What is your experience with threaded applications?
2.  What is you experience with database applications?
3.  What is your experience with gui applications?
4.  What is your experience with embedded systems?
5.  Function overloading?
6.  Function overriding?
7.  Mutex and Semaphores?
8.  What languages are you most familiar with?
9.  What languages have you learned?
10.  Describe a team project. What technologies did you use in the project?
11.  What algorithms did you use/learn?
12.  Your experience with Object Oriented Programming?
13.  What scripting languages do you have experience with?
14.  What debuggers/tools/ides have you worked with?
15.  Have you done any side projects?
16.  Describe the mechanic of how you actually go about writing a program.
17.  How do you view the contents of text file at runtime?
18.  In which technology/technical focus are you most interested? What classes have you taken to prepare you for that interest?
19.  What operating systems have you worked on?
20.  What programming languages are you familiar with?
21.  What type of technologies have you used so far in your education and/or work career?
22.  Can you explain a TCP connection’s `3 Way Handshake`?
23.  Describe your responsibilities at your previous programming jobs/internships.
24.  Do you have experience with Telecommunications systems? Explain
25.  Do you strongly prefer using a particular programming language or development tool? If so, which one(s)?
26.  How do you find what active sockets are listening?
27.  How do you know what operating system is loaded on the host.
28.  What is a const function and give a signature of one? When do you absolutely need a const method?
29.  What is a difference/similarity between an interface and an abstract class
30.  What is the difference between DDL and DML commands?

 

Job Interviewing Questions for Developers

1.  Are you involved in every stage of the full life cycle development?
2.  Do you do any scripting?
3.  Do you work with any databases? Which?
4.  Have you done any software architecture?
5.  Have you ever been the lead on a development team?
6.  How long have you been working with each language?
7.  What language is your strength?
8.  What languages do you program in?
9.  What layer do you work at?
10.  What platform do you use?
11.  What type of applications – client/server or web-based?

 

 

Job Interviewing Questions for Programming Positions

1.  What has been your experience in developing applications and why are you interested in this area?
2.  You have been asked to develop an application for the public to obtain general information about the state government. The application will run in kiosks in state buildings. To facilitate public use, what features might you include in your application?
3.  Tell us about a difficult or complex programming assignment you’ve had. What steps did you take and how successful were you?
4.  What is the system development life cycle?
5.  What is rapid application development?
6.  Tell us about your experience in migrating from one application to another. What steps did you take to maintain user satisfaction during the migration?
7.  What techniques and tools can you use to insure that a new application is as user friendly as possible?
8.  What actions can you take to ensure that user requirements are appropriately addressed in the implementation of a new application?
9.  What is one of the main benefits of using XML?
10.  How do you design with a user in mind?
11.  What is information architecture?
12.  What are some benefits to dynamic web pages over static ones?
13.  Can you describe the basic elements of typography?

 

Job Interviewing Questions for Web Design

1. Tell me about a problem that you analyzed and your recommendation. How did you arrive at that recommendation? Tell me about a time when your analysis was incorrect.   What would you have done differently?
2.  As a designer, tell me about how you have partnered with more technical teammates?
3.  Tell me about a situation where you demonstrated good communication skills.
4.  Tell me about a time when you had to learn a new technology. What steps did you take? How would you describe your success?
5.  Are you familiar with any information architecture methods? Which ones?
6.  What are some common purposes of a web site?
7.  What factors would you take into consideration when deciding how users will navigate your site?
8.  Can you describe a few ways to organize web content?
9.  What to you is good interactivity and why does it matter?
10.  Should different colors be used for visited and unvisited links?
11.  What do you see as some fundamental web design mistakes?
12.  What is an effective way to figure out how your users will navigate your web site?
13.  List some of the key stages of the web development process. What are some features of each stage?
14.  How do you keep your knowledge of user experience design and usability up to date?
15.  How do you define when a website or application is usable enough?
16.  What does an attractive web page look and feel mean to you?
17.  What are some of the differences in designing for the web versus designing for print?
18.  If you had very little time or money to conduct a usability trial, what would you do?
19.  How would you define design?
20.  What is a failure analysis and when would you use it?
21.  What methods do you know for evaluating designs?

 

Job Interviewing Questions for Software Development

1.  Describe an interesting class you have designed?
2.  Describe and discuss polymorphism.
3.  Describe differences between a class and an interface.
4.  How is a class different from a structure?
5.  How would you design a car?
6.  If given a new programming problem, what is your first step in producing code?
7.  What are important aspects of GUI design?
8.  What are some influential books that you’ve read?
9.  What are the really important aspects of software development?
10.  What books have you read on software design that were good? Blogs? Websites? Magazines?
11.  What do you know about our corporate culture?
12.  What is your ideal team size?
13.  Why do projects fail?
14.  Briefly explain how you would develop a testing plan for any software.
15.  Describe different approaches to testing software.
16.  Describe different software development processes and which one you prefer. Why?
17.  Do structures support inheritance?
18.  How would you gather customer requirements for designing a car?
19.  How would you rate your current management?
20.  How would you test a car?
21.  How would you use polymorphism. Give real world examples.
22.  Tell us about your qualifications.
23.  What are some of your favorite web sites for technical information?
24.  What are the essential elements of OO Programming?
25.  What do you like about your current job? What don’t you like?
26.  What is Object Oriented Design?
27.  What is OOD Methodology?
28.  Why are you leaving your current job?
29.  What types of computer software/statistical packages are you familiar with?

 

Job Interviewing Questions for Quality Assurance

1.  Did you have any other roles besides testing? 
2.  Did you relate directly to the Developers? 
3.  Did you use any bug tracking tools? 
4.  Have you been a Lead Tester? How large was the team?
5.  Have you created Test Plans? Executed Test Plans?
6.  Have you done more manual or automated testing? What percentage?
7.  How did you write up your reports?
8.  If Automated: What automated test tools did you use? Were the tools already present
9.  What testing methodologies have you used?
10.  What type of application and testing environments? Client/Server or Web-based?
11.  What type of testing have you done?

 

Technical Career Questions

1.  Describe a product, process or program you would like to develop or enhance.
2.  Describe a research project you would initiate if you had generous funding.
3.  Describe how you would like your career to progress.
4.  Tell me about a situation when your ethics were challenged.
5.  What role do you play on a work team?
6.  Describe a problem you solved in a class or technical setting.
7.  Describe an incident in the workplace which required you to negotiate.
8.  If you had 5 of 7 modules done near deadline, would you do all 7 quickly or do the 5 well?
9.  Tell me about a time during a project, lab or job that you recognized a potential problem as an opportunity.
10.  Tell me how you have applied your computer skills.
11.  What do you feel you still need to learn in your field?
12.  What do you think is our company’s greatest challenge?
13.  What is your greatest technological skill?
14.  What product or service which our company provides most interests you?
15.  What technological changes do you see coming in your chosen field?
16.  When you are troubleshooting, what kinds of information do you seek & why?
17.  Where do you think the best fit for you would be in our operations?

 

Job Interviewing Questions for Networking /LAN/WAN Engineers

1.  Tell us about your experience in network administration
2.  Explain to us what local area networks and wide area networks are, and how, if at all, are they related.
3.  What experience do you have in implementing and supporting e-mail applications?
4.  Our department has already installed an e-mail application. What steps would you recommend for us to leverage our e-mail system?
5.  What is the difference between e-mail and groupware?
6.  How would you define bandwidth?
7.  Any network monitoring tools?
8.  Any networking tools?
9.  Did you do the assessment
10.  Did you install the equipment or just maintain and troubleshoot?
11.  Do you have any certifications?
12.  Do you use sniffers? Which ones?
13.  Have you done any clustering? What kind?
14.  Have you gone into an environment where there is nothing
15.  Have you worked with any routers?
16.  How large is the network?
17.  How many servers are in the network?
18.  What kind of equipment (hardware) do you work with?
19.  What kind of hardware?
20.  What kind of OS?
21.  What operating systems do you work with?
22.  What protocols do you work with?
23.  What protocols?
24.  What types of routers?

 

Job Interviewing Questions for Design Specific Positions

1.  Describe a time when you made a mistake on a project and explain how you resolved it. 
2.  Describe your design process. 
3.  How would you describe your design style?
4.  Tell me about a time when you incorporated feedback into a design even if you didn’t agree with it.
5.  What has been your favorite design project at school or work? Why?
6.  What strategies do you use to sell your design ideas to others?
7.  Can you describe the design courses that you have taken?
8.  Describe your senior design project.
9.  What was your defined role on the project?
10.  What were the technical challenges your team faced during the project?
11.  How did you & your team overcome these challenges?
12.  What was covered in these courses and what did you like the most and where to you think your strengths lie?
13.  What is the most successful design you have created?
14.  Describe your ability to troubleshoot design issues and make improvements.
15.  What methods have you used to present your design/data to managers or professors?
16.  What strategies do you use to ensure the accuracy of your data?

 

General Engineering Job Interviewing Questions

1.  Describe a specific engineering project where you were required to work with people outside of the engineering realm.
2.  How do you keep from getting bored when working on routine engineering tasks?
3.  Tell me about a time when you were confronted with a problem that really tested your engineering know-how.
4.  Tell me about the most challenging engineering project you’ve been involved with.
5.  What do you get out of engineering that you couldn’t get from any other type of work?
6.  What new engineering specialty skills have you learned or enhanced most recently?
7.  Health and safety is a huge concern for most Engineering companies. Are you capable of following strict protocols?
8.  Do you have the potential to be a leader of projects and people in the Engineering field?
9.  Can you tell me about a time where you were in danger of not meeting a deadline on a project?
10.  If you were an object in this room, which would it be, and why?
11.  Explain a difficult process/concept/theory to me so that I can understand it.

I noticed that there are not many questions for IT, Engineering or Design specific interview questions out there. I hope this list will help focus you more on what you can offer instead. Let me know if you have any job interview questions which you need help with.  

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