Obtaining your first job as a recent graduate can be extremely challenging. A lot of the difficulty with this is that you have a limited set of experiences to call from in order to demonstrate your knowledge, and value, to your prospective employer. This post will be continuing from our previous entry describing how you can tailor your resume to ensure you get this far in the first place.
Our previous article on developing your resume paid particular attention to how you can leverage what experience you have into your application for a new role. A similar skill will be required for completing successful interviews, the hard part, is that you must be able to complete this in a natural manner during the interview setting.
Before we delve into the nitty – gritty of interviewing for roles within the Medtech industry, let's just get some general interview advice out of the way: In Person Interview
Make sure you are early. You will have enough on your mind without also rushing to make an interview and you will need to allow yourself enough time to ensure you don’t come into the interview flustered and already under pressure.
Look presentable and professional. Pressed shirt, nice trousers/skirt (not jeans) and clean well-maintained shoes. What is critical is that you provide a look of professionalism to the interviewer.
Online Interview
Make sure you have good Wi-Fi and your housemates/family know that you are interviewing and do not disturb you.
Background – Plain, non-distracting. Don’t have televisions or other people visible behind you.
Lighting – from in front of your camera. You do not want to appear like you have some kind of a halo behind you.
Sound – Even the acoustics in the room should be considered, you want to avoid sounding echoey on your interviewer’s computer.
Do a trial run on your own or with a friend. Check that you are centred on the screen, not too close or too far away and that you are sitting on a proper chair as it looks more professional than a couch or large arm- chair.
A lot of the above points may seem either overly simple or perhaps too in depth to some people, but every small detail matters in an interview. Knowing that you are correctly set up for interview success from before a question is asked takes away some of the stress of interviews. This is true in particular for online interviews as the last thing you want to be doing is scrambling due to technical difficulties. With the simple things covered, it is now time to focus on the interview process itself. In general, most interviews for graduate positions will be 2 stages (for multinationals there may also be some other stages such as psychometric evaluations and aptitude tests, these will not be covered as part of this post). The first stage will commonly include a member of the project team such as a senior engineer you will be working closely with, and likely a representative from HR also. In some instances, the first stage of the interview process might just be a phone call with a manager to scope out your fit for the position before moving onto a formal interview. The second stage interview usually involves somebody in a higher position in the company such as a manager of the department. This is likely the person who will be signing off on your hiring.
As for the interview itself, they usually consist of a small introduction of all the members present. The engineer or manager will likely give you a brief synopsis of their career/ time with the company and what their current role is. You will also be provided the opportunity to introduce yourself to the interviewers. This isn’t the time to discuss your hobbies. You want to provide a brief overview of who you are and why you are applying for the role. For example:
I am John Doe and I am a recent graduate of Biomedical Engineering from the University of X. I am from Y but would love to move to Z (wherever the job is). I would have previously been working at my local restaurant for 4 years, where I would have developed strong communication skills from working with many different customers and team members. I also gained great introductory experience to the medical device industry through my placement at company A, where I would have seen how a controlled manufacturing environment works and various stages of medical device development. The reason I applied for this particular job, was that during my final year project, I worked a lot on developing prototypes and working hands on in a lab setting which I found extremely enjoyable, and I think that this role would offer a similar type of work I would find enjoyable.
Throughout the interview you want to continually demonstrate exactly why you want this job and how something you have completed in the past is relevant for this. For an entry level position enthusiasm and a demonstrated work ethic (mentioning past experience) will get you very far. Tone of voice and clarity in speech are also important factors. Be proactive in your answers and speak with enthusiasm about the position you are applying for.
The next stage of the interview will more than likely start digging into your experience to determine what knowledge you have for the required position. A very important part of preparation for this stage would be studying the posted job description and learning a little bit more about each of the expected tasks. If you were given an interview with no industry/ very limited experience they should not be drilling extremely deeply with questions. You just need to have enough knowledge with you that you can answer anything they ask in some capacity. For example:
Q: So, as a process development engineer you will be working on developing and ensuring processes run correctly and produce good quality parts, what do you know about this aspect of the role?
A: Frome the research I was doing prior to today I could see that statistical analysis is one of the key parts of ensuring you have a high-quality process, and that Minitab is commonly for this with engineers running analysis on process data to ensure it is capable. Secondly, I know that the pFMEA would be another critical part of process quality management, as it documents and rates the risks associated with particular process steps and the effect they can have on the overall impact to functionality of a device.
Nothing that is wrote above is ground-breaking information. It is something you will become very familiar with within 3 months of a new role. However, the information provided is enough to show your interviewer that 1) you are eager enough to learn that you have already started researching key parts of the role, and 2) You already have a basic understanding of two of the core pillars for the role. A word of warning about using the above approach however – be wary of a follow up question such as what is meant by a capable process etc. Learning an answer verbatim is no use unless you actually gain some understanding of the information behind your answer. We will be developing plenty of content related to core engineering principles, so you are in the right place to get all the background information you need.
You ideally want to be able to answer a question related to everything on the job description, this is not to be confused with saying you have experience with everything. If experience with a particular software is required, for example, and you have never even heard of it, research it before the interview. What is it used for? Why do they use it? Have you ever used something similar? Is the underlying concept of the software something you were thought in college like FEA analysis or drafting etc.?
I have not used X, but I understand that it is used for analysis of Y. This is something I would be very interested in learning more about and up skilling myself in.
The above post is a simple demonstration of how you can prepare for an interview and set yourself up for success, if you desire to learn more, please read though our other posts where we will be continually updating with more information and advice for up-and-coming young engineers.
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