On-campus Interviews (part 2)

Friday, November 13, 2009

In part 1 of this series on on-campus interviews, I provided the definition of an on-campus interview and talked about its role in the technical interview process. In parts 2 and 3, I'm going to give specific examples of on-campus interviews that I had while I was in school. In this post, I'm going to talk about my experiences with National Instruments, Raytheon, Honeywell, General Dynamics, and IBM.

National Instruments

I interviewed on-campus with National Instruments for its Engineering Leadership Program in Austin, Texas. This was the only company that I interviewed with that had two rounds of on-campus interviews. The first round consisted of a 20 minute interview that contained one behavioral question and one technical question. If you passed the first round, then the following day you’d have another interview that would be 45 minutes long and would consist of more behavioral and technical questions, as well as questions about your career goals and aspirations. National instruments recommended wearing a suit to the interview. My interviewer was an engineer who was a former alum from my school.

Raytheon

I had one on-campus interview with Raytheon that was only 15 minutes long. In it, I was interviewed by a recruiter and only asked a couple of behavioral questions. He told me that Raytheon used their on-campus interviews to place candidates at hiring events and that it could take a while to hear back about an invitation. I had applied for the interview on my schools career site.

Honeywell

My Honeywell on-campus interview was with a senior engineering manager from their embedded operating system group. I had applied for the interview on my schools career site. The interview was around 30 minutes long and consisted of behavioral and resume questions. A couple of days afterwards, I received an automated e-mail message that denoted my success in the interview and asked me to apply to a generic “Engineering Software Internship Opportunities” job requisition on the Honeywell website. About a month later I was contacted by a Honeywell recruiter for an on-site interview.

General Dynamics

I had one 30 minute on-campus interview with General Dynamics C4 Systems located in Scottsdale, Arizona. I had obtained the interview via my schools career site. The interview was conducted by a recruiter and contained mainly resume and behavioral questions. Successful candidates were invited to interview on-site at one of the General Dynamics C4 Systems hiring events.

IBM

I obtained an on-campus internship interview with IBM in Tucson through a career fair at my school. I handed my resume to the IBM representative and chatted with her for a while. Towards the end of our conversation she asked me if I was interested in signing up for an interview slot the next day. The interview didn’t contain any technical questions, only resume and behavioral questions.

Click here for On-campus Interviews (part 3)

What's Next?