The interview at Cobham for an entry level electrical engineering position (Electrical Engineer I) turned out to be alarming. This is a company that is only looking for the smartest of the smart.
The interview lasted about five hours with six different people in a large office. I spent about 30 to 45 minutes with each person during which they asked me questions ranging from VERY technical to moderate.
Person 1: The first person I met was VERY knowledgeable in microwave transmission technology. He seemed to be a higher up who has had years of practice. This man was a gentlemen, but he GRILLED me. In summary, he asked me to draw a Smith Chart from memory, identify the input and output of a Widlar Mirror, use resistors to adjust the gain of a BJT operational amplifier, use relationships and equations to derive the intrinsic gain of that op amp circuit and many more questions of that nature. It's worth noting that I graduated a year before this interview and have been working in the engineering field, so even though I studied all these topics I was not expecting to have this material come up with such demand in the interview.
Person 2: The second person who interviewed me was closer to his retirement years. He looked at my resume and told me that my six years of auto technician experience was irrelevant for this position. After looking at the academic side of my resume he asked me about my senior project. I happily explained the entire project to him in detail. From how our proximity sensors interfaced with our micro- controller to the code we used. Needless to say he didn't seem impressed, but I took that as an interview tactic and brushed it off.
Person 3: This man was an Electrical Engineer at Cobham who was also more on the technical side. During a tour that I will go into more detail later, there was a picture of him under a board that recognized outstanding achievements. He was first place. He gave me a written exam that was three pages long that I answered well. It was an exam on finding gain, a specific wavelength from a smith chart, as well as more simple questions like the ideal input impedance of an op amp.
Person 4: The fourth gentlemen who walked into the large office was the same guy who I had my previous two phone interviews with. The whole reason why I was there that day was because he thought I was good enough so I was happy to finally meet him in person. He gave me a tour around the facility which consisted of different buildings depending on what department you would be working in. One building for engineering, one for administration, etc. Unfortunately, he did hit me with some technical questions that I was unable to answer.
Person 5: This man was very friendly and was more interested in how responsible, discipline, and on task I can be rather than how much technical knowledge I knew at the moment. We found out that we had the same professors at SDSU and spent the majority of our interview time talking about that. It was a nice break from the intense grilling process.
Person 6: The last person was a kind lady from HR. She asked me the classic interview questions such as, "Give me an example of how you handle stress?" and "What is your take on team work?" etc. She also informed me about the job benefits and work hours. This encouraged me because it made me think I had an edge on getting the job. Later, I found out I was wrong.
In conclusion, if you apply for ANY engineering position at Cobham, please go back and review your old text books and notes thoroughly. They asked me questions that were on the final exam of some of my classes so you have to take it THAT seriously. These are questions that I would not expect a student straight out of college would know off the top of their heads so I feel that the job title was a bit mislabeled. I say this because I had already been working in the electrical engineering field for a year prior to this interview.