What is that number?

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While the questions asked at interviews vary, some of the most common are listed below. Preparing for these types of questions before you get to the more technical one will allow you to increase your confidence and avoid the awkward moments of silence.

Here are 20 of the most common introductory-type questions you should anticipate during your next interview.

1. Please tell us a few things about yourself?
2. What are your career objectives and preferences?
3. How much salary you are expecting?
4. What is your plan regarding continuing your education?
5. Do you work well in a team?
6. Do you function well in high stress environment?
7. Where do you see yourself in the next 2, 5, 10 years?
8. What are some of the areas you would like to improve professionally?
9. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
10. Why should we not hire you?
11. Why you have applied for this position?
12. Why do you believe that you are the best candidate for this position?
13. Tell us about some of the classes you took in college and how they would help you in this position?
14. What are you looking for in a job?
15. What kind of person would you refuse to work with?
16. What motivates you to do your best on the job?
17. Describe your management style.
18. How do you propose to compensate for your lack of experience?
19. What qualities do you look for in an employer? And most importantly
20. Do you have any questions for me?

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Also, you might want to consider adding the following books to your existing collection:

Famous Bridges Of The World

Bridges: A History of the World’s Most Famous and Important Spans

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If  you will be taking the Fundamentals of Engineering exam in the coming months,  there are few thing you might consider:

1. The FE is a required test for those pursuing a professional engineering license. Many colleges and universities encourage students to take the FE exam as an outcome assessment tool upon the completion of the education coursework.
2. The National Council for examiners for Engineering and Surveying is the administration body for this exam. All registrations and questions pertaining to the FE exam should be addressed to NCEES.

How to prepare

There are several resources available to help you prepare for the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam.  The NCEES offers both sample examinations and diagnostic tools prepared by engineering professionals and reviewed annually and revised as needed. View the complete listing of FE study materials or call the NCEES Customer Service Department at 1-800-250-3196 if you have questions about exam preparation materials.

Books

BUY	BUY	BUY	BUY	BUY

Because books cannot be taken into the FE exam rooms, the NCEES provides a copy of the FE Supplied-Reference Handbook at the exam site, which is to be returned at the end of the exam. This is the only reference you will have during the exam.

The Reference Handbook contains only reference formulas and tables; no example questions are included. It is not designed to assist in all parts of the FE exam. For example, some of the basic theories, conversions, formulas, and definitions that you are expected to know have not been included.

You can obtain a Reference Handbook in advance of the exam for review, but the copy you purchase in advance cannot be brought to the exam. Some licensing boards furnish their applicants with a Reference Handbook that has been recycled from a previous administration. These recycled copies may or may not be the version used for the next exam administration.

Approved Calculators

Casio

Hewlett Packard

Texas Instruments

The Test

The exam is eight hours long altogether, split into two four-hour sessions with a 30 minute lunch break in between. Typically the morning session begins at 7:15 am, however, one hour passes between when time is called for the morning session to end until admission starts for the afternoon session.

Morning session

The morning session is a 120-question general exam for which all examinees must sit, while the afternoon session consists of 60 questions and is more discipline-oriented.

Afternoon session

For the second half, examinees choose one of the following seven tests: chemical engineering, civil engineering, environmental engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, or general engineering (similar in content to the morning exam, but far more detailed). The choice does not have to be made in advance, but rather on the day of the test.

The topics covered by the general exam are covered in the courses taken by engineering undergraduates, and include the following,

Mathematics | Chemistry | Computers | Statics | Dynamics | Strength of materials | Material science | Electrical circuits | Thermodynamics | Fluid mechanics | Engineering economics | Engineering Management Ethics |

Environmental Engineering | Biology (Afternoon only; general discipline) |

Those who pass the exam are designated Engineer In Training or given an equivalent designation, such as Engineer Intern, by their state’s licensure board for engineers, and are partway through the certification process. After completing an apprenticeship (the length of which is set by state law and based on the type of degree received) an EIT may qualify to take the Professional Engineer (PE) exam. Certification is awarded upon successful completion of the PE exam. The standard time of apprenticeship under a Professional Engineer is 5 years of work experience for graduates of an ABET-accredited engineering program.

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In 1867 Baker wrote a series of articles, “Long Span Bridges,” discussing the application of cantilevers. Baker served on numerous government commissions and boards and, among other assignments as a consultant, implemented William Willcocks’s plans for the Aswān Dam (1898–1902). In the United States he was consulted by James B. Eads on the construction of his steel bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, and, when the first Hudson River tunnel threatened to fail, Baker was called in to design a tunneling shield that allowed work to be completed. Baker was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1895–96 and a vice president of the Royal Society from 1896 to his death in 1907.

Gustave Eiffel | Back – Next |

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Gustave Eiffel

Gustave Eiffel was a French structural engineer from the École Centrale Paris, an architect, an entrepreneur and a specialist of metallic structures. He is highly acclaimed for his design of the famous Eiffel Tower in Paris. Eiffel, owned an engineering consulting and construction firm which in addition to the Eiffel Tower, created the Ruche in Paris, France. The Ruche like the Eiffel Tower became a city landmark.

In 1887, Eiffel became involved with the French unsuccessful effort at constructing a Panama Canal.  The French Panama Canal Company had been attempting to build a sea-level canal but stopped upon the realization that a sea-level canal was impractical.

Eiffel was also responsible for New York’s Statue of Liberty which was France’s to the United States. Eiffel’s design for the interior structural elements of the statue allowed for the statue to become a reality. The statue symbolized the friendship and respect that was shared between France and the United States.

Elijah McCoy | Back – Next | Benjamin Baker

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He worked in Michigan in a home-based shop, where he developed inventions and improvements on them. He obtained his first patent On July 12, 1872, for his automatic lubricator for oiling steam engines on locomotives and ships, an invention that greatly benefitted the railroad industry by enabling trains to run more efficiently. (U.S. Patent 129,843).

Recognized by Booker T Washington’s The Story of The Negro as having produced more patents than any other African American inventor up to that time. Continued inventing throughout his life and obtained 50 patents for lubrication and a number of others including household items a folding ironing board and a lawn sprinkler.

In 1920 he formed the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company.

Archimedes | Back – Next |  Gustave Eiffel

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2. How much weight can a rural two-lane bridge hold?

Click to Zoom

3. And finally, would this be covered under the home insurance or the car insurance policy?

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Dmitri Mendeleev

Dmitri Mendeleev was a Russian aristocrat and academic with a vested interest in the basic elements of the universe that combine in all manner of forms to make up physical matter. The seemingly random properties of these building blocks and how they related to each other was an elusive concept that Mendelev was unable to explain.

It so happened that one day Mendeleev after listening to his family attempt to play chamber music, he slept while the music was still playing in the background. And then he had a dream. In this dream, Mendeleev had a vision of the basic elements of the universe flowing together in a manner akin to the progression of a musical sequence, orderly and beautiful. He awoke and outlined from his dream every element in order. This sequence became known in Chemistry as the Periodic Table of Elements.

Neils Bohr

Neils Bohr was a Dutch physicist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics.
When he completed his doctorate in physics, Bohr gained notoriety in the physics fraternity due to his knack of being able to decipher complex problems that for much time had frustrated his peers and colleagues.

Bohr focused his attention to the atom and its structure. In his attempt to understand the atom, he came up with many varying frameworks as to the configuration but none seemed to fit.

One evening Bohr had a dreaming about atoms. In this dream, Bohr visualized a nucleus of the atom with the electrons spinning around it, just as the planets do around the sun.

The dream led Bohr to his lab in an attempt to confirm the revelations. A series of tests led him to confirm the now famous Bohr model of the atom, which depicts the atom as a small, positively charged nucleus surrounded by electrons that travel in circular orbits around the nucleus—similar in structure to the solar system, but with electrostatic forces providing attraction, rather than gravity.

Elias Howe

Inventor Elias Howe had a great idea about a machine that could be used for sewing. His concept consisted of a needle attached to a machine that would go through material. Initially, Howe tried using a needle with a sharp point at both ends and an eye in the middle, but it failed.

Howe was not able to come up with a working model. At one point in a dream, Howe saw himself being taken prisoner by a group of savages. He watched as these men danced around him with spears and noticed that each native’s spear had a hole near the tip.

When he woke up, Howe instantly recognized that the dream had solved the problem to his proposed sewing machine. The solution: placing a hole at the tip of the needle, the thread could be caught after piercing the material. He instantly altered his previous and made a product that worked.

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He acknowledges that engineering is vital in ensuring human social-economic development.  The role that engineers continue to play in solving development issues (transporation, housing) cannot be underestimated. However, he concurs that there is an increased shortage of engineers around the world.  This reality is compounded by the fact that the profession is not attracting as many students, especially in light of the numbers needed to allow us to meet the social-economic obligations around the world.

Obviously the profession should increase its public awareness efforts and rebrand itself as the profession that promotes humanitarian development.  Unfortunately, given the fact that we still lack safe water, sanitation and electricity around the work; Perhaps we as engineering professionals are not doing enough to deliver solutions to problems we are mandated to solve.

Do you concur with Dr. Marjoram assessment? In your opinion, how can engineering be adequately applied to be more effective in delivering solutions for these problems?

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WATCH: The History and Construction of The Burma Railway (Video)

Construction

Forced labour was used for the construction with the labourers comprising of mostly prisoners of war (POWs) and Asians from sorrounding countries.  It is estimated that more than 16,000 prisoners died during the construction of the railway roughly about 38 prisoners for every km of railway built.  Given the lack of adequate food and medical services, most labourers died out of sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion.

The most famous portion of the railway is Bridge 277, ‘the bridge over the River Kwai‘, which was built over a stretch of river which was then known as part of the Mae Klong.

Movies bases on the Burma Railway

The Bridge on the River Kwai is an epic story about British prisoners of war during World War II who are ordered to build a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge but, under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson, they are persuaded that the bridge should be constructed as a symbol of British morale, spirit and dignity in adverse circumstances. At first, the prisoners admire Nicholson when he bravely endures torture rather than compromise his principles for the benefit of the Japanese commandant Saito.

Video

The History and Construction of The Burma Railway (Video)

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The projects below are our carefully researched list of some of the most interesting projects that commenced ended between 2000 and 2010. Notably three of the entries are from China, which led the world with several of their projects pushing engineering boundaries over the last ten years. The rest equally, pushed engineering boundaries and are equally impressive in their own right.

1. Millau viaduct

The Millau Viaduct is presently the tallest vehicular cable-stayed road-bridge that spans the valley of the river Tarn near Millau in southern France. The height of the bridge is an impressive 1,125 feet, 62 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. The bridge was opened in December 2004 and crosses the Valley of the River Tarn close to Millau in the South of France.

2. Burj Khalifa

The Burj Dubai, which was christened Burj Khalifa at its Jan. 4, 2009 opening, achieved instantengineering marvel status before it even opened. This is not because it was long projected to achieve the world tallest building status upon completion, but because the height proposed has never before been attempted, and especially not in the type of environment it now sits on. The construction of Burj Dubai therefore necessitated the the building be designed to withstand the tough and windy terrain, plus the projected human demands of the building.

3. Three gorges dam

The dam is located near the mouth of the lowest of the Three Gorges, where the current was divided in two by an island. In November l997, the first stage was completed with the blocking of two-thirds of the river’s width. The waterleaves had risen l8 metres (59 feet) by the end of l998, will rise a further 52metres (171 feet) by 2003, 30 metres (98 feet) more up to 2009, and a final ten metres (33 feet) that year, when the dam will come into operation. Smaller ships will use a single stage lift, and larger ones a stair of five locks. The waters in the Three Gorges will rise a total of l l0 metres (36l feet), gradua1ly changing the scenery forever.

4. Langeled pipeline

5. Qingzang Tibet railway

6. Taipei 101

7. Hangzhou bay bridge

8. Big Dig aka the Central Artery/Tunnel Project (CA/T)

On our recently featured compilation of the top 10 most impressive engineering projects, the Boston Big Dig project made it at number four, well ahead of The Millau Viaduct and The Channel Tunnel. What impressed us most about this Boston wonder was the audacious approach to solving a congestion issue. Where most people would have been content with wider lanes or maintaining the status quo, the project engineers sought to go under the city, marking the beginning of one of the most complex and technologically challenging highway projects in the history of the United States.

9. Ras Laffan gas trains

10. Large hadron collider

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• Casio: All fx-115 models. Any Casio calculator must contain fx-115 in its model name.
• Hewlett-Packard: The HP 33s and HP 35s models, but no others
• Texas Instruments: All TI-30X and TI-36X models. Any Texas Instruments calculator must contain either TI-30X or TI-36X in its model name.

Calculators not listed above will not be permitted in the exam room.  According to NCEES,  Examinees possessing unapproved calculators during the administration of an exam are  subject to dismissal from the exam site.

Click here for a complete list of calculators available through Amazon.

To purchase a specific calculator, simple click on the buy button below each calculator.

Casio

Hewlett Packard

Texas Instruments

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No highway in the sky

The premise is as follows: Theodore Honey is an aeronautical engineer sent to Labrador from London to examine the wreckage of a new passenger plane designed by his company. His theory is that the planes are susceptible to metal fatigue after a specific amount of time in the air. The absent minded Honey boards the Reindeer class plane and only realizes that this particular plane is due to fail in the next few hours after the plane is airborne. He decides to warn the crew and creates an incident regardless of whether he is right or wrong.

We like the movie because it does not have the typical chase scenes, blood or gratuitous skin. The movie is just an engrossing human story, a hallmark of Neville Shute’s writing.

Flight of the Phoenix

Flight of the Phoenix, also by Jimmie Stewart, along with a top notch cast is an engaging story about a group of men stranded in the desert and how they “engineer” a way out.  Picture this interesting premise: a cargo plane goes down in a sandstorm in the Sahara with less than a dozen men on board. One of the passengers is an airplane designer who comes up with the idea of ripping off the undamaged wing and using it as the basis for an airplane they will build to escape.

Flash of Genius

Now for a more recent movie that is based on the true story of college professor and part-time inventor Robert Kearns’ long battle with the U.S. automobile industry. Flash of Genius tells the tale of one man whose fight to receive recognition for his ingenuity would come at a heavy price. But this determined engineer refused to be silenced, and he took on the corporate titans in a battle that nobody thought he could win.

We like this movie not just because it is a well played little-guy-fights-back-against-the-big-corporation type of movie, but it also provides an epic story on ingenuity, family values and sanity.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Perhaps one of those movies that every civil engineer should watch, The Bridge on the River Kwai is about British prisoners of war during World War II who are ordered to build a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge but, under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson, they are persuaded that the bridge should be constructed as a symbol of British morale, spirit and dignity in adverse circumstances. At first, the prisoners admire Nicholson when he bravely endures torture rather than compromise his principles for the benefit of the Japanese commandant Saito.  He is an honorable but arrogant man, who is slowly revealed to be a deluded obsessive. He convinces himself that the bridge is a monument to British character, but actually is a monument to himself, and his insistence on its construction becomes a subtle form of collaboration with the enemy.

Primer

At night and on weekends, four men in a suburban garage have built a cottage industry of error-checking devices. But, they know that there is something more. There is some idea, some mechanism, some accidental side effect that is standing between them and a pure leap of innovation. And so, through trial and error they are building the device that is missing most. However, two of these men find the device and immediately realize that it is too valuable to market. The limit of their trust in each other is strained when they are faced with the question, If you always want what you can’t have, what do you want when you can have anything?

The Dam Busters

Finally, we are happy to officially proclaim The Dam Busters as an engineer’s war movie.  The Dam Busters is the story about British engineer Barnes Wallace and his development of a bouncing bomb used to attack hydroelectric dams critical to Germany’s war production in WWII.  The special effects are okay by 1950s standards, but still intriguing and well-acted.

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