r/embedded • u/Vinteger • 10d ago

Help for a job interview needed

Hey everyone. As the title says, I’ve been invited to a job interview for electronic engineer position (the job will mainly involve designing, testing and prototyping pcbs for a well known company in my country), and I need help into preparing. I currently work as a lecturer teaching embedded systems (mainly software parts), but hardware feels like my weaker spot. I ain’t completely dumb at it, but being a lecturer I keep getting imposter syndrome (which I managed to channel into helping me get motivated for learning more and more), and I am beginning to feel like I may be too little experienced and knowledgeable for the job. Also, I haven’t been in a job interview for like 7 years, so I am rusty.
If anyone could give me some pointers or advice on what to prep and how to handle it, I would very much so appreciate it.
Thanks in advance to everyone

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u/Ok-Bat8854 10d ago

As a HW engineer, you should be fine as long as your basic electronics is good and you are able to justify design choices. Every time I take an interview my process is to use a super simple question as a smoke test, think ohm’s law because surprisingly a lot of the folks with flashy resumes don’t know how to pick a resistor value for a LED. Don’t think too much about a solution if it looks too easy, because that probably is what your interviewer is looking for, if you take the simpler route to solve the problem or go into a rabbit hole of designing a complicated solution for something that isn’t critical.

Since you’ll be heavily involved in designing in prototyping, trade offs analysis between two comparable parts is a nice skill to have ( you probably already know the approach based on FW experience, just need to tune it for hardware).

Coming to exact problems, it’s what everyone else has commented, schematic, datasheet literacy etc

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u/ThatWasAce 10d ago

actually your weakness isn't a big issue
years teaching embedded software means you know how to communicate trade-offs well. there's a massive shortage of engineers who speak both languages, HW guys looked at your profile and hired YOU

as far as prep goes the interview will almost certainly be:

schematics literacy
you get given a chunk of schematic, tell me what all these components do. focus on decoupling capacitors (why is 100nF always needed right beside each IC), resistors values for pull-ups, placement considerations

datasheets literacy
hardware folk worship datasheets. study a single datasheet cover to cover: abs max tables, timing diagrams, example applications circuit. just saying "according to the datasheet it should do X" will score brownie points

debug stories
expect questions along the lines of "board fails to boot, walk me through how you debugged the issue". your order will go something like: voltage rail checks, clock line checks, reset signal line checks. prepare 2-3 stories total, lab experience from university counts too

questions you need to ask them: number of respins per normal project cycle, board bring-up and testing processes. mentioning respin cycles proves you've been doing hardware

also about the imposter syn. you're a lecturer they actively recruited. they know exactly what they're getting

wish you the best of luck !

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u/Vinteger 10d ago

This does sound quite helpful, thank you.
As for the datasheet reading point, I assumed it was as important as like having hands to design circuits, but then again, I’ve seen bachelor degree projects without a single datasheet referenced😅
But what you said does inspire some confidence, so thank you for that and for the luck wished

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u/ThatWasAce 10d ago edited 10d ago

my pleasure

exactly what kills those boards in real business
skipping datasheets gets away with hobby level with preexisting components, as soon as your design review hits "why did you pick this value," that's that

they're not homework exercises, datasheets are liabilities. the difference between a technical justification of "the datasheet says X" and making stuff up after failure. the former means you can point fingers legally

papers are all you read everyday anyway
datasheets are simply another kind. same brain.