PROFESSIONAL INTERVIEW

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SUMMARY:

This assignment required  us to conduct an interview with a professional in the field of engineering that we desired to pursue, to gain a better insight of what our future held as well as amass useful advice. Our documentation followed the outline below:

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• Professional Background

  • Interviewee's name

  • Interviewee's specific degree

  • Interviewee's place of employment

  • Interviewee's contact information (phone number/email)

• ​​Interview Questions and Responses

  • Please describe your engineering field.

  • What is your current job title?

  • Please describe your particular job and duties.

  • What is your average work schedule?

  • Starting with high school, please describe your educational background chronologically.

  • If you had it to do over, related to your career or education, would you do anything differently?

  • What advice would you give to me as someone interested in pursuing a career path similar to yours?

• Interviewer Reflection

  • What surprised you the most about the interview?

  • What was the most important piece of information that you learned from the interview?

  • How has this interview influenced your feelings about your future career?

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We were required to acquire instructor approval on the interviewee before officially beginning our study, then we were allowed to contact the interviewee for their consent. After completing our documentation on the interview,  there was a mandatory presentation of our findings to the rest of the class and instructor with a given rubric.

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REFLECTION:

Learning:

One of the most valuable skills I learned from this project is how to professionally communicate with another individual. I already have given speeches/presentations in Introduction to Engineering, as well as used formal language in conversations, however I had not yet interacted with another person in a businesslike manner. Some other concepts I grasped during this project were how to reliably connect with people who are not in reach at time which are convenient for me, appropriately communicate with them, as well as carefully extract information. One of my overarching goals during the time period I was taking Principles of Engineering was to gain some practical field experience, and this project aided in forming connections with people currently employed in the engineering field I wanted to pursue. As a whole, this project opened my eyes to the true nature of engineering.

Improvements:

I contacted only two or three places for interviewing, yet ended up relying on my cousin's friend who was employed in software engineering for NASA, a different engineering profession yet in the topic area that I desired. If I could have improved anything on this project, I would have chosen to take a greater amount of time to ask for interviews at many more places and in the right places. I believe if I had taken a greater amount of time to gather more resources for possible interviews, I would have gotten an interviewee better suited for my preference in engineering profession. Other than that, I should have asked more questions to the interviewer than the project required, for my own benefit. This improvement in particular is very disappointing to me, as I pride myself on my curiosity. In conclusion, better organization of my work efforts may have yielded a highly effective project that greatly improved my understanding of aerospace engineering.