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Production Worker Interview Questions: Mechanical Ability

In a production environment, the ability to understand how the equipment works is an important skill. Having extensive mechanical experience can speed up training and make an employee more versatile. It can also help an employee work safer and more productively.

Every position requires certain technical skills. In manufacturing, there is wide range of skills that companies may want. To build a strong team of production workers, a company can’t always require every skill. For example, a company may be the only one in the area with specific type of machinery. They will not be able to find new employees who have experience with that machinery. This makes it essential to hire individual with strong mechanical skills that can be applied to wide range of equipment.

To demonstrate your mechanical skill, you will need to show a long track record of mechanical experience. Ideally, you have been working with heavy equipment, repairing machinery and improving your mechanical skills for your entire career. For example, an individual who grew up on a farm and learned to repair the farming equipment from a young age will have an excellent understanding of the basic mechanisms of machinery. You can’t train a new hire and give them the insight that comes with 10, 20 or 30 years of fixing a wide range of machinery.

In addition to showing the range of experiences, you should give some specifics of the type of mechanical work you have done. Talking in generalizations will only get you so far. Describe major repair work, examples of operating complicated machines, or installing equipment. This will give the interviewer a clear picture of your skill level reinforcing the broad scope of your experience.

Interview Questions:

Tell me about your manufacturing experience.
Describe your mechanical skills.
Do you have any experience setting up and operating equipment?
What are you strongest technical skills?
Can you read engineering drawings?
What types of equipment have you worked on?
Do you consider yourself very mechanically inclined? Why?

If you want a job in manufacturing but have no mechanical experience, answering these questions can be tough. There isn’t an quick fix. Developing mechanical skills takes years. You can start by taking some classes at local Vo Tech school or community college. Find out from the employer you are pursuing what types of classes will best prepare you for their organization. Few people will go to the effort to do this, and it will set you apart.

Production Worker Interview Questions: Attitude

As a job seeker, you want to show how you will work well on a team and add to the overall performance. To do this, you should prepare to discuss times when your teamwork led to success. Also, prepare to discuss specific situations when you encountered conflicts with co-workers and supervisors. You want to show how the conflict arose and what you did to help resolve it.

One of the worst hires a company can make is a person who does their job well but has an attitude so bad that it destroys the teamwork and morale in a department. Often an individual like this can hurt the performance of a department so much that they end up being a net drain on the company. The greatest challenge with a person like this is that their individual performance meets expectations. It is how they interact with the team that is a problem.

As a manager, dealing with a person like this requires significant time and energy. It’s easy to handle quantifiable performance problems like attendance. Subjective performance problems are tougher. The easiest and best way to manage teamwork, morale and employee attitudes is to hire people who won’t be a problem. Once hired, it can take a long time to correct the behavior or get rid of the person.

Interview Questions:

Tell me about a time when you didn’t get along with your boss.
Tell me about the worst boss you ever had?
Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker.
Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your supervisor.
Tell me about a time when you didn’t support a project in your department.
Tell me about a co-worker you didn’t get along with.
Tell me about a time when your supervisor criticized your work.
Tell me about at time when you disagreed with your co-workers.

If you prepare answers to questions like these, you will be able to better show how you will contribute to the team and be an effective team member. Develop a few stories with examples of conflicts you had at work and show how you resolved those conflicts. You goal isn’t to avoid discussing conflicts. Everyone has disagreements and conflicts at some point. What is important is how you deal with the conflict. Do you elevate the conflict, cause a disruption in the organization, or do you diffuse the situation?

Production Worker Interview Questions: Reliability

Being reliable is an important attribute for every job seeker to demonstrate. For production workers, this is especially important. Manufacturing firms often have complex operations where every worker is fulfilling an essential role. Workers may only be trained on a few pieces of equipment, making it difficult to find backfills. A single worker who fails to come to work can disrupt an entire department.

The complexity of some manufacturing organizations makes it essential to build a reliable workforce. Hiring managers will ask job seekers about their attendance in interviews. They will also ask about attendance in reference checks. This makes it important to be honest. You don’t want to say you had perfect attendance in an interview and then have a former employer say something different.

As important as reliability is, you don’t need a history of perfect attendance to get hired. You need to show that being reliable is important to you. You also need to show a track record where your reliability was good, meeting or exceeding the expectations of your employers.

Some industries have large season fluctuations. In these organizations, having a work force that can adapt their schedules to increasing or decreasing hours can be important. Your reliability will also include your ability to work overtime when needed. A hiring manager will want to know if you can be counted on to show up when they add an extra shift or extend the hours of a shift.

No one is going to get hired because of their reliability. This is a topic designed to weed out unreliable people. Your goal is to show you reliable enough to meet the expectations of the hiring manager.

Interview Questions:

Describe your attendance at .
How many times did you call in last year?
How important is it to you to be on-time?
In our busy season, will you be able to work weekends?
Can you work any of our shifts, including either second or third shift?
During your training, you will need to work on different shifts to get trained. Will this be a problem?
When was the last time you were late for work?

Production Worker Interview Questions: Work Ethic

In an interview for a production worker, questions about the job seeker’s work ethic are routine. Hiring managers want to hire individuals who are going to take initiative and strive to be successful. They don’t want to hire someone who is going to try to get out of work at every opportunity. In addition to be a drain on the company, individuals with a poor work ethic are more difficult to manage because they must be watched much closer.

Almost every job seeker will claim to be a hard worker in an interview. Everyone’s work ethic is not the same, though. What one person considers hard working may be slacking off to another. This requires you to do more than claim to be hard working in an interview.

To show a hiring manager your work ethic, you need to discuss your past experiences. In particular, you should describe times when you work autonomously, times when you went above and beyond expectations and times when you took initiative. If you can give specific examples of these situations in an interview, you will give yourself an edge over your competition.

Typical Questions:

Tell me about a time when you worked with little or no contact with your supervisor.
Tell me about a time when you finished your scheduled work early. What did you do?
Tell me about a time when you exceeded your supervisor’s expectations.
Tell me about a time when you took the initiative to do something without being told.
How would you describe your work ethic?
How did your performance rate compare to others doing the same job?
What expectations did you have to meet and what was your performance level?
When have you volunteered for a tough assignment you really didn’t want?
If you knew you couldn’t get all your work done on time, what would you do?
How to do you handle stress?

The questions above are just a sampling of the questions you might see in an interview. There are hundreds or thousands of questions you may see in an interview. To prepare effectively, you can’t memorize answers to each. You need to develop a selection of stories that illustrate your experience, skills and accomplishments. If you prepare a few stories from your experience that show your work ethic and can answer the questions above, you should be able to adapt to unexpected questions about your work ethic easily.

Preparing for a Production Worker Interview

This year, we have watched the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. The job market in manufacturing is tough, but it is far from being a lost cause. Manufacturing firms need to maintain certain staffing levels to meet production requirements. For a displaced production worker, particularly individuals who may not have looked for a job in the last twenty or thirty years, preparing to interview can be very difficult.

Interviewing for a job is not a skill everyone naturally possesses. In fact, most people are not very good at selling their potential in an interview (and a lot of them are downright terrible). Knowing how hiring managers assess job seekers can help your preparation.

In manufacturing, a supervisor might manage upwards of 100 production workers. Even with teams of only a few dozen, managing this many people can be difficult. The supervisor will have a wide range of tasks and responsibilities. When a single employee has performance problems, it can eat a tremendous amount of the supervisor’s time.

When hiring, a supervisor will look for characteristics which indicate the job seeker will not be a performance problem. In other words, the supervisor tries to pick out reasons why the job seeker will not succeed, and reject the job seeker for these reasons. If the supervisor can’t find a reason to reject the job seeker, they are likely to be hired.

What characteristics do supervisors consider?

Work Ethic: Supervisors want to build teams of people who work hard and do not need to be pushed to do their job. I’m sure you have worked with people at both ends of the spectrum – individuals who can’t sit still and will find work if they don’t have any, and individuals who sit and wait to be told what to do. The former is easy to manage and the latter can be a huge source of frustration for the supervisor.
Reliability: One of the biggest challenges in a production environment is dealing with unexpected absenteeism. Businesses run very lean, often with every scheduled employee performing an essential job. There are no extra workers sitting around in case someone is a no show. This makes reliability a big concern.
Attitude: The most productive employee can be a terrible part of a company if they have a bad attitude and destroy the morale on a team. We see this in sports all the time – a superstar whose’s attitude causes a good team to turn into a bad one. The same happens in production environments. Supervisors look for characteristics that show how a job seeker might be disruptive in a team environment.
Mechanical Ability: In a production environment, having good mechanical skills can help a new employ get up to speed quickly and make it much easier for the company to train them. Supervisors will look for past experiences that show good mechanical ability.
Safety: Supervisors want employees who will make good decisions and safety is a big part of this. There are workers who will do whatever they can to circumvent safety rules. I’ve never understood this. Failing to follow the safety rules can lead to serious injury and will often lead to termination. Despite this, there are people who just won’t follow the rules. They can be very difficult to deal with as a supervisor, and supervisors will try to avoid hiring people like this.

If a person can demonstrate they have a good work ethic, are reliable, have a positive attitude, have good mechanical ability and are concerned about safety, they have a good chance of getting hired.

No Worries Man

I’ve got a friend working on a Caribbean island on a large construction project. The island is small and there are few jobs available. Residents are routinely walking on to the job site to ask for work. Their typical approach shows what NOT to do in a job search.

My friend is part of the project management team (he’s an engineer), but isn’t responsible for hiring construction workers. Despite this, a lot of potential workers approach him (mainly because he’s in the office a lot and works a ton of hours). Their approach is direct – they walk up and ask for a job.

The engineer then asks a few questions to learn about the job seeker. First on the list is “what are you good at?” In almost every case, the answer is “No worries man, I do everything.” This answer is useless. It gives no information about the job seeker and fails to give any reason why he should be hired.

The next question the engineer asks will relate to a specific functional area. For example, “do you have any experience with…” tile installation, drywall, carpentry, hvac repairs, electrical, plumbing, etc. Generally, he asks about a skill that is currently in demand on the job site. The answer is almost always the same, something like “No worries man, I’m the best tile installer on the island.” If the engineer asks about a second area, say “Do you have any electrical experience,” he gets the same answer “No worries man, I’m the best electrician on the island.”

Because everyone claims to be the “best on the island” for every skill, the answers are meaningless. They do nothing to differentiate the job seeker.

The next question the engineer asks is for examples of the work they have done, for example, “what types of tile installation projects have you worked on?” You should be able to guess the answer at this stage… “No worries man, I do it all.”

At this point, if the engineer is really busy or having a bad day, he will usually throw the guy out. If he’s feeling generous, he might ask a couple more questions, but they produce the same generic answers. No matter how many different questions he asks, he’s never been able to get someone to give a specific answer. They all are “the best on the island and can do it all.”

The core problem with generic answers is they don’t allow a hiring manager to consider the job seeker. In this engineer’s case, all he wants to know is who to send the potential employee to see. Is the best place the superintendent for flooring, plumbing, electrical, finish carpentry, etc? That superintendent will then make the hiring decision. Unfortunately, if you don’t know what a person is good at, you can’t classify them and consider them for a job.

I expect the workers are worried they will miss an opportunity if they take a stand. For example, if they say they are good with drywall, they will only have a chance if the company is hiring drywall people. If the company is hiring in other areas, but not drywall, the worker would be out of luck. Narrowing your scope to a single job type won’t limit the number of opportunities. On the contrary, it will do just the opposite and open up opportunities. There are no jobs for a pure generalist. Every job requires some level of specialization and certain skills. If you don’t focus on a niche, you will not be considered for anything.

This is the result for the workers on the island. They never get to speak with the superintendent who might hire them.

When to Arrive at an Interview

When going to a face to face interview, many job seekers wonder when the best time to arrive is. Should you get there exactly when the interview is scheduled? Should you arrive early, and if so, how early? Will you kill your chance of getting hired if you are late?

Unfortunately, there is no single answer to these questions that will hold in every situation. There are some guidelines you can follow to maximize your chance of success.

First, you should arrive at an interview early. The further you must travel, the more time you need to add to your trip. In major cities with significant traffic congestion, you also need to plan around delays. Ideally, you want to arrive at the company fifteen or twenty minutes early. This will give a little leeway in case you are delayed.

If you arrive more than 15 minutes early, you should wait to enter the facility. Walking in too early can start the interview on the wrong foot. The hiring manager scheduled the interview for specific time and will expect you to arrive then. If you walk in earlier, the hiring manager will have to do one of two things. He might feel he should adjust his schedule to start the interview early, or he will make you wait in a lobby of conference. If you have any anxiety about interviewing, waiting without anything do can raise the tension much higher.

A better strategy is to arrive at the company’s location and wait in your car until five minutes before the interview. This will give you the opportunity to review your interview prep notes. If you are significantly early, driving around the area can help learn about the region (especially important if you are considering relocating). With more time, finding a restaurant where you can sit and wait.

If you are early, you just need to kill some time. But what if you’re late? There are interviewers reject any candidates that are late. Most interviewers will take into account the circumstances. If you are running late and call ahead to let the interviewer know you are going to be late, you should be ok with most interviewers. Once you are late, there’s not much you can do.

Getting stressed out because you are late can destroy any chance you have left. You will not be able to change the interviewer’s impression. Apologize and go forward confidently and professionally.

Interviewing with a Former Boss or Coworker

If you network well, there’s a good chance you will eventually interview with a former boss or coworker. This can feel awkward. The interviewer has firsthand knowledge of many of the experiences and accomplishments from your background. They also know about your failures and weaknesses. Preparing for an interview like this can be difficult.

When you prepare for an interview with someone that you know well, you need to approach the interview just like any other interview. Prepare examples of your experience from both the times you worked with them, and when you worked apart. Don’t assume the person will remember all of your accomplishments from the time you worked together. It is likely, they have forgotten many of the details.

The experiences you gained after working together are also important. You should provide a clear picture of what you have been doing, and what you have accomplished. Discussing your recent experiences provides an opportunity to show how you have learned and grown professionally. The interviewer will know your weaknesses. Showing you recognized these weaknesses, worked to improve on them, and succeeded in developing in these areas can be very impressive in an interview.

You can expect some of the interview to be very conversational, with the two of you reminiscing. This is good but don’t forget you’re in an interview. Focus on listening and answering the questions asked.

When you interview with a former coworker, you have one big benefit: you are a known entity. Hiring managers want to make a great hire, but often are more worried about avoiding a bad hire. Knowing a person will be able to meet expectations, even if they aren’t a super star, can be the tipping point in a hiring decision.

There is one question you can ask that could improve your chances: “What about this position will be more difficult for me in comparison to the job where we worked together?” The goal of this question is to uncover any reason the interviewer might reject you. You may not be able to overcome this, but at least you will have the chance to address it.

If you ask this question, be prepared for some criticism. You’re asking the interviewer to tell you why they think you won’t succeed. If you get defensive or argumentative, you will almost guarantee that you will be rejected.

There’s a chance the objection will be something you can’t overcome. For example, the hiring manager wants a technical skill you don’t have. In this situation, there’s only one thing you can do. You need to express your commitment to learn the new skill quickly.

The other scenario involves and objection in an area where you have gained experience and skills since working with the interviewer. The interviewer will picture you exactly as you were when you last worked together. Your challenge is changing the picture. Show the new experiences and accomplishments you have had. If you do this effectively, you will show how you are more capable than in the past.

New Job Interview Prep Webinar

On Wednesday, I’m going to conduct a webinar teaching job interview techniques. The “Job Interview Basics” class will be held on Wednesday July 8th at 11AM EDT. The session is free and I invite any job seeker interested in improving their interview skills to attend.

The “Job Interview Basics” webinar will teach job seekers the how to sell their experience, accomplishments and potential in a job interview. This one-hour session will cover the following topics:

The interviewer’s perspective
The types of interviews and the styles of interviewers
The structure of an interview
How to prepare an answer for the most common interview question, “Tell Me About Yourself”
A technique to prepare for almost any question (STARL)
How to research a company
What questions to ask

The webinar incorporates many of the techniques taught in my book, Power Up Your Job Search: A Modern Approach to Interview Preparation.

Update: I now do webinars for APICS. Check out the APICS career portal for more information.

Failure and Your Job Search

Failure is a part of learning and growth. It is important to fail and learn from the experience. Despite this, few people are comfortable talking about their failures – especially in a job interview.

If you have failed in your career, you may have the tendency to avoid talking about the situation. This gets tough in interviews with a lot of questions about times you have failed or your weaknesses. The truth is a failure is not as bad for your career as you may think. If you accept responsibility for the failure, can clearly explain why the failure occurred, can describe what you learned from the experience and know what you would do differently in the same situation, you can make a very positive impression.

An example of a failure comes from Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE. Below is Immelt’s discussion of a major failure:

In 1992, I was running all the commercial operations for the plastics business at GE. We had a product called Nuvel, which was a sheet product that would go over wood to try to create the poor man’s Corian countertops. Turns out the thing just didn’t work. Any time you dropped a coin on it, it would leave a mark that you couldn’t get out unless you buffed it with sandpaper. It was a classic case of just not asking the right questions up front.

This one was my mistake. I let the need for speed overwhelm doing enough upfront market research and testing. It was a $20 million mistake. We caught it after about three months. Customers would complain. At first, you go through this denial phase: “You don’t understand” the product, and stuff like that.

It made me learn about listening better. I’m more disciplined on the upfront stuff now than I was then. I wanted to do something big and exciting, and I wanted to do it now rather than wait a year. I ‘fessed up: stepped up, made up for the financial hit we had to take on it by exceeding sales targets on other products, and made good to the customers. I think that I got better at understanding the need for research and more thought up front, so you don’t have to redo things.

You’re never allowed in GE to make the same mistake twice. You’re allowed to make the mistake once. If you try something and it fails, but you went about it the right way and you learned from it, that’s not a bad thing. (From Businessweek: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/06/six_tales/index_01.htm)

Most people have never lost a company $20 million. Even worse, Immelt explains the failure occurred because he tried to move a project forward too fast and didn’t respond to customer complaints. The failure was not caused by outside influences – Immelt made a mistake. Despite this, the failure did not end his career. He continued to progress through GE and replaced Jack Welch as Chairman and CEO.

Immelt dealt with the failure very well. He was honest about the cause and took responsibility. He did not blame others for the mistake. He showed the impact of his mistake – $20 million. Although this emphasizes the magnitude of the mistake, it also shows how Immelt was aware of how his actions affected the company.

Immelt explained clearly what he learned from the experience. The lessons learned did not include a way to make this project successful. There are projects that cannot succeed and the product being developed in this case could not be fixed. The lesson learned was Immelt’s new ability to assess a project and address issues much earlier (before they cost $20 million).

In your career, consider the failures you have had. Prepare to discuss them in an interview. You should try to talk about your accomplishments, but don’t shy away from a significant story about failure.