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SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test
2

SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

(OP)
Has anyone had to take an exam when interviewing with a structural engineering company?
I'm trying to put together a short exam, something pretty basic for entry level / junior engineers. The idea is to get a baseline of someone's experience and how fast/slow they complete the "exercise". I'm wondering if anyone has a test like this or has taken one? What did it include?

My thoughts are:

Given:
A square Roof plan 2 eq. spaced columns and one steel beam line. Show wood joists framing perpendicular to the beam.
A square Floor plan with a column in the middle. Show no floor on one side of the beam.
Roof / Floor live and deads
Allowable bearing capacity
Size a joist, beam, column and footing.
This checks the ability to size wood and steel but more importantly if they can follow a load path. Maybe ask the person to draw shear and moment diagrams.
The catch is that there is a point load on the floor beam and it is unbraced on one side.

Unfortunately this is not an all inclusive test but I think the idea is to try and see if the person understands load paths/take downs more so than material code specifics.

I'd be interested to hear any comments, thanks in advance!



EIT
www.HowToEngineer.com

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

I'd just concentrate on the load path and bending moment and Shear force diagrams. In my experience if someone can visualise those on the spot in an interview, they will be capable of doing actual design with no worries.

The other thing which is important in my opinion is to give them a real structure and get them to real off possible structural schemes or configuration and possible design issues, things to consider, etc. Ask questions along the way and challenge their ideas and see if they can defend/explain their choices. This in my mind demonstrates the ability to think beyond just designing an individual component, let's face it almost all engineers can do the design of an element, but it's the other higher level stuff more junior engineers just don't get exposed to that's more valuable in the long term.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Have a look at some of the questions presented within this online exam for inspiration.

I agree with Agent666 - make them draw BMD's for a simple portal frame. Give them an industrial steel shed or house, then ask them where/how they would brace it. Ask them how post-tensioning works? Most young engineers can follow a code, so don't bother going down that path.

Or... give them a question so far out of their league / time allowed, but examine their reaction and subsequent thought processes. For example, I heard a story about a graduate interview at one of the world's largest & influential banking companies. Their office overlooked the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The interview started with, "How much would it cost to run that bridge each year?"


RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

At my old work we had evaluations on ability to use structural modeling software (Staad in this case) at 3 and 6 months after being hired and compared it to someone fluent in using the software.

Never had an exam at an interview but I would fully support it. Vague questions about my aptitude suck, I'd much rather demonstrate my skill. In this end I usually bring a portfolio of projects I worked on and use them as discussion points.

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

While I understand the intent of the test, I personally would be put off by such a request. I have not heard of this approach, but I have heard of engineers being asked to demonstrate their use of analysis programs as part of a 2nd or 3rd interview. I suspect that an entry level engineer may find it intimidating.

That being said, I do think that you as the employer are entitled to have some understanding as to where the engineer's strengths and weaknesses lie. Having sat on both sides of the interviewing table, I think that if you ask directed and specific questions about projects they have worked on or materials they have worked with, it usually becomes quickly apparent whether or not they can speak intelligently on a subject matter (such as using correct terms, reference to code requirements, load path......).

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Be careful with giving interview exams. With a prevalence of "equal opportunity employment" laws around, you have to be sure that anyone who holds the existing job in your company must be able to pass any interview exam you give!

Being able to pass an exam at an interview, while laudable, does not guarantee a competent employee....it guarantees someone who is capable of taking an exam! Some people are just not good at taking exams, but can perform quite will in a daily environment. Yes, being able to take and pass an "on the spot" exam shows that one can "think on their feet" and have presence of mind in front of clients and others........all good qualities to have for a prospective employee. Such might help spot a "star", but wouldn't necessarily pick out the better, long term employee.

Conversely, we need to strive for quality in our business and technical competence is foremost in that process. Being able to visualize and describe a load path or doing a free body diagram would certainly be necessities and a prospective employee should be able to give it a good shot, even with a few minor glitches!

I also agree with GregLocock....would they even understand the question. Yes, our academic system in the US for engineering school attempts to get to that level of detail, but that depends on the school they attended and the professors they had. It is not universal that a new grad would understand the how the individual component analyses would fit into a whole building system application.

As an example, when I was teaching structural analysis, I devoted a full lecture to describing that the same member section can be called a purlin, a beam, a girder or even a column....just depending on where it sits and its orientation in the building system. I have interviewed prospective employees who were never exposed to such in their academic process, so it varies.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

(OP)
All great points, thank you for your insight!
I have similar feelings as the rest of you. I'm not so sure I would have "passed" the test I just described straight out of college and I went through (what I would consider) I pretty intensive structural curriculum (not saying I was a very good student though...). And for sure I would have been intimidated. For me the most important thing is trying to find someone who is passionate/interested about engineering and who really wants to keep learning, no matter their age or experience. I think the test has been brought up due to a couple recent events (I'll stop their). I don't even want to call it a test because there would be no pass/fail but just used as some sort of gauge or KPI.

Thanks again!

EIT
www.HowToEngineer.com

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Well, maybe the point of the test shouldn't be to "pass" but rather use it as a level playing field to compare applicants?

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Honestly, I would just give them some statics problems to solve. This is probably the most important class you ever took and I see many veteran engineers who appear to have never mastered it.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

I have been tested once. And, while I disdain the practice, I'll concede that it was a cleverly designed test. It had some statics (echo XR250) and a bunch of other practical things:

- cold weather concreting practices
- fundamentals of moment connection detailing.
- intelligent brace layout.
- awareness that there's such a thing as earthquakes.

It was an exam intended to be taken by engineers at all experience levels with EIT's being expected to do poorly. Although, rockstar EIT's would often do surprisingly well. If you're interested and have a burner email address, I can share a copy.

I like to debate structural engineering theory -- a lot. If I challenge you on something, know that I'm doing so because I respect your opinion enough to either change it or adopt it.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

I agree with Mighty Engineer. Hopefully, your initial screening will weed out the ones who do not know the basics. The test then should expose the different potential for the various candidates. I would suggest tailoring the test to the applicants initial responsibilities and perhaps some future work. For example: type of design work: residential, commercial, institutional, industrial or types of materials used: wood, steel, concrete, precast, post tensioned, etc. You might even throw in some questions about codes, loads, costs, software, ethics, etc. In any event, the test should reflect the specific business of the company: design, estimating, detailing, construction administration, etc.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

One firm where I interviewed had candidates (2nd or 3rd round) sit down with each of the PM types. These PMs each had a binder with some photos of projects they'd worked on in the last few years. They'd talk about the project a little, some of the challenges they faced, then would ask a question or two related to the project. (E.g. if you had to brace this system against movement in this direction, how would you go about designing a deadman?).

I thought that was a pretty clever idea to see how well engineers could analyze a real world situation on their feet, and to tell applicants about the company's work in an interesting manner.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

I think you should be careful asking for knowledge typically gained through work experience of entry level applicants, unless your idea of entry level is at the end of their EIT period. I think you should be testing for general aptitude, basic techniques, and general fit with your office. For example with the example in OPs example, out of school I could do most of it (except maybe design the footing - I'd need my notes/books to do that as its not something I did often at school), but because most of experience is academic asking for tactics you pick up from working on projects and being mentored by other engineers may be asking a bit much.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

As a young engineer myself, we never had a timber design class and would be clueless as to how to choose a wood beam.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

I'd rather hire an eit that takes the time to actually think about what he's doing. I think that would be my test, too many fill their mouth's with complete crap.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

My firm requires a Masters degree in structural or civil with structural emphasis for any entry level engineer. That seems to do a good job weeding out the weaker EITs without the need for a test. The principals ask questions regarding projects and what ifs, but nothing formal or written. It's more to gauge whether they can understand drawings, can do basic design, and more importantly, understand the load path for gravity and lateral loads through the building. A good example question they asked me was "What are the ramifications of adding architectural precast to this spandrel beam when the building was originally designed for stucco cladding?" It's a quick answer and demonstrates knowledge of load path without confusing the interviewee with details.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

If you're testing people straight out of school, make sure you're testing them on what they learn in school, not on what you know based on 20 years of work experience. There can be a large, perhaps complete, gap between those two levels.
Be aware that if the answers to your questions might vary depending on the specific industry, area of the country, or countries in the world, then your testing may be less than useful. If you expect the applicants to have particular tables from the building codes memorized, or have the various design formulas and stress equations memorized, or be familiar with specific years and editions of the codes, or have a knowledge of the relative costs of all the alternatives that might be considered, you may be asking a bit much.
Make sure you're not measuring somebody on speed of results when they are concentrating on thoroughness and neatness of documentation, or vice versa.
If you're evaluating hand work when that work is normally done by computer, or vice versa, you may get less than useful results from a test.
If you're looking for somebody that is thoroughly familiar with exactly what you're doing right now, and can get to work without any supervision, your approach would be different than from general hiring.
If you're looking for top-notch engineers, be prepared to pay for top-notch engineers. It'd be kind of pointless to generate a test that only the best could pass if you're not going to pay enough to hire them.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Looking at me straight in the eyes and saying "I don't know". <---- immediate hire

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

+1 on Ron's comments regarding the legality of it. Apparently the relevant case in the US is Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971). I know nothing regarding the topic, I'm simply lifting it from an article by James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal. I'll try to paste excerpts from the article in a following post, if I can.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Disparate but Not Serious
College is an expensive way of taking an IQ test.

BY JAMES TARANTO
The Wall Street Journal, Friday, May 18, 2007

By all accounts Marilee Jones did an excellent job as dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But she was forced to resign last month after it emerged that she had falsely claimed to hold three degrees when she first came to work at MIT 28 years earlier. In fact, she held only an undergraduate degree from an obscure Catholic college.

I feel her pain, for school never agreed with me. I repeatedly found myself in conflict with teachers and professors. I left high school after my sophomore year; and although I spent several years in college, I never bothered to graduate. In my 20s I considered a career in law, but I decided to stick with journalism in large part because the thought of spending three more years in school repelled me.

Ostensibly Ms. Jones was forced out because she committed fraud, but one can make a strong case that MIT had to get rid of her to avoid acknowledging that there is something fraudulent at the heart of American higher education. "If she had done a miserable job as dean, MIT might have been more forgiving," the leftist author Barbara Ehrenreich writes in an essay for the Nation, "but her very success has to be threatening to an institution of higher learning: What good are educational credentials anyway?"

Ms. Ehrenreich argues that "there are ways in which the higher education industry is becoming a racket: Buy our product or be condemned to life of penury, and our product can easily cost well over $100,000. . . . In the last three decades the percentage of jobs requiring at least some college has doubled, which means that employers are going along with the college racket. A résumé without a college degree is never going to get past the computer programs that screen applications."

What accounts for the increasing insistence on college degrees as a prerequisite for entry-level professional jobs? Ms. Ehrenreich offers this theory: "Employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one's ability to obey and conform."

To a nonconformist dropout like me, this explanation is emotionally appealing. But I think it's bunk. For one thing, not all white-collar jobs require obedience and conformity. Some employers prize creativity and enterprise--but even they do not generally go out of their way to hire people without degrees. For another, it's hard to believe that employers today value the "ability to obey and conform" twice as highly as they did in the era of "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit."

I have a better theory. I blame the Supreme Court.

What most professional jobs require is basic intellectual aptitude. And what has changed since the 1970s is that the court has developed a body of law that prevents employers from directly screening for such aptitude. The landmark case was Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971). A black coal miner claimed discrimination because his employer required a high-school diploma and an intelligence test as prerequisites for promotion to a more skilled position. The court ruled 8-0 in the miner's favor. "Good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as 'built-in headwinds' for minority groups," Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote.

This became known as the "disparate impact" test, and it applies only in employment law. Colleges and universities remain free to use aptitude tests, and elite institutions in particular lean heavily on exams such as the SAT in deciding whom to admit. For a prospective employee, obtaining a college degree is a very expensive way of showing that he has, in effect, passed an IQ test.

But why are employers able to get away with requiring a degree without running afoul of Griggs? Because colleges and universities--again, especially elite ones--go out of their way to discriminate in favor of minorities. By admitting blacks and Hispanics with much lower SAT scores than their white and Asian classmates, purportedly in order to promote "diversity," these institutions launder the exam of its disparity.

Thus the higher-education industry and corporate employers have formed a symbiotic relationship in which the former profits by acting as the latter's gatekeeper and shield against civil-rights lawsuits. Little wonder that in 2003, when the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of discriminatory admissions policies at the University of Michigan, 65 Fortune 500 companies filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging that they be upheld.

They were. By a 5-4 vote in Grutter v. Bollinger, the court found that universities may use race as "a 'plus' factor" in determining whether "an applicant might contribute to a diverse educational environment." The author of that decision, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, said she expected that "25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary."

Michigan voters didn't want to wait. Last November they approved an initiative banning discrimination by the state, including the university. Meanwhile Justice O'Connor has retired, and there is reason to think the man who replaced her, Justice Samuel Alito, will take a harder line against discrimination. Last year he joined Chief Justice John Roberts's dissent in a voting-rights case, which flatly stated: "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race."

It's quite possible that legally sanctioned discrimination in university admissions will come to an end sooner than Justice O'Connor expected. But the court cannot overturn the disparate-impact test in Griggs, because Congress codified it into law in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Thus a reversal of Grutter would make it harder for employers to screen applicants and avoid litigation.

Then again, what do I know? I never went to law school.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Just reading through it quickly, and thus I could be entirely wrong, it appears that the case you gave only bans testing that isn't related to job function. Thus, if your job is driving a forklift you can test people on their ability to drive a forklift. If your job is designed a building then it seems to me that demonstrating this ability is acceptable.

Definitely something to it though and likely it's more trouble than it's worth if you have to get a lawyer involved to make sure it's acceptable.

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Once you start the exam (any form of an exam) be ABSOLUTELY sure EVERYBODY applying for work at that same level takes the same exam during the same time period! Skipping people, skipping classes of people, skipping races or genders or ages or right or left handers, or skipping students from one school while testing ANY other people is going to open discrimination questions by those with a chip on their shoulders and no money in their wallets, and a discrimination lawyer on their phone list.

I took one "exam" in 3D AutoCAD at one company while working for a temp agency. Did OK, but really got the job by asking questions about what THEY wanted to do with the final 3D geometry: Do Boolean subtractions and additions, make a mold for the insulation, find out volume of insulation, simulate heat transfer areas, find out openings for air flow out of the oven, calculate duct "sheet metal shapes, etc. Just knowing the use of the final ahapes (and how to talk about making them) sold them on how I could be useful..

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

I have administered what I thought was an easy test and saw how they dealt with it. Some people kicked its ass, they were given a 2nd interview. Some asked good questions that demonstrated a grasp of the basics but not the details, some were asked back. Some wanted to take it home after struggling with it for an hour. Some turned it in quickly but incomplete. Some struggled with the computer. etc. Often what was important was just how they dealt with it and what questions they asked. Combined with a face-to-face interview we weeded out the chaff and got a dozen good people..

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

Quote (RFreund)

@Kootk - if you're still willing to share:

It is done...

I like to debate structural engineering theory -- a lot. If I challenge you on something, know that I'm doing so because I respect your opinion enough to either change it or adopt it.

RE: SE Interview Aptitude Exercise / Test

(OP)
@KootK - Thanks for sending. I tried to reply but just noticed it was rejected, twice. Might be something with my server or your email has determined that my email is spam. Anyway, thank you.

EIT
www.HowToEngineer.com

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