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CEng interview - how much technical detail?

Amy Paton

Hello,

I have my PRI for CEng coming up soon, and having read the guidelines I have a 6-slide presentation pack ready. It covers a large project that I worked on that encompasses all A & B competencies quite well.

My worry, however, is that I haven't been able to provide much technical detail in the slides due to the work being classified. I have tried to give a flavour of the work that I carried out / was responsible for, and have given a top level overview, but cannot really provide much technical flesh to the slides. I'm struggling to find any relevant images either that would be allowed in the public domain. 

As a result it does feel a bit like simply repeating what I put in my application.

My question is: would this prove a disadvantage in my interview? How much technical depth are the interviewees expected to go into? I plan to declare my predicament at the outset with the interviewers, and could go into a bit more detail verbally but again only within the framework of allowable public domain knowledge.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

  • 0

    Hi Amy,

    This is a common dilemma, but interviewers have this situation more commonly than you might expect. You don't need to delve into the classified details as the interviewers are not so much looking at what you produced but how/why you went about producing it. This is the difference between "I designed the gun mounting to withstand a shock of 17.3g" and "when designing the gun mounting I took into account the shock loading from the gun recoil". The second sentence doesn't give away any classified information (assuming the recoil loading is classified here) but also explains why you did what you did, so is better on all counts.

    The interviewers will have read your application (and make sure you reread it before the interview so you remember what you said) so if you are just repeating what was in it they have the option of asking questions to get to bits that weren't in the application. If they are probing areas that are classified then explain to them what is classified (the general topic that is classified - not the technical detail obviously) and they will help you to find a way to explain what you were doing without going into forbidden detail. The one thing to avoid is an abrupt "I can't tell you that, it's classified!" which will just set the interviewers against you.

    Alasdair

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