Here's how you can handle stress and pressure during an automotive engineering interview.

Technical interviews are not just about showcasing your technical prowess; they delve into your innovative thinking, adaptability to rapid industry changes, and your collaborative spirit in driving team projects to the finish line. These questions are intended to validate your expertise in the core principles of automotive engineering and your ability to apply this knowledge to real-world problems.

By understanding the questions and preparing your responses, you can showcase the depth of your expertise, highlight your innovative thinking, and your readiness to tackle the challenges. Most importantly, tailoring answers, practicing, and understanding the job duties will help you enter the interview with confidence and a clear strategy for articulating your qualifications.

1. When well-prepared, candidates feel more confident and in control, this helps reduce anxiety. 2. Feeling anxious often directs your attention inward, generating negative thoughts. Try to combat this by focusing on the present situation. 3. Be kind to yourself and know your value. 4. Remember that you don’t need to respond swiftly to every question—it’s a discussion, not a race! Before answering, take a breath and use a few seconds to organize your thoughts. You can even buy yourself more time by saying, “This is a really good question!

Combating nerves is all about getting into a more comfortable personal space and gaining more confidence, and the best way to do this is to practice, practice, practice! First, take a deep breath and try to relax. It sounds cliché, but it does help. If you can focus on your breathing and slow down your heart rate, you'll start to feel calmer, and your body will follow suit. If you fidget, try to take a few deep breaths and focus on keeping your hands still. Place them on the table before you or hold them together in your lap. It will help you stay calm and collected. Once you've calmed down, gradually make eye contact with the person you're talking to. Smile and keep the conversation going. They'll never know how nervous you are feeling!

You can ask open-ended questions that encourage the interviewer to elaborate or provide an example. You can also use reflective statements to paraphrase what the interviewer said and confirm your understanding.

This is a tricky bit. To reflect accurately on how you've done, you normally need clear and concise feedback from the company that you interviewed at. That's often not obtainable especially when it comes to larger companies that give you a generic response. If you are dealing with a headhunter, make sure to ask them for feedback, as they often will have a backchannel into the organisation. You can also reach out to hiring managers directly and see if they can share their thoughts directly with you - more often than not they will be happy to do so.

When faced with a complex question, its absolutely fine to ask for some time to consider your response. Even if your faced with a problem you can't solve, the best response would include a logical reasoning sequence that you would follow to arrive at the answer. In essence, how would you go about solving this problem even if the information is unknown.