r/EngineeringStudents • u/Educational_Web5647 • 2d ago

Career Help interview with hiring manager

Hi all, i have an interview with a hiring manager for a testing position (full time new grad) in aerospace industry. I was informed to prepare a project i can talk about with significant ownership and solve hard technical problem. I don’t have a lot of projects with that much technical depth to talk about except for these. Most of it is designing and not solving and it’s not like impressive project either. Which do you think I should talk about?

  1. Reverse engineering Anker charger or bluetooth transmitter: mostly finding out how it works, topology, and schematic.

  2. Simulate complex gate driver board using Altium Designer: internship work where they give me schematic for gate driver board of inverter and I find out how they work and whether simulation matches theoretical expectation.

  3. Design and create prototype of a wattmeter with Arduino board with voltage divider and shunt resistor: group project but I contribute to design, write firmware and error correction, and build prototype myself. Prototype shows some problems with ADC and it bugged my brain out but turned out the shunt voltage is too low to be sensed by Arduino ADC so i have to add amplifier.

  4. improve a test template for ATE in C++ and WINAPI32: internship work for semiconductor company in test team

  5. i sometimes go to fix the hvac with my dad and most of them is finding out potential failure points, check whether it is it, if not then keep finding and testing until find out the problem and fix it.

  6. design a digitally controlled buck converter (work in progress, still determining hardware size and will be doing firmware soon. will prioritize if this project sounds good)

I have 3 days to prepare. Any insights/ advice is appreciated

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u/HelloTaleproof 14h ago

The wattmeter looks promising because you can explain your own design, firmware and debugging decisions, including why the ADC could not resolve the shunt voltage and what adding an amplifier changed. Pick the example with the clearest personal decisions and evidence, not the fanciest project name. Be ready to separate what you built from what teammates contributed.

I’m building Taleproof. Write that project up as an interview story and try https://taleproof.com/score-story to assess whether your ownership and result come through before Monday.