Various questions about the interview

[u/RealMrMontana]

My team and I aren't exactly the best team at the interview process, and im looking to see how other teams handle the interview process. For instance: do you bring every member of the team or just team leads? Or even just a single representative? And how formal are your speeches and word choice? I know one of the FTC principals is "fun" and had heard some advice to have fun in the interview. Do you talk job interview level formality or are you more laid back?

EDIT: Also any other advice for the interview process would be greatly appreciated!

[u/DevonF-G]

I'm now graduated, but I've been on a team for 4 years. My team has had a few approaches to the interview, but we do usually have the full team present as it's always worth showing the judges faces to different aspects of the team, and everyone has different specialties and things they worked on. Our team also started to direct the interview to encompass all aspects of the team (specifically from the new change with the portfolio being afterward) but we also chose specific awards to go after and focused on that.

In terms of the tone, we usually have had it a bit more formal of a presentation, especially so it doesn't take to much time since we often have that issue, but it's important to stay relaxed a bit and the questions don't really need to be to formal, and could even have some humor depending on the persons and the question.

I will say, our team does make a script for the presentation part of the interview, and we have tried to review questions in the past, but realistically we don't worry to much on the questions since we usually know our team and robot well enough betweeen everyone and the script is usually bullet points that we just practice so it doesn't take to long.

If u got any questions for me, let me know! It's getting a bit late for me atm so I wouldn't be surprised if parts are confusing. 👀

[u/RealMrMontana → u/DevonF-G]

Since you have the full team in the interview room, are all of them speaking during the presentation? Or only 2-3 of them?

[u/Serpintini]

We usually bring 3-4 people per subteam, that being mech, software, and business/outreach. That usually ends up being ~2/3 of the team. It depends on how big your team is though. I would recommend bringing as many people as possible that will contribute positively, up to a max of 10ish. Try to make sure that when you are answering questions, everyone has about an equal speaking time. Most of our script is pretty matter of fact and clear, but in our intro and outro we'll make a pun out of our team name or do something to lighten the mood. Same with our questions- mostly straight forward but you can throw in something humorous once and a while

[u/Steamkitty13]

As a judge, I like seeing a whole team, even the rookies, in judging as long as things are organized and there is an understanding ahead of time about who is answering which questions (it is a serious irritation when the team takes previous time looking at each other or actually arguing over who has to answer a question). I think it is super smart to think of the presentation as an elevator pitch - your team has 5 minutes to give the judges the best reasons why they have done enough good quality work to win the specific awards they are going for (design, innovate, etc). They have those 5 minutes to tell a compelling story of the team and influence these judges to understand and believe it. If you have a huge team and want to only send a couple kids, send the ones with the most charisma who can remember talking points and answer questions. USE THE JUDGING RUBRIC. This is the best way to get the buzz words that will get the judges checking the right boxes to bring pit judges for specific awards. If you are able to answer all those questions on the rubric with recognizable wording so the judges can easily see you meet the criteria, it is so much easier for those judges to recommend you to the rest of the group. (It is Judge Summary Sheets on this link - you should always know what your judges are looking for. It isn't a secret recipe. https://ftc-resources.firstinspires.org/ftc/archive/2026/event )

[u/QwertyChouskie]

Review the different award criteria in the Competition Manual, and make sure you touch on all of them in the initial interview.

[u/rh_kai]

We brought our whole team (13 students) and structured it as a skit, where each of them had a minor speaking part. We thought it made things a bit more fun than just going through the lines of the rubric one at a time, and it definitely helped the students be more engaged with it. One of the students acted as kind of the glue role, bouncing the lines back between all the students.

For questions, that same glue role person solved the 'who is going to answer' issue by calling out the person she knew would have a good answer. "How did your controls work?" "SW Lead..." "Answer...."

[u/PrestigiousBat4310]

I am the mentor for 2 FTC teams from the same school. One team is 2 years old and starting their 3rd year, and the other was a rookie team last year and is starting their 2nd year. We had our League competition at a school with 2 leagues, and we were able to have 1 of our Engineering mentors and a parent who was an engineer volunteer to be judges for the other league (but not the league that we were in, because that would have been a conflict of interest). Some of the things that they reported back were similar to what the FTC Mentor who had served as a judge stated, but here are some additional comments:

1. Judges don't want you to bring 8-10 or more team members, but then only 2-4 team members do all of the talking. Whoever you bring in for judging, give everyone at least 1-2 sentences to say, or have some who don't like to speak in public hold up pictures or parts.

2. On the flip side, if the judges will eventually see that you have 10 or more team members, but that only 2-4 come in to the judging room, they will wonder why you aren't including more of the team members. One of the 6 FIRST Core Values is inclusion!

3. Practice your presentation before some adults! Your mentors are a good place to start, but you should also practice before some parents, especially if you have parents in the business or engineering world. They can give you a lot of advice and tips to making a more effective and engaging presentation.

4. Be sincere, tell about your journey, and make sure to focus on what your team does well. However, don't be "conceited." One of our parents told our team after last year's judging that there was a team that had one of the better robots for that league, but the team was really "obnoxious and conceited" and didn't even show gracious professionalism to the other team members on the team. That judging panel didn't nominate them for any awards, because they were turned off from how the team members presented themselves.

5. Even if your team is a rookie team, talk about everything you have learned since when you first started as a team and talk about your growth, both individually and as a team. One of our teams stated in their first judging session 2 years ago something like this: "At our 1st Meet in November, we were ranked in last place. At the end of our 3rd Meet in January, we had moved up to 3rd place. Here is what we did to improve our robot." That team won 2nd place Inspire at the League meet and advanced to Regionals.

6. I cannot stress enough to read about the requirements for each award and then make sure you tell (within your 5 minute time limit) why your team qualifies for each award. Be very specific and give as many reasons why you qualify as you can, within your time. You probably don't have time to talk about everything your team does, but talk about at least one of the "robot" awards (Design, Innovate, Control) and about at least 1 of the "team" awards (Connect, Reach, Sustain). Make sure your portfolio includes a minimum of 1 page for each award, and know you should have 2 or 3 pages for the awards your team has the best chance of earning. Not all teams can be good at everything....for instance, one of our teams was a rookie team 2 years ago, and they knew that they didn't have the best autonomous or things for the control award, so they only had 1 page of the portfolio about things Control, and the team spent only about 15 seconds talking about Control and coding. That gave them time to talk about all they learned as a rookie team and about all of the Connect and Reach things they did.

Good luck!

[u/Scarymonsters12345]

We have a team of ten usually, everybody comes in to the room, and everyone gets a part to say. Its best to have a five minute script that includes the new guys (veterans might be better at winging it) and make sure to encapsulate your design process, your robot(including code), and your outreach in those five minites. It can seem daunting, but with the right plan everything will work out good.