Suggestion Interview Sticky

redargon

hi,

I've noticed while scanning through the no replies section that there are a lot of highschool students and first years doing projects where they have to interview someone in their prospective field. It seems mostly to be questions for engineers.

I think the reason they're not getting any replies, is because a lot of us have answered these interviews (or similar) many times before. Would it be possible to put up a sticky somewhere (career guidance or engineering) where we could direct these people to that contains a list of questions and answers already answered by the pfers here.

Let me know what you think.
Thanks.

FredGarvin

I was going to start this very thread. There are quite a few threads asking about this. The reason I don't answer them is because, a lot of times, they ask personal questions that I prefer to not post publicly, i.e title, position, address, etc...

I hate to be a stick in the mud, but I am border line tempted to ask them to be put on the "do not ask" list. I think this should be discussed amongst the PF engineering community to get an idea of who would be willing to answer what questions.

Q_Goest

I agree. I've answered one or two of these, but they seem very repetitive. Also, don't like answering a lot of personal questions as Fred mentions.

redargon

No admins/mentors out there to give us a hand on how we should continue with this topic?

Moonbear

When I see someone trying to ask interview questions here, I generally choose to ignore them. I really doubt anyone gets an assignment for school where they should hunt down a particular profession online and bug them with a game of 20 questions. I've had interview assignments back when I was in high school, and even in college, but the purpose was to go talk to someone in person and learn actual interview skills, not just gather up the answers from an FAQ thread.

redargon

I agree, but in today's world people don't actually have to make personal contact any more and can just learn everything from the interwebs

but to be serious, I remember having similar tasks in school and I didn't have any aeronautical engineering contacts. So it's not as easy as it may seem to find the people you need to access. Also, you get out what you put in: If you come to a website and just use answers already generated, and so does the rest of your class, you're bound to get a worse report out of it, and grade too. If you do it the personal way, it would be much more enriching and probably make for a better report. The choice is up to the student.

D H

Count me in with Fred, Q_Goest, and Moonbear. I don't give out personal information to random strangers. The chances of me posting such personal info in a sticky thread? Zero.

Besides, haven't teachers learned from Dilbert that asking engineers what they do is a bit like going to watch sausage being made?

FredGarvin

It's nice to see some involvement in this topic. I see a beginning of a general agreement that these interview requests are not going to be entertained, especially with the increasing amount of personal information being requested.

Mentors: Is this enough to have this topic put on the "closed topics" list?

Astronuc

I concur.

And yes to FredGarvin's question.