Greeting Welder Skills!

I am in the process of preparing for an interview and thought it would be fun and helpful to start a thread on it and see where it goes. I hate interviews, doesn't matter how much I prepare, how well I think it is going to go, if I know who is on the panel, doesn't matter, I'm still a nervous wreck. Just how I operate, sitting and talking about me is my least favorite thing to do.

I work for a state agency as a shop lead and I'm preparing for a Supervisor position if one comes up, so I'm going to focus on that.

Step 1: do your homework. I know that my current supervisor is going to be applying for a position that is coming open due to retirement. I asked my supervisor to set aside some time to sit down and discuss some things and told him I was interested in his position should it become available. I brought a list of questions to that meeting and almost turned it into an interview of the supervisor. What are some of the things that your job entails that you didn't expect? What does the hiring process look like when you go to hire new employees? What training do you wish you had? What training should I start taking now?

Step 2: use your resources. My supervisor had a list of online trainings the agency has that I could do. He also helped set up a meeting with HR for me so that I could chat with them as well. HR had some great resources, mock interviews, additional training, other supervisors to talk to and be mentored by, and resources for putting together an interview presentation.

Step 3: prepare now. If the supervisor position becomes available it will be in 3 months or so. I am now working on writing my interview presentation, doing training and interviewing other supervisors.

This is the first job that I had to do a presentation as part of the interview. It wasn't required, but expected. When I applied for the Lead position my presentation was about 4 minutes long, and was basically a chance to go over everything that wasn't asked in the interview. I did a simple power point with some bullet points to talk about work and training history, technical skills and what goals I had as a Lead and what I had done to prepare for the position.

The state is far different from some of the other places I worked. The weld shop I worked at previously was pretty standard as far as interviews went: discussed training, certifications, basic welding knowledge and blueprint questions, did a weld test and tour and got offered the job at the end of the tour. With the state the hiring process is about a month long and fairly tedious.

I'd love to hear what everyone else has to share about interviews! How did you prepare? What were the interviews for your industry like? What did you wish you had done before the interview? And of course, what am I missing? There's always something that I'll never think of.

It seems the STAR interview process is widely used and in fact my last interview was based on this.

Of course I learned that after the fact but when I just now googled "star interview method examples" I found exact questions I was asked so I think its worthwhile to study a few pages about STAR interview questions.

I will go ahead a paste a bunch of them here that I remember being asked

Share an example of a time when you faced a difficult problem at work. How did you solve this problem?
Have you ever had to make an unpopular decision? How did you handle it?
Describe a time when you were under a lot of pressure at work. How did you react?
Tell me about a mistake you’ve made. How did you handle it?
Share an example of a time you had to make a difficult decision. What did you do?
Explain a situation where you used data or logic to make a recommendation.
Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss. How did you resolve it?
Describe a time when you had to deliver bad news. How did you do it?
Tell me about a time you worked with other departments to complete a project.
Share an example of a time when you failed. What did you learn from the experience?
Tell me about a time when you set and achieved a specific goal.
Tell me about a time when you had to persuade someone to do something.
Describe a time when you had a conflict with a colleague. How did you handle it?
Have you ever had to motivate others? How did you do it?
Tell me about the last time your workday ended before you were able to get everything done.