<p>has anyone interviewed with JPL before? (on-site)</p>
<p>do they ask technical questions during the interivew?</p>
<p>if anyone has, can you please tell me about your JPL interview experience?</p>
<p>Um, I talked to a rep but not on-site, they came here to my school. I think it will simply vary depending on who is doing the interviewing. I thought it would be interrogation style but it really was just a chat. She gave me a lot more information it felt like than I gave her, reminded me a little of a college interview.</p>
<p>There was a member on here that worked at JPL for a time. I can't remember the name though. He went to Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>nevermind: I remember, RocketDA.</p>
<p>Oh wow... yeah I kinda forgot about CC...</p>
<p>First, who is interviewing you? Is it going to be a technically competent person or a human resources person? I'll assume technically competent...</p>
<p>I interviewed for my first internship at JPL in 2004. At the time, I was in high school so I'm not sure how valid my assessment is of the JPL interview experience or whether my experience is representative of the typical experience.</p>
<p>I arrived at the visitor's center and checked in. They required a driver's license and/or a valid US passport to go on lab. After about 10 minutes the group I was interviewing for sent someone down to escort me.</p>
<p>I talked with the section manager for about 30 minutes about my experience and interests with rockets and such. He seemed impressed...probably only because I was a high schooler. Then he took me to a couple propulsion engineers and had me sit down with them for 10 minutes or so. They asked me more technical questions about my work. I believe they tailored this to make a good assessment of my conceptual basis on propulsion stuff.</p>
<p>One of the guys I talked to (who was a team leader for MER descent solid propulsion system) had a spare rocket motor that was designed for use on Mars for MER (which had landed earlier that year). He said, "Tell me what you can about this rocket motor based upon the design of this spare." I took a look over the motor and noted the expansion ratio, throat diameter, and the fact that it was of APCP type and responded with what appeared to be close to the proper thrust and operating pressure levels. (I don't remember what those were now...). Then the guy said, "when can you start?"</p>
<p>So yeah...my experience may be a bit out of the ordinary. I do suggest being comfortable with the subject that you plan to pursue there, should you be hired. The people are generally pretty cool and definitely are looking for "new blood" that has both ideas and superb analytic skills.</p>
<p>Since 2004 I've worked there in summer of 2006 and became a private contractor in 2007 doing consulting work on the engineering of a micrometeorite impactor to test spacecraft parts.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Is this for an internship or a forever-type job?
Interns, you don't have to live with forever... If they work out, you offer them a job. If they don't, tell them to have a nice life.
For forever-type jobs, the interview's probably going to be pretty grueling... At The Aerospace Corporation, I had to give a powerpoint presentation of my research to a room full of PhDs and in one of the one-on-one interviews, they had me derive the finite element method. It was... um... harsh.</p>
<p>Hey I have an interview with JPL (2nd interview) for a starting position as a mechanical engineer. It is a full day event (8 am until 5 pm).
What kind of technical questions can i expect thru the day? will the ask me for formulas that i remember or concepts or theorems? Will they probe me with hard tricky engineering questions? How can I nail the interview? What skills/abilities impresses them?
Thanks!</p>
<p>I’ve been there twice for an interview. (Once just for a tour.) It was more than a few years ago. Each time I traveled there at my own expense. Each time I thought I had the job. Once I even interviewed with a guy I had worked with on a project elsewhere. Each time they told me that they decided to hire internally. I don’t know if that was true or if they were just being nice. Anyway, ever since then I’ve told them I won’t bother interviewing there unless they pay for my travel which they won’t do. I suggest if you do interview there, always ask if they are considering any internal candidates (who would have priority over someone from the outside).</p>
<p>“Hey I have an interview with JPL (2nd interview) for a starting position as a mechanical engineer. It is a full day event (8 am until 5 pm).
What kind of technical questions can i expect thru the day? will the ask me for formulas that i remember or concepts or theorems? Will they probe me with hard tricky engineering questions? How can I nail the interview? What skills/abilities impresses them?
Thanks!”</p>
<p>Know how to derive most of those equations. Understand their assumptions and limitations and where to apply them. Be able to talk through a few of the nuances of your research (or past projects) as they will ask you: “so you mentioned ___ in your presentation, could you please write a general transfer function for that?”</p>
<p>Which section are you applying to? 35x?</p>
<p>Update: Since my above post I’ve stopped working (part time) at JPL/Caltech and I’ve moved up to Seattle for permanent job. JPL is a cool place but for engineers like me I feel it is too restrictive and until NASA gets restructured (which I’ve been talking about for years now) there is far too much red tape, not enough ambition, and not enough direction.</p>
<p>Hi RocketDA, I had a coworker who worked for NASA for a while, then quit to work elsewhere. I got the sense that the larger the project, the more bureaucracy - whether at a gov. employer or private. Smaller projects get done more quickly with smaller teams and offer more flexibility. Is this your sense too, or do you think the gov. employers are unique?</p>
<p>“Hi RocketDA, I had a coworker who worked for NASA for a while, then quit to work elsewhere. I got the sense that the larger the project, the more bureaucracy - whether at a gov. employer or private. Smaller projects get done more quickly with smaller teams and offer more flexibility. Is this your sense too, or do you think the gov. employers are unique?”</p>
<p>At the end of the day, JPL and other NASA centers are probably only 35% efficient when it comes to the value of the product delivered verses its cost. After talking to another government project manager (in my family) he told me that even building offices and stuff is only 65% cost efficient.</p>
<p>For NASA, where does all that other money go? It goes into spinning their bureaucracy wheels and doing things inefficiently. Expensive and time-consuming qualifications are "blanket’ procedures that must be done on everything. The contract bidding aspect is messed up too and made a mockery of “best value” bidding.</p>
<p>Cut out 90% of the management, fire the legacy engineers that have been there for 25 years, put some ambitious programs on the table and call for public support of them.</p>
<p>The good news is that NASA’s spending policy is that it must all be domestic so money pumped in goes (nearly) all back to the US economy in the form of skilled services.</p>
<p>A lot of people are leaving NASA… but unfortunately, the tend to be the type that NASA should really be holding on to. I really support NASA but I honestly think that there needs to be a new direction.</p>
<p>(I had lunch with former NASA science directorate head Dr. Alan Stern a few months back and his insider’s take (and resignation) just reinforced my opinions about the state of NASA.)</p>
<p>RocketDA, I agree that some older engineers need an update, but I’m surprised that you didn’t find one ‘legacy’ engineer that impressed you. (Someday you may be a ‘legacy’ engineer too - what then?)</p>
<p>Please have a look at this link, from which I’ll excerpt below:
[Online</a> NewsHour: The Hand- December 31, 1998](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/december98/gergen_12-31.html]Online”>http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/december98/gergen_12-31.html)</p>
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<p>Hi, so about that interview i spoke of above…
It is happening this Thursday, they are paying for my flight, hotel and other expenses. I would probably not go otherwise. I have no idea how many people are being interviewed, however this is for a new hire position (I am graduating from Berkeley in May) so can they really expect me to know the equations from a class i might have take a year ago?</p>
<p>What if i simply remain calm and tell them i simply dont know a certain formula off the top of my head but I was familiar with the concepts and i knew where to get the information from if i needed to use it for work? Would that be a good enough answer?</p>
<p>Is the fact that they are flying me out to JPL a good sign of a potential offer? Does JPL hire new engineers each year?</p>
<p>Thanks for all your input so far.</p>
<p>does it hurt your hiring prospects if you try for a job at JPL, don’t get it, then later on down the road try again?</p>
<p>cutie, I doubt it.</p>
<p>Robbie, treat this interview as your only chance to be seen by JPL. Yes, if facility with certain equations is important to an interviewer, then they’ll ask. I was rarely asked such detailed questions - it depends on the interviewer, what matters to them. If they are looking for a problem solving sort of person, then they may ask you a question that you would not already know the answer to - to judge your problem solving strategy. If they are looking for a certain personality, then that’s what they’ll focus on. They will undoubtedly ask you if you have questions, so look over their site and have some ready. </p>
<p>Get a book on ‘how to interview someone’ from the library and bone up on that before this Thurs. interview - it will give you ideas about what to look out for during the interview. Be on time, wear a suit, look confident. Good luck!!!</p>
<p>When my girlfriend interviewed there about a year ago she had a bunch of different interview styles. The first one was a lady that grilled her on pretty much anything she had ever learned while the rest of the day were more laid back casual interviews.</p>
<p>“RocketDA, I agree that some older engineers need an update, but I’m surprised that you didn’t find one ‘legacy’ engineer that impressed you. (Someday you may be a ‘legacy’ engineer too - what then?)”</p>
<p>Aerospace legacy… i.e. the engineers push a legacy method or product because it works and don’t want to take on the risk/effort of a new method. This correlates pretty strongly to “old” engineers but there are exceptions. I’d say the correlation is about 0.7</p>
<p>“…but when we give them a problem that has to do with spatial relations, and designing an object, let’s say a piece that goes into a space capsule, a module of some kind, and there’s something that’s three-dimensional about it that has to be fixed, they just don’t seem to understand it, and so we don’t hire any engineers anymore…”</p>
<p>Rest assured that there are still some of us who taught ourselves in our garage in the early days and continued on in the lab and machine shop in college. This, with a healthy dose of math, physics, and an ass kicking is what forges a good engineer. And yes, the American forgings are better than the Chinese casts.</p>
<p>So I had my on site interview at JPL yesterday… i am an undergrad in Mech Engr.
There were about 12 people interviewing on the same day but all for various sections and positions. It was about 1/3 PhD, 1/3 MS and 1/3 BS enginineering students.
They were from all over the country. My experience was really great.
I spoke to three different sections of the division that is looking to hire me (3700).
Each was about an hour and a half interview. There were no direct technical questions.
We spoke of all the projects, extra curricular (solar car team in my case) and projects I had done. I explained my role, etc. The technical questions came from there, but they were not hard… just things like… so how did u find this? what did u do to overcome that design challenge etc…</p>
<p>One manager started telling me jokes of the old days and how things change. At lunch i sat down with another young new hire and spoke to them about their experience. It was super awesome… then we had a tour… THAT WAS AWESOME! We same the mission control fro the deep space network, and all sorts of other places where they come up with mission concepts…</p>
<p>Then I had one more interview with the third section manager… then at the end i sat down with HR person for debrief… and next steps… they said i will get a call in 1-2 weeks. So now i wait…
Cheers.</p>
<p>BTW is you are a MS and PhD… u have to present on ur research and dissertation, and they ask more touch questions… naturally.</p>
<p>Hey Robbie, I just stumbled across this post. I was actually one of the other students that was there yesterday. I don’t think any of us were competing with each other for a job, so that’s good. We were all interviewing with different sections, I was in 314. I feel like it went well and I really hope I got the job. I hope you the best of luck as well</p>
<p>Best part of JPL: </p>
<p>The Californian sandwich @ 303 Orbit Cafe
Turkey, cheese, avocado, tomato on artisan bread and grilled to perfection.</p>
<p>mmm. damn i miss that sandwich.</p>
<p>“BTW is you are a MS and PhD… u have to present on ur research and dissertation, and they ask more touch questions… naturally.”</p>
<p>IMHO this has “procurements” written all over it. I hope I’m wrong though.</p>