How to answer “tell me about yourself” as an engineer

Most engineers would rather be asked about a fault than about themselves. That’s normal. You’re used to letting the work speak for itself.

In an interview it can’t, so you have to speak for it. The good news is you don’t need to be a natural talker. You need a plan.

What they’re actually listening for

The interviewer isn’t after your life story. In the first two minutes they’re quietly answering four questions:

• Can this person do the job? The kit, the systems and the type of sites you know.
• Can they work safely and on their own? Permits, isolations, lone working, sites where you can’t get it wrong.
• Will customers like them? Most service roles are half engineering, half dealing with people on site.
• Why do they want this job? Not just any job.

Answer those and the rest of the interview gets easier, because you’ve given them things to ask about.

Start with their job advert, not your CV

Before you prepare anything, read the job advert again. Pick out the three or four things they care about most: the equipment, the type of work, the travel, the customers.

Then build your answer around the parts of your experience that match. Everything else on your CV can wait for later questions.

A simple way to structure it

1. Now. What you do, what you work on and where.
2. How you got here. One or two sentences on your background.
3. One example. A real job that shows you’re good at what they need.
4. Why this role. What it offers that you want next.

Use one real job as your proof

The strongest answers we hear have one real example in them, not a list of qualities.

One candidate was asked to describe a recent job. He walked through a VRV install from start to finish, including the awkward bits. The interviewer came away knowing exactly what he could do.

Another summed up eight years of UPS work across government, healthcare, education and data centre sites, then said what she was best at: explaining technical problems to customers who aren’t technical. Specific, and memorable.

Pick a job where something wasn’t straightforward and you sorted it. What was the problem, what did you do, and how did it end?

What it sounds like

These aren’t scripts. They show the shape of a good answer. Use your own kit, sites and jobs.

A UPS field service engineer going for a commissioning role

“I’m a field service engineer on UPS systems, mainly maintenance and breakdowns across hospitals and data centres in the Midlands. I came through an electrical apprenticeship and moved onto UPS about six years ago. A recent one I was pleased with was an intermittent fault that two earlier visits hadn’t found. I tracked it down to a failing control board and the site’s had no problems since. I’ve done a bit of commissioning alongside the project engineers and I want to do more of it, which is why this role caught my eye.”

A commercial air conditioning engineer moving into data centres

“I’m an air conditioning and refrigeration engineer, F-gas Category I. Most of my work is VRF and chillers in offices and retail, service and breakdown. I’ve got a couple of data halls in my area now and I’ve found I really like that side of it, the redundancy and the fact nothing can go down. I know data centre work is its own world, and I’m keen to learn it properly with a company that runs its own kit.”

A service manager

“I run a team of service engineers covering UPS and generator maintenance contracts across the South East. I was on the tools for ten years before that, so I still understand the work and the engineers trust that. My focus over the last year has been getting planned maintenance done on time and keeping our main contracts at renewal. I’m looking for a bigger team and more say in how the service side grows.”

The mistakes we hear most

• Reading out the CV. They’ve got it in front of them.
• Starting with “I left school and…” Start with now.
• Adjectives instead of evidence. “Hardworking and reliable” tells them nothing.
• Talking down your current employer. Even if it’s deserved, it worries the interviewer.
• Refusing to talk about the work. One engineer we know declined to describe a recent job at the screening stage. It left the interviewer with nothing to go on.
• Going on too long. Two minutes, then stop and let them ask.

If you’ve moved around

If your CV shows a few moves close together, the interviewer will wonder why. Deal with it briefly and without blaming anyone. One honest reason is enough, for example “the last two roles didn’t have the workload I was told to expect”. Then say why this one is different.

Practise it out loud

Say it out loud a few times before the interview, ideally to someone else. It’ll feel awkward the first time and natural by the third. Time it on your phone. If it’s much over two minutes, cut something.

We brief our candidates before every interview. If you’ve got one coming up, we’ll go through this with you.