embedded hardware skillset

[badri89]

hi everyone. I am a fresher of 2010 from Electronics and Communication.I recently got flunked in an interview which is for the position of embedded hardware engineer due to lack of preparation and fear of interview. Tell me the skillsets that are to be developed in order to get to embedded hardware domain. If possible can anyone list out the companies which has got openings for freshers in this domain in India.

thank you

 

[rakko]

can you list the questions they asked you then maybe i can point you to how to prepare for each. usually companies ask similar questions. basically learn from your mistake and incremetally impreove yourself. Don't take this failure personally. Most of the bullshit they ask you in interviews has very little significance on your job performance or your overall knowlwdge. It is just a way for companies to filter out candidates. I personally have seen many engineers that aced the interview and ended up being lousy designers and those who failed the interview and ended up being excellent engineers. The interview process is very complicated and depends on many variables such as;
1- do you answer all questions without making the interviewer feel stupid.
2- your personality.
3- are you applying for the interviewer's job. Lots of time those who don't do good in their job get moved to other positions within the company and the same person could endup interviewing you. You probably don't get a good score from him.
4- Do you know one of the interviewers or someone within the company. If you do, let everyone on the interview know. They may not want to risk upsetting your contact and may be easier on you.
5- Do the interviewer think you are easy to get along with.
6- Is there another candidate that the interviewer prefers. Like his friend may be applying for the same job. If this happens and the manager has a friend in mind for the job, then, forget it.
7- Is the interviewer is from your own race. Usually people of the same race stick together and feel comfortable working with each other. So the interviewers always give preference to their own kinds. This is more true in US/Europe than anywhere else in the world. Company HR has rules against this but they never enforce it. No one wants to rock the boat. For this I suggest you always take a tape recorder to the interview and record the entire interview process. I used to work with a manager whom always gave positive feedback to people of his own race regardless of their capabilities. In a case like this send an email to their HR and just have to hope that one of the other interviewers has noticed this and has enough courage to confront him. Otherwise, forget it, you won't get the job.
.......
hope this helps set your expectations right.

 

[badri89]

thank you for your valuable reply. the questions asked were really from the basics.like race condition in flipflop, characteristic impedance,etc. they expected a little deeper explanation and i stammered there and also running out of words. why am asking the skillsets now is, the next time i go to an interview, i should not fail.This opportunity came by surprise but i really don know whether another would come. But hoping for the best.

 

[rakko]

I'm sure there be other opportunities soon for you. Here is what I suggest; 1- search this site for "Interviewing questions" and concatanate all questions into one big list of questions and go through them and try to learn them all in your spare time. One thing to remember is that majority of the interviewers ask the same types of questions. The reason they ask for deeper explanation is to see if you memorized things or understand them. One thing to keep in mind is that most interviewers don't understand things deeply either. Especially if the subject is out of their fields. They have spend more time reseaching the questions than perhaps you. For example take the case of race in flops stages. One could say that it happens if the data from previous stage gets to current flop and wipes the data clean before flop has a chance to register the old data. The interviewer may push deeper by asking why does this happen to begin with. The answer may be that flop are made of latches and latches need a stable data on their input before they close and lock the data in. If they ask for more info, one may say that the input to latches are like two inverters (amplifiers) with the output on one feeding the input of the other and a transmission gate switch at the input. When the switch is open, and the input changes due to a race condition, the latch closes on the wrong data. If they ask why, then may be you need to talk about why setup/holds are necessary. The reason I'm saying this is that when you read the interviewing questions, don't just memorize the answer but ask question and push deeper, google the answer or lookup Wikipedia for more in depth answers to each question. I'm sure you nail it in no time....