Interview Assessment #1

 

Name of Professional: Sean Thomas

 

Profession/Title:  Senior Mechanical Engineer

 

Business/Company name: CommScope

 

Date of Interview: 29 September 2017

 

Assessment:

    For my first interview I interviewed a senior mechanical engineer named Sean Thomas. Mr. Thomas went to Oklahoma State then went on to go to University of Texas. He told me that he has worked at many different companies, but now works on building parts to cell towers. One of the types of engineers that he talked about is called defense engineering, which really caught my attention at the beginning of the interview. He said it was building tanks, aircrafts, and other army related machinery. For this interview I wanted to be able to talk to a mechanical engineer about what it takes to become a good engineer and learn how he felt the workload in college and beyond. Mr. Thomas did a great job talking to me about this saying that the workload is going to be overwhelming at times, but is worth it because it will get you to where you want to be. I agreed with him because everyone says it is hard and I know that the harder you work the better you will be for the future in terms of job status, salary, and quality of internships. Mr. Thomas also told me that the engineering field is constantly shifting which could affect where you work because of the demand of the world. This means that if oil production is down then the need for petroleum engineers will go down as well. This did not surprise me because the world is always coming up with new ideas that may be in need of a certain type of job. What did surprise me was when Mr. Thomas said that there has never been a week when he has not gotten calls from different companies asking him to com work there. I was surprised because I never realized that engineers we constantly being needed by companies that are not companies based around engineers. I guess they are needed because they are good with technology and great problem solvers. One question I asked Mr. Thomas was how he thinks the ISM program could have affected his decision on whether or not he would want to become an engineer. He told me that it would have helped him make a decision sooner because he was able to get experience earlier in high school. Another thing he told me was that his company, CommScope, always has interns working for them and are always willing to accept interns. This made me very excited because I would think that he would accept my offer of him being my mentor because his company always has interns. I would also think that I would be able to get a great experience out of working with Mr. Thomas because he is knowledgeable in many fields. Overall I felt that I had a great first interview because I was able to learn about the basics of engineering from a very experienced engineer. I feel that Mr. Thomas would make a great mentor because he was very easy to talk to and has worked in many different engineering fields.