I applied through university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at CO-OP CRS (Saskatoon, SK) in Apr 2014
Interview
It was a little weird, I was being interviewed for two positions at once. One guy was a recruiter and his job was just to be personable and make me feel comfortable. They had a supervisor for each position I had applied to sit in on the interview and ask me questions.
The first guy was relatively young and headed up the Energy Pipeline position I had applied for, and upon talking to him, I became much more interested in the work. He seemed excited when I explained my experience with simulation software, it seemed like a true R&D position but maybe they didn't have the developer horsepower at the time to push out the deliverables they thought they were capable of. There were no truly technical questions, just some inquiries about my development experience and mathematical skills.
The other guy was from the IT department and seemed to loath being at the interview, as though it was a waste of his time. He became visibly frustrated when I told him I had no real world experience in IT. I wondered if he bothered to think about the fact they were hiring an intern out of university, not a tech school IT program grad or someone straight from another IT job. His personality in general put me off, but what was more striking was the contrast between the personalities in the room. You had this one guy who was purely negative and another who seemed positive and excited to be interviewing me. It gave me a little bit of cautious insight into what the company must function like - disconnected and siloed departments with wildly incongruent expectations and goals.
The simulations position really interested me, but ultimately I got the position I truly wanted later on with a different company and had no reason to continue with my application for FCL. Aside from the negative experience with the IT supervisor, my biggest reason for not wanting to work at FCL was that the company culture seemed way too formal like it was still the 50s - it didn't seem like a fun place to work on a human level.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What simulation software have you used to build models?