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      Harbor Freight Tools

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      Engineering Interview

      11 Apr 2012
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Harbor Freight Tools in Oct 2011

      Interview

      After getting a glimpse of how their company operates, I'm not surprised that most of my tools that I buy from Harbor Freight BREAK. They have 10 engineers in a company full of thousands of employees(not exaggerating). That said, their stuff is so CHEAP that you can afford to buy 2-3 pairs before you lose money. Interview was a huge waste of time. Lots of technical questions, pretty much on everything I ever learned through college. What is a resistor? Explain to me the difference between DC and AC. How do you convert AC to DC? What is Torque? What is HP? Questions like this with varying degrees of difficulty for 1 hour over the phone. Then at least 3-4 hours of a face to face interview with the manager who asked 3-4 hours of technical questions. Imagine taking the EIT(Engineer-In-Training Exam) but in person and every time you got something wrong he would give you a dirty look and say "its OK not to know some things". They wanted someone with EXTENSIVE hands on experience(think auto mechanic) that also knew everything inside of every textbook they've ever read in their college career. I had a 3.5 GPA so I was no slacker and I recently graduated so everything was fresh. Even then, I think I missed at least 10-15% of the stuff he asked. If they find someone that could do better than I did then I feel sorry for them because the job they're taking is way below their ability. Probably they will lower the bar. After about 4 hours I met with the CEO of engineering. VERY down to earth and cool guy. I would of loved to work for him . He was an engineer which is great because you didn't have to explain the very basics as you do with HR people. After that, I go back to the office and the manager draws a HUGE wiring diagram and wants me to solve the equivalent resistance. Really? After 5 hours? At this point I felt like he was just playing games... Here is the kicker. They want someone who has TONS OF HANDS-ON experience. I have a lot of experience that involved machining(CNC), hand tools, and various manual machines. For my university, I was definitely in the upper 5% when it came to hands-on experience due to the fact that I worked in the machine shop. That said, why did the guy ask me 4 hours of technical questions? No clue...must of enjoyed showing off? I later got a call saying "We liked you but we are interviewing other people to make sure you were the best". I also got a good feeling that the pay was going to be bad because they kept re-iterating how they're a performance based company with very tight overhead.

      Interview questions [2]

      Question 1

      Explain the difference between a SAE and Metric Bolt and how you can tell the difference by looking at one?
      Answer question

      Question 2

      What is a compression release for on a internal combustion engine?
      Answer question
      1

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