First Solar Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview was easy with few technical questions. It felt like the interviewers didn't enjoy their jobs and didn't seem to care, making it seem like a slow and boring place to work. I met with 5 different people, and they all asked the same questions. There was no communication between interviewers.

It was a pretty packed day with 5 rounds happening all in one day, taking about 5 hours. Each round had a different interviewer, just one-on-one each time. The rounds were set up like this: round 1 was about my past job, strengths, and weaknesses. Round 2 focused on difficult situations, again with strengths and weaknesses. Round 3 covered customer relationships, also asking about strengths and weaknesses. Round 4 was about what my old manager would say about my strengths and weaknesses. Finally, round 5 had some technical questions related to my field.

First Solar has the most disciplined interviewing process that I have encountered. All employees that interview attend mandatory interviewing training. When an interview is conducted, all members of the interview are assigned a topic to focus on certain aspects of the company's core values - ex: "Results Matter", "Continuous Improvement", or "Overall Fit". Interviewers are also given a standard template of questions to help guide them in probing the candidate's experiences and reactions in given situations. The most difficult part of the interview process is the "Structured Interview" where the candidate's prospective hiring manager delves deeply into the candidate's past work history, asking about their accomplishments, the things that they would do better, the things that their past managers and co-workers would say about them, and their reason for leaving each position. At the end of the process, this same team meets and evaluates each candidate to determine which one to hire.