I received a call from a technical recruiter based in Los Angeles, CA. After a short phone interview with him, I phone-interviewed with two SpaceX employees: 1) HR recruiter and 2) lead manufacturing engineer.
On February 11th, I received a call and an e-mail from a recruiter who asked me if I was interested in a technical writer position at his client's location in LA. After some phone and e-mail tag that lasted several days, we finally managed to talk to each other about the job, which would be located at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, CA (near LAX).
The first thing I did was to provide a brief write-up of my skills and achievements as a Mechanical Engineer during my last job. This basically took the form of a cover letter that described my most significant successes at my recent jobs including my experiences working on simple to complex projects.
The second thing I did was to take a technical writing test. This involved taking a rough draft of a technical writing memorandum and rewriting it. I was free to make any necessary changes to the raw memo and turn it into a clear, concise, persuasive, and polished document. I had complete authority in deciding the best solution to achieve this, including the use of graphics, styles, layout, wording, etc. In their words, "Let your skills shine!" I finished and submitted my "test" within six hours of receiving it from the recruiter.
Then came the two interviews. The first interview occurred nearly a month after I submitted my tech writing test. The second interview happened a week after the first.
The first phone interview was with an HR recruiter who asked me some standard interview questions that included why did you leave your last job to why do you want to work at SpaceX? I spoke at great length regarding my role as ME at my last job. I also talked about some projects I worked on that included designing and building fixtures for use on the manufacturing floor.
Some questions that I asked of him were:
1) What's the highest priority in the next 30 days and how could someone like me help?
2) What's a typical day like for someone in this position?
3) What are the 3 main qualities you are looking for in a technical writer candidate?
4) Do you have any concerns about my ability to be successful with your company?
The interviewer was friendly and quite congenial during the interview. I appreciated his candor when he told me that their were many other prospects also being considered for the tech writer position. No doubt that number was in the high double digits.
He also told me that my last question regarding any concerns he may have about my ability was a good one. Off the bat, he did not have any glaring concerns with regards to my ability (writing or engineering). He did write a lot of notes, which he would share with his HR manager.
The second interview was with a lead engineer. He asked me questions about my engineering experiences with the past 3 companies that I worked for during 15 years of my ME career. One question that I may have flubbed regarded how I used GD&T at my most recent work. He didn't seem all that impressed with my answer. He was very congenial during the call and I appreciated his questions, which were to-the-point and covered many bases.
I asked him several questions too.
1) How do you feel your major competitors stack up against SpaceX in terms of strengths and weaknesses?
2) What is the biggest success at SpaceX so far?
3) Do you have any concerns about my ability to be successful with your company?
The last question proved be very telling. His one concern was my ability to endure the intensity of the work environment as well as my enthusiasm for the position of technical writer. While he did acknowledge that they do work long hours, that was nothing compared to the intensity of the work being done at SpaceX. I told him that I would regularly work from 7am to 6pm at my last job, sometimes even staying as late as 8pm in order to get a customer's design finished. That seemed to allay his concerns, but not by much per my own suspicion.
A day after the last interview... I received word from the first recruiter that I had been passed over for the position. They said that I had a strong background in hardware design, but they were looking for someone with a specialty in manufacturing and technical writing. Oh well...
