Interviewing with ARA

ARA is a company that challenges employees to achieve excellence. At ARA, we hire proven performers, from new grads to seasoned professionals. From time to time, all employees are responsible for briefing co-workers, teammates, customers, potential clients, etc. As a result, ARA's interview process requires the candidate to give a 20 minute presentation as part of the hiring process. You can expect the audience to consist of the interviewers as well as potential co-workers.

Interview Instructions:

  1. Develop a technical presentation in PowerPoint that shows your participation in a current or past problem/task/project. Include helpful graphs, charts, and illustrations. Reusing a class or project briefing is normally fine for this purpose. Please do not present any proprietary or classified information.
  2. Email your main ARA point of contact a paragraph-length abstract of your briefing.
  3. Demonstrate how you solved each piece yourself or as part of a team and combined the solutions together into a deliverable (hardware, software, report, etc.).
  4. Explain the success or failure, the reasons for such, and any lessons learned.
  5. Be prepared for a question and answer session following the presentation.
  6. Your briefing should consider the knowledge level of the audience. The audience will likely be comprised of engineers and scientists whose education ranges from bachelors to PhD level.

What to Bring:

You will need to bring the following items to the interview if possible:

  1. USB flash drive that contains your PowerPoint presentation. (Instead of the flash drive you have the option of bringing your own laptop).
  2. Undergraduate/graduate transcripts (does not have to be official/sealed).
  3. Contact information for three professional references (try to obtain at least one former manager/supervisor).
  4. Driver's license (information is needed for a background check).