A construction interview is decided by how precisely you describe what you controlled. Prepare two projects in depth: your scope in dollars, the decisions that were yours, what went wrong and what you did about it. Add one honest account of a job that lost money. Detail is what the interviewer is listening for.
The president has your resume face down on the table and has not looked at it since you sat. He asks about the medical office building in Austin, and you start where everyone starts: square footage, contract value, the owner’s name. He nods and waits. A construction interview at the senior level has one real question in it, asked five different ways, and he is waiting to find out whether you have noticed. Who decided things on that job, and was it you?
What is a construction interview testing?
Whether your account of a project matches the account of someone who ran it. The interviewer has built enough work to know which details only the responsible person would have. They are listening for those details, and for what happens to your answers when the questions get specific.
Expect the same question in several forms:
- Who signed the subcontracts, and who chose the low bidder you did not take?
- What was the contingency at GMP, and where did it go?
- Which change order did you lose, and why?
- What did the superintendent call you about most?
- If I rang the owner’s rep today, what would she say you were slow on?
A candidate who ran the job answers these without a pause and usually with a small story. A candidate who was near the job answers with “we.” Experienced interviewers count the pronouns. Our note on how employers assess backlog claims describes the technique, and the interview scorecard many contractors use shows what gets written down while you talk.
Knowing that the test is depth, the preparation follows from it.
How should you prepare for a construction interview?
Prepare two projects until you can answer anything about them, and one failure you can tell without excuses. Breadth is on the resume already. The hour will go deep on a small number of jobs, and you can choose which by leading with them.
Plan the hour. In a 60-minute interview, expect about 10 minutes of introductions, 30 minutes on your projects, 10 minutes for your questions and 10 minutes on logistics and pay. A well-run interview panel gives each interviewer one evidence area, so ask who you will meet and what each of them covers.
For each of the two projects, have these ready without notes:
| Have ready | Example |
|---|---|
| Your scope in dollars | ”$31M of a $70M job: the tower, not the garage” |
| The delivery method | CM-at-risk with a GMP set at 60 percent design development |
| Three decisions that were yours | Resequenced the curtain wall; replaced a failing sub; held a change order |
| One number that moved | Buyout savings, a recovered schedule, a claim avoided |
| What went wrong | And what you did in the first forty-eight hours |
| Who would vouch for it | The owner’s rep, the architect, a major sub |
Do your homework on the firm with the same care. If the contractor appears in the ENR rankings, know its size and sector mix. Know which way its market is heading: the Census Bureau publishes construction spending by project type every month, and a candidate who can say that the firm’s main sector is growing or shrinking sounds like someone thinking about the business.
Estimators should expect a practical exercise as well. Some firms hand over a drawing set and ask what is missing from the scope, which tests the skill that matters most. For a preconstruction leadership seat, the estimating exercise is usually a timed review of a redacted set, scored on the assumptions you state and the scope gaps you find rather than on takeoff speed. Superintendents may be walked around a live site and asked what they see. If the resume carries an eleven-month stint, prepare the short tenure answer before anything else.
How do you talk about a project that went badly?
Directly, in four parts: what happened, what your part was, what you did, and what you do differently now. Keep it under three minutes. Interviewers trust a candidate with a clear account of a loss more than one whose every job finished early and under budget.
The common mistake is the blame tour. The architect was late, the owner changed everything, the estimate was light before you arrived. All of it may be true. To the listener it sounds like a preview of how you will describe this firm in five years. Say what was in your control, even if it was only when you raised the alarm.
A workable version sounds like this. The job lost two points of fee. The structural steel sub defaulted in month five, and I had seen the warning signs in their manpower three weeks earlier and waited. I now act on the first missed commitment. That takes thirty seconds and tells the listener more than an hour of successes.
The same restraint applies to your current employer. Explain why you are leaving in one sentence about what you want next. A contractor in Tampa or Dallas probably knows your president, and will hear the criticism as indiscretion.
Which questions should you ask?
Questions about the work, asked the way an operator would. They show how you think, and the answers are what you need in order to decide. Save benefits and vacation for the offer stage.
- Which project would I start on, and where is it today?
- What authority does this seat have over buyout and change orders?
- Why is the role open?
- How did the last estimate you lost by a wide margin get reviewed afterward?
- What would make you say in a year that this hire worked?
The answer to why the role is open is sharper at a firm that ran an exit interview aimed at the seat and wrote the findings into the brief. If you are coming back after time away, ask which software the team runs today: our note on rejoining construction explains why that doubt is better answered before it is raised. If the final round includes a personality assessment, ask what the instrument is and who reads the report. There are also questions the firm should not ask you. Federal law bars employment decisions based on age, religion, national origin, disability and other protected characteristics, and the EEOC explains what that covers. If one comes up, steer back to the work, and take note of it.
Selah Talent Partners conducts confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, for contractors across the United States. Before a client interview a candidate should know who will be in the room and what the firm is trying to solve, because both sides do better with fewer surprises. The candidates page is where to introduce yourself.
Go back to the Austin job and say it out loud tonight, alone, with the pronoun “I” wherever it is true. Notice where you reach for “we.”
Sources and further reading
- ENR, Top 400 Contractors
- Construction spending, US Census Bureau, value of construction put in place
- EEOC, prohibited employment policies and practices