Choosing a Final-Year Project That Gets You Hired

The final-year project is the single most discussed item in an engineering interview, because it is the only substantial thing you built that the interviewer can probe. Choosing it well is therefore a placement decision as much as an academic one.

The test to apply before choosing

Can you imagine explaining this project for fifteen minutes to someone who knows more than you, and still having something to say? If yes, it is a good choice. If the whole thing can be described in two sentences, it will not carry an interview.

What makes a project discussable

• A real problem. Something a person or organisation would actually want solved.
• Decisions you made. Choices between approaches, with reasons. Interviewers ask why, not what.
• Something that went wrong. A project with no failures was not difficult enough, and the failure is often the most interesting part of the discussion.
• A result you can state. It worked, or it worked partly, or it did not, and you know why.

Common mistakes

1. Too ambitious. An unfinished project is hard to discuss. Scope it so it finishes.
2. Too derivative. If it was assembled from a tutorial, you will be exposed in the first probing question.
3. Splitting work by person rather than by component. In a group of four, if each person only knows their quarter, all four interview badly. Rotate enough that everyone understands the whole.
4. Leaving documentation to the end. Keep a running log of decisions. You will not remember them in six months, and the decisions are what get asked about.

Aiming at the boundary

Projects that sit between your discipline and something adjacent stand out. A civil project using sensor data, a mechanical project applying a data method, an electrical project with an embedded control element. They are more interesting to discuss and fewer candidates have them.