50 Interview Questions for the DFT (With Sample Answers and Tips)
When you go in for an interview for a job as a design for test (DFT) engineer, the interviewer may ask you about your skills, background, and education. If you know some of the possible questions for this job, you might be able to prepare for your interview better. This article has 50 DFT interview questions, some sample answers, and a few tips that may help you prepare for your interview.50 Interview Questions for the DFT (With Sample Answers and Tips)
General DFT interview questions
Most of the time, interviewers will ask you general questions to learn about your personality and how you work. These questions could also help the interviewer figure out if you would fit in well with the way the company does things. Think about these general questions as you prepare for your DFT interview:
- Tell me about yourself.
- How much money do you want?
- How do you do what you do best?
- Why are you leaving your current job?
- How can you help this company?
- Do you have any questions for me?
- Do you prefer to work alone or with others?
- How familiar are you with our group?
- What sets you apart from everyone else running?
- How do you keep up with the latest technical news in your field?
- What do you want to do with your work? How do you plan on getting there?
- What else do I need to know about you that isn’t on your resume?
- Tell me about a difficult task you had to do at work. How did you keep going?
Questions about work and history from the past
Your interviewer might spend most of the time asking you about your experience, skills related to DFT, and education. Most of the time, these questions help the interviewer figure out how you use your skills and if they match the job description. Here is a list of common experience-based DFT interview questions:50 Interview Questions for the DFT (With Sample Answers and Tips)
- How do you handle stress at work?
- How can you learn a new skill?
- At your last job, what kinds of problems did you have to solve?
- During school, what did you learn?
- How did your education prepare you for work in this field?
- How have you improved your DFT skills over the past year?
- What were some of the things you did well at your last job? What did they do right?
- Do you have any professional certifications?
- Have you ever supervised a group of people? What went wrong?
- How do you work in a team? Can you tell us about a time when you worked well with others at a DFT engineering job you had before?
- How do you think our hiring process compares to that of other companies in the same field?
- How many times have you actually used DFT?
- What was your favourite part of your last job?
- What did you do at your last job that had anything to do with DFT?
- What can you give this business that no one else can?
- Tell me about the last project you worked on and what you did if you ran into any problems.
In-depth questions
Questions that go into detail and are directly about the job you are applying for. Most of the time, interviewers ask these tough questions to see how much you know about DFT tasks and situations. Some questions will be based on situations, while others will ask you to list specific ideas and actions. Here’s a list of sample in-depth questions:
- How does DFT work?
- What DRC violations have you seen during Scan Insertion, and how did you fix them?
- What’s the difference between flops and scan flops?
- What are some important things you look at before you start a new project?
- What is metastability, and how does it work in the real world?
- How do you get the technical tools you need to do DFT tasks?
- If your simulations didn’t work, what would you look at to fix the problem?
- How do you think the best way would be to train new DFT engineers?
- Do you feel comfortable with the technology we use here?
- How does making a product easy to test fit into its lifecycle?
- Why is it bad to fall apart?
- Draw a D-flipflop and a diagram showing how it works.
- What does putting in a test point mean? Can you explain a test point insertion scenario?
- What do “able to be controlled” and “able to be seen” mean?
- Why don’t we connect the capture flip-clock clock’s to the lockup latch’s clock? flop’s
- What does it mean for the TAP state machine to be in the “pause” state?
- Write down the equation for slack.
Examples of how to answer questions about DFT
Here are three interview questions from the lists above, along with answers that might help you think of your own.
How did you hear about this job opening?
Employers often ask this because they post job openings on a number of websites and social media sites, and they want to know which one you found them on. This helps them figure out which site or social media channel works best for attracting qualified candidates. When you answer this question, be honest about where you saw the job ad. This means being open to suggestions from coworkers, friends, and family.
Example: “I looked for other jobs because I wanted to leave the one I had. I found an article online that listed some of the best places to work, so I did my own research. I liked what I saw on your website and on your careers page, so I decided to apply and learn more about this job.”
2.What are the most important skills for this job, in your opinion?
The interviewer might ask you this to see if you have the same skills that are important to their company. They may also use your answer to this question to figure out what your career priorities and values are. Before you answer this question, look at the job listing and the company’s website. Most of the time, they talk about the skills and personality traits they want in workers. Think about the skills that most people in this field have when writing your answer. List at least three skills you think are important for a DFT job and explain why.
Example: “I think the most important skills for a DFT position are being able to solve problems, communicate well, and use design tools in a technical way. Most of the time, you need to be able to solve problems to test and fix bugs, do analyses, and put DFT into place for this job. Engineers need to be able to talk about their ideas, write instructions, and work with others on projects. Design tool skills are probably some of the most important skills for this job, since engineers use them every day to do their jobs.”
How can you cut back on patterns without losing coverage?
Most of the time, interviewers ask this role-specific question to see how you would handle a similar situation at work. This question could also help them figure out how much you know about the topic and how skilled you are. When you answer this question, give a brief summary of the process you use.
Example: “Different ATPG tools offer different ways to compress and order patterns to help cut down on the number of patterns. When stitching or adding scans, the first step is to make sure that the chains are balanced. If I balance my chains, Tool has to add fewer dummy patterns to reach a required flop. I can also make the chains tighter in places where the device’s pins aren’t as many. This means that if I have a compression factor of 2, my one scan chain splits into two inside the device. This makes the chain shorter.”
Tips for an interview
As you get ready for your interview, here are some things to think about:
- Practice answering questions by looking in the mirror. If you answer sample questions in front of a mirror, you can practise making eye contact and standing up straight. Most of the time, this shows how professional and sure of yourself you are.
- Bring multiple copies of your resume to the interview. Most of the time, bringing extra copies gives the interviewer something to look at while you talk about your qualifications. Having more than one copy may also help if there are more than one interviewer.
- Use the STAR method to answer a question. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. This method helps you answer behavioural questions because it often makes it easier to give answers that are clear, focused, and also show off your skills.
