A former Apple employee has revealed the key quality that she believes impressed the company and landed her the job.
Sabrina Paseman, who served as an engineer at Apple, was taken aback when she first received the job offer.
This surprise stemmed from the fact that she had a background in biological engineering, rather than the mechanical engineering role for which she was hired at Apple.
According to Apple’s job creation website, the company has a workforce of approximately 80,000 employees.
The roles at Apple range from engineering positions, including software and product design, to essential business functions such as accounting, marketing, and HR management.
Despite her degree being in a different field, Paseman credits one aspect of her interview with giving her a competitive advantage during the application process.
She attributes her success to demonstrating her problem-solving capabilities, even though her major was different.
“People just want problem solvers in all aspects of all fields,” Paseman shared with Business Insider, adding, “So that would be my advice for anyone starting out in product design.”
Paseman believes that this quality impressed the interviewers and secured her the job. But how did she showcase this in practice?
Instead of discussing her past experiences, Paseman brought a model of a medical device she had been working on to the interview.
She then explained what she would change in her next design to make improvements.
She stated, “I said, ‘These are the things that I did, and this is what I would do differently.'”
“And I showed them my thought process [and] iterations. And I think the fact that I brought tangible things to them and I was able to elaborate on what was good and what was bad about them, that itself made them want to hire me,” she elaborated.
Paseman believes this principle, though particularly relevant in engineering, can be applied to any field.
She explained, “Just showing that whenever you encounter a problem that you don’t necessarily know how to solve, you have a really open mindset of, ‘Okay, there’s something wrong here. Let’s try to dive down into details and figure out what’s wrong.'”
For Paseman, the ultimate goal was to achieve simplicity in design.
“I learned that good design comes from simple design,” she explained. “And simple design can only be achieved by really fully understanding the problem.”
Paseman eventually left Apple to focus on ‘Fix the Mask,’ a project dedicated to enhancing the effectiveness of face masks in preventing virus transmission.