It's alright, but it's certainly another typical "2016 job interview for entry-level positions" kind of interview. They only had a single HR person interview me, who had difficulty answering many questions I asked about the work environment and kept not addressing the questions initially asked. When I asked a few questions about the work (not even about technical stuff, just the work environments), she told me, "Oh, the team lead knows that," and kept circling around the questions I asked and trying to shoehorn the reputation of the company into her answers. Why not have the team lead help conduct the interviews? It was clear they were playing the numbers game, trying to get as many viable candidates into interviews as possible. I have no issue with being optimistic and proud of the company you work for, but in an interview with limited time please respect the candidate's time for asking questions.
Anyways, the interview is entirely behavioural-based, which makes sense for a consulting company like Lakeside. Don't study even a bit of process controls. Seriously, not even the basics of process controls is asked. This interview is a trivia contest to see how much Lakeside trivia you can spit out. It may also well be just them seeing what you look like in-person.
The interviewer is extremely "fake" and I guarantee you'll fall asleep listening to the way she spits out her memorized lines. I could tell that the interviewer was trying to force premade company information and trivia into the questions I asked about and spent an unnecessarily long time answering. Felt really, really fake and insincere.
This role isn't really much of an "engineering" role. It's entirely business - you'll be making sales for the clients and helping clients solve their problems. A large portion of the position is making trips across Ontario, as well as for their new office in Manitoba.
Position is from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, so you actually need to work an extra hour compared to most other positions for the salary pay. But the main headquarters you work is in the business area of Mississauga, so even if you live within the city, you'll need to wake up and commute for many hours earlier than that. You apparently have the option to shift this timeframe ahead an hour or behind an hour, but the interviewer said for this position it's really not your choice, it depends on the client's choice.
The interview itself was extremely short - 30 minutes for the 1 HR representative. Like most interviews for entry-level engineering positions, they were pretty much interviewing about 10-15 people each day in 30 minute intervals for a week. Even the interviewer had to act nice about it, "Oh, for this kind of entry-level position we get too many applicants and interviewees, it takes a very long time for us to make offers..." I hate to say it, but when a company interviews so many candidates (not just screening them, but actually interviewing everyone, they likely interviewed 40+ candidates for 1 position) there's a good chance that you'll get removed for something not in your control (ie: You didn't memorize all of the awards Lakeside Controls received in 2015?! Heh, nothing personal, kid, but we don't think you're a right fit for the company!).
From the fakeness of the interviewer, I feel that there is a great amount of "big company" politics here, even though Lakeside is an independent company (they have a large amount of partners).
Salary range was $40-45k CAD annually. For an engineering sales position where you work weekends and travel frequently, I'd be looking somewhere else for $60k+ CAD annually to start with. Again, you need to push very hard to find this out. The interviewer twisted her mouth and began her spiel, "We at Lakeside have VERY competitive salaries..." and it wasn't until I continuously prodded that she specified a range. They definitely became annoyed at you asking it, but hypothetically, if I'm currently employed and need to move my entire life around to accommodate for this new position, certainly the salary is something I'd like to know.
Kind of like the "applications engineer" position, this position's job description is vague and quite misleading.