50 HVAC Interview Questions

If you have a job interview, then you need to be prepared for these 50 HVAC Interview Questions.

HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) refers to the application of these in both commercial and residential properties to provide high quality air for customers. Jobs in HVAC require a strong problem solving mindset along with necessary technical skills. As a result, employers will ask these questions to ensure that candidates are prepared for the job.

March 2, 2024 by Kazu Fujimoto

25 Behavioral HVAC Interview Questions

HVAC Interviews will be broken up into two parts – behavioral and technical. The behavioral questions will include the standard HR phone screening along with behavioral type of questions.

5 HR Phone Screening Type Questions for HVAC Jobs

You should be expect to be asked these 5 questions at a minimum by HR Recruiters / Managers. This portion of the interview is known as the HR Phone Screening. You will be asked to give a brief introduction about yourself, why you’re interested in the position, and give a walk through of your resume.

At any case, you should be prepared to answer these 5 questions.

1. Tell me about yourself
2. Why this position / this company??
3. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
4. Why should we hire you?
5. Walk me through your resume

20 Behavioral Phone Screening Type Questions for HVAC Jobs

Additionally with the HR Phone screening questions, expect these questions for HVAC interviews.

These questions will be asked either by recruiters or hiring managers to ensure that you have the skills and background needed to successfully complete the job.

Make sure you review the job description.

1. Can you tell me about your experience regarding refrigeration applications?
2. Do you have experience with site plans, floor plans, details, sections, and equipment schedules?
3. Do you have experience with bill of materials creation? Tell me about it
4. Tell me about a time you worked with an installation that was giving you a difficult time
5. What’s the most challenging experience you’ve had regarding HVAC applications?
6. Tell me about your knowledge regarding ASHRAE standards, how do you use standards in your day to day?
7. Tell me about your experience at a company you worked at
8. Tell me about your experience at another company you worked at
9. What are your greatest strengths?
10. What are your greatest weaknesses?
11. Some of the favorite projects you’ve had in the past?
12. Describe an experience with a difficult boss – how did you handle the situation / what have you done differently?
13. Tell me about a time you failed on a project.
14. Can you give me an example of how you displayed leadership?
15. Can you tell me about a time you handled a stressful situation?
16. Can you tell me about a time you had to stand up to someone?
17. Tell me about a time you ran into a conflict at work and what you did to resolve it.
18. Tell me about your greatest technical challenge in HVAC.
19. Tell me how you go about meeting customer requirements in HVAC projects
20. How do you think things can improve regarding your day by day as someone working for HVAC applications?

25 Technical HVAC Interview Questions

1. Tell me about a time you improved how things were done on a specific HVAC project.
2. Tell me about the laws of thermodynamics
3. Can you explain the Rankine power cycle?
4. Can you tell me how the vapor compression cycle works?
5. Can you tell me what the Carnot cycle is? (reversible, isothermal, isentropic process)
6. What three types of heat transfer are there?
7. Explain what a heat exchanger is
8. How would you go about calculating the amount of heating/cooling a building needs?
9. How do you go about integrating solutions for cost savings in HVAC applications?
10. What are some specific engineering parameters you work with in HVAC? (Compression work, horsepower, COP, NRE, efficiency, etc. -> Looking for calcs such as efficiency/units (BTU, etc…)
11. What are some of the HVAC components you’ve designed in the past? How did they turn out?
12. How did they train you in your previous role?
13. Tell me about your experience training others.
14. What machining or manufacturing methods are you familiar with?
15. Tell me about GD&T
16. How have you implemented GD&T in some of the products that you’ve designed?
17. Can you explain what tolerance stack up analysis is?
18. Do you have any experience regarding automation?
19. How would you determine if a certain process is repeatable? 
20. What machining tools, equipment, and techniques are you familiar with and have worked on?
21. Can you tell me about your experience with mechanical, pneumatic, and electronic devices?
22. Do you have experience with SAP or PLM?
23. Tell me about FMEA
24. What would you do in a situation with a critical deadline where you had a customer not responding to your phone or emails? You need this critical information for your presentation to senior leadership.
25. Do you have any questions for us?

Tips for answering HVAC Interview Questions

Make sure you answer the questions in a clear and concise manner.

For any behavioral or situational type of questions, make sure you answer using the STAR method for interview questions.

For technical type of interview questions, these questions are more “black” and “white”. Either you know the answer or you don’t.

In some cases though, when you don’t know the answer, try to verbalize your thought process.

It’s totally fine when you don’t know the answer to a question. In this case, simply talk about your problem solving mindset and how you would go about getting the answer. In this case, interviewers are testing what your critical thinking is like.

They do this because in HVAC jobs, you will need to rely on solid critical thinking skills to solve problems that you don’t have the immediate solution to.

How to get more interviews at HVAC companies

To get more interviews at HVAC companies, you’ll need to make sure your resume has the following:

• Clear and concise
• ATS Compliant
• Keyword optimized
• One page resume
• Detail quantitative results and accomplishments

If your resume has all of the above, then you should have no issues getting interviews for HVAC jobs.

If you’re still struggling to get HVAC job interviews and don’t know how to write a resume, check out the ULTMECHE resume rewrite service.