I just wanted to write this post because I have been looking for jobs and before I go into a job, I do some research to see what the interview will be like. I tried looking up what a technical interview would be like and I couldn't find any information online.

So the technical interview is when the employer is going to be testing you of your skills that would apply to your job. At the job I applied for, I did a regular interview first where the HR representative asked me general interview questions such as:
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Why did you apply to this job?
Tell me something about yourself that I don't already know (something that you did not write on your cover letter and resume)?
Do you have your WHMIS? Any other certificates that I should know about?
What is one thing about your last/current job that you didn't/don't like?
Can you tell me about a time you worked as a team? Acted as a leader?
Give me an example of a time you had a difficult situation and how did you deal with it?

Then there was a second interview for if you were a candidate that made it past the first stage, this was the technical interview. This time I met with not only the HR but with a head scientist. When I walked in, I was given a 2 page list of questions, this was so I could read as the scientist was asking the questions. These questions had simple calculations, a graph, problem shooting and safety/SOP questions. Before I went into the interview I was actually sent a question the night before that I needed to write out and hand in at the start of the interview, this question asked me to write an SOP on how to make a __% agarose gel. Some of the questions during the interview asked:
Calculate the concentration of solution based off an absorbance vs concentration graph (there was a y=mx+b formula).
You are given a photo of a gel and given background information on it, what went wrong with this gel? How would you fix this?
How do you deal with Ethidium bromide?
Make a 2% NaCl solution in 1L.
You are given 2 different types of MSDS sheets, how would you file these?
Give me an example of a job you did where you had to pay attention to detail and was repetitive.

After all the questions, I was then given an already made agarose gel and told to load the gel (so place the gel, put in the buffer, get the micropipetter ect.) Then of course you are given the opportunity to ask any questions.

Every technical interview will be specific to the job you applied for, this job said that you needed to be able to file MSDS, do math calculations and the biggest part of the job was doing PCR and running gels.