How should you justify changing your field or profession in an interview?

While doing this, know that you are trying to explain the quality of having versatile nature. Thus, you need to further justify that you're flexible at work.

I faced this situation in my technical interview of an IT firm while I was (am) a mechanical engineer (as a fresher).

This is one of the toughest questions to face and win over in an interview.

While doing this, know that you are trying to explain the quality of having versatile nature. Thus, you need to further justify that you're flexible at work.

My interviewer asked me why I wanted to shift from mechanical domain to IT domain on the first place.

ME: "Sir, as I previously explained that my final year project was an industry based project where we visited an industry (a mechanical core industry) several times for the project work.

The working conditions, the temperature, the atmosphere, the type of work needed to be done by the engineers, their health conditions were so terrible, that's when I realized that I might not be ready for that kind of work. I can't do it my whole life."

LATER, he asked how will I be able to fit in the IT field? How will I learn this completely different stuff? How will that be even possible for a mechanical guy?

ME: "Sir, I'm pretty flexible at learning new things. If you need that justified, you would check the file. You'll see that I've mastered the mechanical domain tools like CATIA, CREO, ANSYS and also further learned in workshops about the other fields like PLC and SCADA which actually had nothing to do with out current syllabus.

If I can switch from mechanical to electronics/entc, why can't I switch from that to lT sector as well?

All it will take is a few weeks to blend in and know stuff. You already now know that I've capabilities to do that. All you need to do is to give me a chance."

After all this conversation is that, they finally seemed a bit convinced and went on a couple of other questions and ended the interview.

Bottom Line:

  • Know why you need to switch domain
  • Know how you intend to do it
  • Have the reasons you are flexible enough
  • Have some solid background/story/achievements backing your idea of flexibility
  • Do not hesitate to convince/justify your point at all.