Top Interview Questions for CNC Machinist

This week’s topic: What are your go-to questions to figure out if a candidate (machinist) really knows their stuff?

A simple “tell me about yourself” doesn’t cut it when hiring a machinist. Real skills show through hands-on questions, practical tests, and sometimes… just throwing someone on a machine and seeing what happens. Here are some of the best responses we saw when this question came up in the MACHINIST Facebook group:

---

Practical “Show Me” Tests

• “Hire them as a 1099, give them a print and a machine. Tools are loaded, offsets aren’t set. Make me a good part.”
• “We’ve got a test piece that should take less than an hour. If they can’t make it, you’ve got a button pusher, not a machinist.”
• “We run a 1-2 hour manual lathe test—1-3 fits (+0/-0.002), threads, and basic measuring. You see technique, time, stress management, and honesty right away.”
• “If you can’t tram a mill vise, indicate a 4-jaw, or sharpen a drill—good luck. Those are basic skills.”

---

Math & Measurement Skills

• “Tangent of 45 = ?”
• “9 x 7?” (You’d be shocked how many blow this one.)
• “Square root of 9?”
• “How many thousandths in an inch? How many per mic thimble turn?”
• “How comfortable are you with a 1” mic?”

---

Process & Problem-Solving

• “How would you get rid of chatter on a bore?”
• “How would you add a taper to a turned dimension?”
• “How do you pick up an edge with an indicator to within .0002?”
• “Walk me through your order of operations for this print. What tools would you use?”

---

Written & CAD/CAM Tests

• “I’ve seen shops hand out a written practical that weeds out people who don’t belong.”
• “We’ll hand you a program and ask you to mark up what each section does, then draw the part.”
• “SolidWorks? Mastercam? Let’s see you reverse-engineer and program a part. Then estimate setup and cycle time.”

---

Attitude & Mindset

• “The biggest question? How do they feel about learning? A good machinist never says they’ve learned it all.”
• “Ask how they take care of their tools, their station, their machines—this tells you a lot.”

---

And of course… humor:

• “They should be able to move both axes at the same time while standing on their head, reciting the alphabet backwards, all while wearing a Tim Couch jersey.”