Fancying more challenging technical engineering problems coming from a PhD CFD background and some time in industry, I thought why not apply to MBDA?! They advertise all round the year, same adverts, hold open days to gather cv's, recruitment agencies always PM'ing me via LinkedIn about systems/aerodynamics engineering roles, colleagues saying they would really need someone like me, referral encouragement, seemed like a no-brainer. So I did and got an interview with HR, principal and department head. Polite people in general but didn't seem interested in getting to know me as a person. Questions were robotic and process driven reading from a standard script but was told beforehand this is the typical interview format for roles at MBDA. Reason for offer not given was that I didn't have hands on experience...yes..a CFD engineer with no hands on experience. Any decent CFD analyst requires at least a deep understanding and awareness of experimental wind tunnel methods, CFD is garbage without empirical validation, so maybe I shouldn't have focused on my specialism. I mean, what's so difficult to understand about wind tunnel physics? Tunnels are faster than CFD, good source of reliable data, whatever it may be, and are used to generate cl,cd, cm response models an visualise to some extend the flow phenomena. Yes you need Reynolds and Mach consistency requirements, be aware of tunnel effects, apart from that, not much to it. You stand a high chance of getting an offer if you have a) spent a summer placement in the organisation already, c) come from another department in the org, d) worked in another defence company on similar tech, e) done a university project or PhD related to their tech, f) or lastly if you haven't really done much in ~10 years working for another org in the defence industry (no offence). So may people I've spoken over the years have had similar experiences or have known very intelligent people with very versatile career experience wonder why they didn't get a job in this org. The answer is simple. If you believe yourself to be a very suitable candidate, really ask yourself have you got the specific tech related expertise that they need at the time they are interviewing? If not, then an interview here will be your only chance to ask and determine whether you fit the mould required of the role.