Questions you should be asking at your next interview

“Do you have any questions for us?”

It’s perhaps the hardest part of the interview. You now have to ask a question to your interviewer about the role, as if you hadn’t researched the entire company the night before. You know it, they know it. But it is the charade we must play. Most of the time the answer is no. But it’s the answer they don’t want to hear. They want to see you’re engaged, that you’re eager.

I’m no stranger to interviews, and I’m definitely no stranger to getting rejected after them either. For me it’s usually where everything starts to go wrong. In today’s ultra competitive job market, navigating interviews can be immensely stressful and you never always feel as prepared as you should be. But it’s always worth to remind yourself that even though you’re being subjected to getting analysed on an uncomfortable, personal level, it’s also an opportunity for you to find out if this really is the right place for you and if you’re going to actually enjoy working there.

Without further ado, here’s my list of “questions to ask your interviewer”, (bearing in mind I’m not an expert in recruitment, so I refuse to take the heat for any failed interviews):

“What’s the company culture like?”

Okay, this one is an often suggested question, but not nearly enough as it should be. As work becomes ever more ingrained into our lives, we have begun to seek out companies that not only fit the career path we want, but also for a range of cultural and social reasons as well. We want companies to be a good fit for us, seeing as it’s where we’re going to be spending most of our time anyway. Now would be a good time to try and suss out whether this place is going to be the right fit for you.

“Why is the current person leaving?”

This question is barely ever recommended, and I still don’t understand why. It’s good to remind yourself that while they may be interviewing you, you also need to be low-key interviewing them. The job might sound great on paper, and the company looks fantastic, but you’ve never worked there or have any indication of what goes on behind closed doors. How they talk about the outgoing employee can be really telling, and it’s also not a good sign if this is a position that has been replaced multiple times in a short time frame. I went for a job interview once and asked this, and found out that the outgoing person was the third for that position in that year alone. Yikes.

“How does everyone get along and how much collaboration is there?”

This one is more getting at the company culture again more than anything else, but always good to ask. Generally be on the look out for how your interviewer speaks about their colleagues and employees. If they’re quick to badmouth anyone, particularly the outgoing employee, then that’s also not a good sign. This also happened to me in particular when I pressed about the person before me, and it involved the interviewer complaining about them for a solid ten minutes. It didn’t make me feel like a more suitable candidate. It made me feel like I’d be on the other end of it in a few months time.

“What is the managing style like here?”

Again, really telling. If the managing style is anything than slightly less than what you want to work with or are capable of working with, then it’s clear it won’t be the job for you. If it’s a top down hierarchy and you have problems with authority then it’s definitely not a match made in heaven. If you’re the kind of person who puts birthdays in their phone calendar and is really into spreadsheets, then a relaxed, “anything goes” management style probably isn’t going to work out for you either.

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