There are lots of places where you can pick up tips on how to answer questions you might be asked in an interview. Here, our focus is on what questions YOU should ask interviewers. Do you ask questions at the end of an interview? Maybe you just ask about what’s in it for you. Trying to assess whether this is the job for you is not a good idea at an early stage in the hiring process.
In the early stages, you want to focus on selling yourself. Other than talking about your work successes, you can sell yourself by asking questions that show interest in the hiring organization and the interviewer. Most people in an interview miss this huge opportunity to sell themselves by showing interest. They remain passive beyond just answering the questions the interviewer asks them. Why ask interest questions? Because people will like and remember you better if you give them a chance to talk about themselves and their achievements. They will be impressed if you seem really interested.
Selection decisions occur in two stages, so you should ask different kinds of questions for each stage.
- Stage One: The interview – this may be one or more interviews.
- Stage Two: They make you an offer.
These two stages correspond to the two decisions that need to be made. The first decision is for them to decide whether to hire you. The second decision is you deciding whether you want to join them. This distinction is important because too many interviewees ask questions in the first stage to find out how much they will like working for this organization. This is putting the cart before the horse. There is no point asking such questions until they make their decision to hire you. So, you should focus initially on questions that help you sell yourself to them, questions that show how interested you are. Your aim at this stage is to help them make their decision to hire you.
Stage One Questions to Show Interest
In early interviews, focus exclusively on positive questions; ask about the organization’s successes and plans, not about their problems or challenges. Positive questions create a happy, proud feeling in the interviewer. Negative questions may annoy them and they may see you as a potentially difficult employee. The following interest questions are ideally asked of internal Human Resources staff or, better yet, the manager who you would report to. If your first interview is with an external recruiting firm, limit your questions to 2 or 3 unless they seem open to more. Watch out for signs that they are in a hurry and, if they are, they will not appreciate your taking too much of their time.
Interest Questions About the Organization:
- What have been some of your organization’s major successes in recent years?
- What do you attribute your successes to?
- How much has your organization grown in the past 5 years? What was done to achieve such growth
- What growth or expansion plans do you have for the next few years?
- How is your organization better positioned for success than similar organizations?
- What do you see as X department’s role in promoting the organization’s growth or success?
No doubt you can think of other questions. Just keep them positive and prioritize them so that you make the best impression with the fewest number of questions before the interviewer ends the discussion. Use the organization’s name rather than asking about “your organization” – if it’s a public sector organization don’t ask about growth. Ask about new service developments instead or process improvements.
Ideally, you should have done some research on the organization before the interview. If so, you can show interest by stating how you’ve noticed their success in a particular offering or location, then ask how it achieved this success and what plans they have for the future in this area.
It’s best to avoid talking about how this would be a good career move for you or how it would be a learning opportunity. What’s in it for you is not a selling point that will convince them to hire you. However, if they talk about some future plans that you feel you could help them with, tell them how you could contribute to the success of their plans, if you feel you can of course. This way, you are focusing on their needs not yours, a much better selling tactic.
About Keys to Success
- What do you think it takes for newcomers to be successful in this organization?
- What have recent newcomers done early on that have really impressed you?
- What are some notable achievements of others in similar roles?
- What are the most important qualities that your most effective newcomers possess?
- What do you feel have been the keys to your own success in the organization?
Keep watching for signs that the interviewer is pleased rather than impatient with your questions so you know when to stop. If they are really enjoying your questions ask a few more to give them a chance to talk about successes and their role in them. Applying emotional intelligence in this context means recognizing when to stop. It also means recognizing the opportunity to ask follow-on questions if you see that one of your questions really excites them.
The key point of these questions is that showing interest can be a strong selling point. It's not so much about gathering information as it is showing how interested you are.
Stage 2 Making the Offer
Some organizations will send you an offer letter and some will invite you back for an offer meeting. This may depend on the level of the position as well. If they send you an offer letter, phone them and ask for a meeting to ask some clarifying questions but also express your joy at getting the offer and how much you are looking forward to working with them. Don’t sound like a police investigator wanting to dig out the dirt or sound doubtful that this is really the job for you.
Do some research. There are a number of websites that talk about what it’s like to work at a particular organization. One of the most widely known is Glassdoor but there are others worth looking at. Do a search on “What is it like to work at X.” Your research should tell you a lot about how successful and admired the organization is so you should not need to ask these kinds of questions. You should prioritize the questions that are of greatest interest to you, recognizing that they may become impatient if you ask more than 4 or 5. Your guide should be any signs of impatience in their manner toward you. Given the time limitation, you should avoid asking questions about topics that you can research online in advance. This is the best time to ask “What’s in it for me?” questions, such as anything relating to pay and benefits.
Questions to Help you Decide to Accept an Offer
- What are the key features of your organization's culture?
- What are the main reasons people want to work for your organization?
- What is the staff turnover rate in your organization compared to similar organizations?
- What are the main reasons people give for leaving your organization?
- In employee attitude surveys, what are some things people feel could be improved in your organization? What have you done to make these improvements?
- How open are managers to improvement suggestions?
- What is your organization’s approach to empowering and developing staff?
- How willing is your organization to pay for external training courses?
- What do you look for in new employees to decide whether to promote them?
- What is the percentage of internal promotion versus external hiring at various levels?
- What things are employees most often criticized for?
You are unlikely to have time to ask many questions so it's important to prioritize and to tailor the questions to your situation. Watch carefully for signs that one of these questions irritates them. Do they resent being asked about the reasons people give for leaving the organization? Do they put such people down as a poor fit or something more negative? Do you want to join an organization with such an attitude to people who may have left for good reasons? Some of these questions, like those relating to staff turnover can often be found on websites like Glassdoor. Try to answer as many questions through research so you can focus on questions in this meeting that you can’t get answers to elsewhere.
Keep in mind that the hiring person wants to give you a good impression of the organization so you might not get straight answers to some of these questions. If you know someone or have a friend who knows someone who works at this organization, ask them these questions for a more honest answer. If such a contact is very disgruntled you might get only negative answers. It's a good idea to continually probe for the upsides of working there if they are only giving you the downsides.
In summary, the main point is always to ask questions at the end of an interview and be sure to ask positive questions at early interview stages prior to getting an offer. Sell yourself first, and only then ask questions to decide whether this job is for you.