Thursday, January 20, 2011

Questions to ask at interview - for interviewees

While this section essentially gives guidance and tips to interviewees these ideas and principles will also help interviewers.

At job interviews it's as important for you the interviewee to prepare questions to ask the interviewer as it is to prepare answers and readiness for the questions that the interviewer will ask you.

If you are the interviewer, ensure you offer the interviewee the opportunity to ask questions about the job, the management, the organisation and the market within which it operates. The questions that job candidates ask at interview provide valuable insights as to their attitude, maturity, capability and strategic understanding of the role and the organisation, so for interviewers, questions asked by interviewees form a significant and illuminating part of the interview process. Listen to and learn from what interviewees ask you - often the questions that interviewees ask will provide more information to the interviewer than anything you ask them.

As the interviewee, take full advantage of opportunities to ask questions. Asking good well-prepared and researched questions is your chance to demonstrate that you are better than the other candidates, and to show that you have a tremendous capability and understanding and potential, irrespective of what the interviewer asks you.

Preparing and asking great questions at your own job interview dramatically reduces any dependance that you might otherwise have for the interviewer to ask you 'the right questions'. It won't matter if the interviewer doesn't ask good helpful questions, or fails to prompt the sort of discussion that allows you to show how brilliant you are - instead, you can control this area of discussion yourself by asking the interviewer great questions that will make them sit up and realise what an excellent candidate you are.

An helpful although not absolutely essential aspect towards asking the interviewer good questions is good research (which follows later on this page).

A key to asking great questions at your interview is to ask questions that impress the interviewer. Most candidates just ask about routine details that they think they ought to know, or which they think of on the spur of the moment, but which will probably be provided in due course anyway in documentation about terms and conditions. This is meaningless twaddle and to be avoided.

Instead focus on the job priorities and scope, on the organisation and ways to make a difference or an improvement. Try to think strategically like a manager, and for very senior positions, like the CEO. Try to adopt the mind-set of a helpful advisor who needs to ask helpful facilitative questions. Focus on the organisation not on your own needs.

Try to prepare and ask questions that make the interviewer think to themselves, "Wow, that's a good question - this candidate has really thought about the role, and understands the sort of issues we need them to handle/the sort of responsibilities/initiatives we want them to take.."

Aim to ask questions that make the interviewer think, (depending on what the organisation and role requires), "Wow, that's an unusual question - this candidate is special - they are demonstrating to me that they understand people/understand about communications/have great integrity/a strong value system/great humanity/maturity/a good strategic mind/etc, etc."

Think before the interview about what the successful candidate will be like - ask yourself beforehand, what great questions would the successful candidate ask? And then be that person.

When you research the job look into the sort of challenges the organisation is facing, and think how this affects the vacant role. What does the employer need from the successful applicant? How might the role be extended to contribute more to the organisation if the job were performed by a suitably positive and capable person ? (That's you incidentally.) The job advert or job specification might give you some clues. Do your research so that you understand as much as possible about the priorities of the job position, and the organisation and its situation, and then think about the ways that the role could be extended to provide greater support towards achieving organisational challenges.

This sort of background thinking will help you to prepare questions that will seriously impress any interviewer, whatever the role. It is possible also to think of good positive impressive questions just by using what you know of the role and the sort of issues that face modern employers. The point is, you need to think about it and prepare beforehand.

For example:
examples of good questions to ask interviewers

These types of questions are certainly appropriate for interviewees to ask an interviewer at an interview for a junior-to-middle ranking role. For more strategic roles and executive responsibilities you'll need to raise the strategic perspective of some of these questions - use your judgement. Remember, the aim is to make the interviewer think (always relative to the role), "Wow, that's a good question.."

In any event adapt the wording and develop alternative questions to suit your own style and the situations concerned.

"Of the main priorities and expectations attached to this role, which ones are well understood and measurable, and which are not?"

"If the CEO/MD/Departmental Manager/you were to name the three most important priorities for this role/the successful candidate to achieve in the first six months, what would they be, and how would they be measured?"

"I'm aware that this market is fast moving/competitive/mature/local/regional/national/international (whatever your research indicates); how is this affecting the strategic priorities and the demands on the role/vacant position?"

"Communications, internal and external, are clearly extremely important in this organisation; what are the related priorities for this role?"

"I've read that you (the employer organisation) face a lot of competition from XYZ (sector, company, whatever); what do you think are the main ways that the successful candidate can help the organisation deal with this threat?"

"Where are the priorities/What are the issues for this role/the successful candidate in terms of maintaining/developing/improving effective inter-departmental relations?"

"What are the priorities and challenges as regards areas for change and improvement facing the department/organisation/team within/connecting/relating to the role?"

"What is the balance of priorities for this role - short-term efficiencies and performance, or longer-term planning and organising?"

"If someone were to come into this role and begin to make a significant impact on culture and morale, what sort of changes would people/you/the management/the board/the CEO want to see most, and how would this be measured?"

"It's normal that most roles are operating considerably below their potential to contribute to strategic change/organisational performance and improvement; what are the expectations in terms of broadening the scope of this role"?

"How might this role positively impact on/contribute to customer relations/organisational development/culture/staff morale/training and development/legislative anticipation/market development/sales development/business retention in ways that it's not done so far?"

"Where do think there might be opportunities for this role to connect with/cooperate with other functions, and what's stopped that happening in the past?"

"What are the vulnerabilities in processes/people/business retention/grow/ technology, ITC systems within the organisation/department that need to be attended to?"

And so on.. You get the idea?

Serious, strategic, thoughtful, facilitative questions. Questions that amaze the interviewer - about things they might not have even considered. In fact the best questions should make the interviewer think, "My God, if this person can have this level of insight, and such a positive enlightened approach at the interview, just imagine what they'll be able to do when they get their feet under the table..."

This sort of positive expansive questioning is not limited to strategic management positions - every job role is potentially strategic - what makes the role strategic is the person doing it, not the job title or status.

And the role can be in any function, any industry, any type of organisation - doesn't matter - every role interfaces in some way or another with people, processes, other departments, customers and suppliers (internal or external), and so has a strategic dimension. recognise the strategic dimension; influence it positively, and you get asked to do it on a wider scale. Asking good questions at a job interview helps the job candidate to demonstrate that they have this potential.

Organisations, and therefore interviewers want to recruit people into all roles who can come in and make a positive difference. By asking well-prepared and thoughtful questions, you can demonstrate that you are one of these people.



Being an advocate of the maxim 'accentuate the positive' I am usually loath to dwell on negative examples, however in this case I make an exception because this is an important no-go area.

Just as it's helpful for interviewees to prepare and ask good questions, so it's helpful also to avoid asking routine questions that waste time and can often be covered more efficiently in some other way (by reading a document for example.)
questions to avoid asking

Contrast the expansive, positive strategic questions above, about job scope and contribution to organisational effectiveness, with this stuff below. Interviewers will generally react negatively (secretly usually) to questions such as the following examples, so unless you are a very junior person going for a very junior role with an employer who has not prepared in advance this type of routine information, avoid asking questions like these at your interview.

Do not ask these questions 
"How many weeks holiday do I get?.."
"When would I get a pay-rise?.."
"What are the lunch times?.."
"What sort of car do I get?.."
"What other perks are there?.."
"What are the pension arrangements?.."
"Do you have a grievance procedure?.."
"What expenses can I claim for?.."
"How soon before I could get promoted?.."
"When is going-home time?.."
and others like these

Generally speaking these questions suggest to the interviewer that the candidate is mostly interested in what the organisation can give the employee, rather than the other way around. Interviewers want to meet and recruit interviewees who see things in terms of what the employee can do for the organisation.

Find another way to get this sort of information if you really need to know it at the face-to-face interview. Good employers will explain all this to interviewees during the interview or in written terms and conditions, which many employers will send out prior to the interview. As suggested in the tips at the start of this page ask prior to the interview for a copy of the employment terms and conditions or an employee handbook. If they don't have this or can't send it, and you have a burning question about these sort of 'hygiene factors', the best way to approach it is to ask something like:

"What's the best way for me to see the routine details about the employment terms and conditions relating to this role? Do you have a handbook or sample contract for example? I don't want to waste time here going through incidentals..."

By doing this you demonstrate several important things, that:
you regard these things as secondary - implication being that you regard doing the job as the priority
you respect the value of time, since you appreciate there are better things to concentrate on during an interview
you understand the principle of efficient information management and communication, on the basis that all this detail will be available somewhere to read rather than have to waste effort asking individual questions
you are professional - because providing information like this in the way you suggest is the most professional way to do it.

Of course the job-grade and seniority of the vacancy and the size of the employer organisation will affect the significance and transfer of this sort of information. In an interview with a tiny little company for a junior clerk's position the interviewee can be forgiven for asking these sorts of questions relating to terms and conditions, not least because the company might not be professional or organised enough to have produced a proper handbook or contract, nevertheless, whatever the role and size of employer, the less time spent asking about all this sort of information the better. And certainly avoid the entire area in interviews for professional positions with professional employers, especially in commercially competitive functions and industry sectors.

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