101 Smart Questions to Ask on Your Interview by Ron Fry

Author:Ron Fry [Fry, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-4532-5423-3
Publisher: Career Press
Published: 2012-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Questions About the Next Step

How many other candidates have you interviewed?

How many more will you be interviewing before you expect to make a decision?

Before you’re able to reach a hiring decision, how many more interviews should I expect to go through and with whom?

With whom will I be meeting next (names and job titles)?

What issues are important to each of them?

What are they like?

Are they amiable, laid back, hard charging? You want to be ready for the personality you’re going to face. Won’t you act differently with a fire-breathing sales type than you would with a mild-mannered bean counter? Of course you would. Additionally, you wouldn’t want to overemphasize your computer expertise with the guy who is computer illiterate; it would just make him feel inferior . . . to a potential subordinate.

What are their ages and family situations?

You would not ask this question of a hiring manager or anyone else with direct input into the hiring decision. Since they can’t, by law, ask you these types of questions, you would (I hope) be careful to avoid such personal questions yourself. But even though it’s a small risk, I think it’s worth it to get whatever such information you can from the lower-level interviewers. The more you know, the more you can prepare.

How long have they been with the company?

If the interviewer is middle-aged and in a middle-management position at a smaller company, he’s either not the most ambitious person you ever met or has “risen to the level of his incompetence.” You may want to make him feel secure—by not coming on too strong—since he’s probably aware he isn’t moving any higher up the corporate ladder.

On the other hand, if you’re interviewing with a 27-year-old vice president who clearly seems destined for better things (and higher levels), you’ll want to convince her that you’re someone she’ll want to bring along for the ride, someone who can perhaps make her own rise quicker or easier.

You may not be able to find out the answers to all or even most of these personal questions, but you will certainly get helpful answers to some. Whatever you learn will be more than you knew before!

Based on the answers you receive to these kinds of questions, try to create a model of the person with whom you’ll be meeting: what she looks like, what makes her smile, what makes her angry, how she deals with stress, what seems important to her, what she’d laugh off.

Using this admittedly hypothetical “pseudo-interviewer,” picture yourself actually in the interview with her. Answer her questions. Ask yours. Counter her objections. Ask for the job! Even if the eventual reality bears little or no resemblance to the model you’ve constructed, doing this exercise makes you better prepared than just walking in cold.

All the research, assessment, and preparation is over. It’s time for the real thing—your interview with the hiring manager.

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