Interviewing for a job is supposed to be a two-way street. To be sure, too often a company does it wrong and leaves candidates feeling like this is not the case – that the company holds all the cards and the candidates had better know it. That doesn’t change the reality, though, that if you are interviewing for a job, you are also interviewing them.
For a company, the cost of a hire that doesn’t work out – we won’t call it a “bad hire” because sometimes the person simply doesn’t fit and looks to leave on their own even while performing well – is one they want to avoid. A candidate should want to find a great fit as well, because working at a job you hate going to is a heavy burden no matter how large the paycheck may be, and going back out on the job market shortly after being a job seeker is similarly undesirable.
The avenue for a candidate to explore this is by asking questions. It helps if you know someone inside the company who can tell you about this, but an interview is also the place to find out some of this information as well. Even if you know someone there, you only get one vantage point, and what they tell you can lead to questions that will tell you more. Unless a company is doing it as badly as possible, a candidate will be asked if they have any questions for an interviewer, which is a golden opportunity.
We have established that the worst possible answer to that is some form of, “I have no questions.“ But what are good questions to ask for the information you need? They are largely dependent on the job and the company, but here are a three ideas to help you come up with some.
- The job itself. You want to know what you will be getting yourself into if offered the job and you accept it. Is this job open because of the company’s growth? Or is it open because someone left, and they were not the first in a couple of years to leave it? For the latter, you are unlikely to get the full information – no manager is going to tell you that four people have preceded you and none lasted more than a year – but you can read between the lines with how they answer. It’s also helpful to ask what success looks like in the position or how employees feel about the company’s culture, morale or overall prospects.
- Something the company is currently engaged in. Maybe you know about a product the company released, and want to get a little inside view of how excited – or not – people inside the company are about it. Maybe you want to know a little more about it because your job would involve it – is it a continuation of a product or service line, or a brand new one with much expansion planned? You can ask to get a sense of this. Or perhaps the company has launched a well-publicized initiative in the local community. There may be limits on what you can be told, but only good things can come from asking about them.
- The company or department’s processes. How does the company put out quality products? What tools does the department use? This can help you get a sense of what current skills you will need to use and what you might need to brush up on should you land the job. It can also help you find out if a company seems to have questionable practices – maybe they appear to cut corners or use tools you have used before with only bad results – that may help you avoid taking a job that doesn’t go well or end well.
A job interview is not a one-way exchange, even if some employers might make job seekers feel like it is. When interviewing, you want to make sure you walk away with more knowledge to help you make a decision, either if offered a job the company in question or another company after thinking about what you learned in a future interview.