Whaddaya hear, whaddaya say? Welcome to episode 10 of the Career Consigliere podcast, your no frills, no BS forum for navigating the corporate job scene. Jimmy with you, as always, for what we hope to be a highly informative and engaging half an hour, or so! Today, we address a topic that was intentionally ignored in the other episodes: what kinds of questions YOU as the job candidate should ask during the interview. We covered everything you’ll get hit with when the interviewers shine the flashlight in your face, but let’s flip the script now and put YOU in the drivers’ seat! We’ll talk about what to ask, what NOT to ask, and how to use questions strategically to make the interview feel less like an inquisition, and more like a conversation. Lot’s on deck podcast land, so letttssssss get it!
This, my friends, is another example of the SEVERELY misguided narrative about the job interview process that was drilled into our heads growing up. If the “wisdom” you received from your 7th grade careers teacher was anything like the garbage I was fed, you were basically taught to go in there, be an obedient little puppy, and act like you were about to have a conversation with God himself. You were told to be obsequious, subservient, and do all but bow your head in gratitude at the chance to have this conversation about making just enough money to cover (most of) the bills every month. They told us all to act like little kids and to basically “speak when spoken to”, only asking questions at the very end when the interrogator (sorry, the interviewer), says it’s okay to do so.
Unfortunately folks, this is the state many of us regress into when we walk into the interview room, or fire up the virtual meeting, however it’s happening. We completely forget that this job is for US, not the other way around. It goes back to you being the boss of your career – just like I remind you at the end of every episode. You’re interviewing for this job because you want to determine whether it’s a fit for YOU: whatever that means in your case. But I completely understand how intimidating it can be, especially for those of you that might be a little less experienced.
Quick story of how this can go: I remember interviewing for an internship back when I was in college. It was with a very well-known media outlet here in New York, and I had next to zero “big boy” experience backing me up. I remember sitting in the lobby trying to basically memorize my resume for the interrogation I was about to endure (for a job that didn’t pay anything except academic credit.......kind of funny when you think back on it). And while I was sitting there having SERIOUS agita, I remember seeing people I recognized from TV walking by me: well-known actors, big media personalities, and whole bunch of others I recognized from the spotlight. Could you have put 20 year-old me in any MORE of an intimidating situation? Was I in ANY position to start asking strategic questions and controlling the cadence of the interview with someone 20 years my senior and in the same circles as celebrities?
I realize the average corporatopian listening may or may not have ever been in a situation like this, but it’s all relative: maybe the senior vice president of whatever business unit that you’re meeting with in your interview has the same effect on you that the actors and famous sportscasters had on me that day. And if that’s the case, regardless of who’s there and what their net worth is, it’s easy to clam up and become a complete slave to the situation at hand. But not only can you prevent this from happening, you can also use questions to establish yourself and steer the conversation in ways that will help you speak from a position of strength. Let’s take a look at how.
It all starts before the interview even happens, when you’re home preparing for it. Remember from previous episodes when we talked about doing research on the company, looking up the interviewers on Linked-In, all that stuff? THAT’S when we develop our list of questions to ask. As you’re researching the company, or reading over the job posting, your naturally curious mind will begin to wonder things. And when this happens, jot down all the questions that come to mind. Here are some things you should be genuinely curious about and would be appropriate to ask during your phone screen with talent acquisition:
- What is the work arrangement? (in-person, virtual, hybrid?)
- Is travel a part of this role? If so, what percentage of time would be spent away?
- What is the general schedule/hours you’d be expected to work?
- Where in the organization does this position sit, what specific team does it support?
Remember, the TA person probably isn’t going to know the intricate details of the role, so we want to keep the questions surface level like this. A good amount of this information should have been included in the job posting, but it’s always a good idea to pick the interviewer’s brain a little further to get more information – AND to make sure that their answer is consistent with what was advertised. It’s unfortunately all-too-common for the job as advertised to be COMPLETELY different from the job in-practice, so you want to make sure that the company’s story is consistent throughout the interview process. If not, it’s up to you whether or not you stick with it.
When you make it to the hiring manager, here’s where you empty the chamber. You ask all the role and company-specific questions you want, because who better than the hiring manager to answer them, right? They’re you’re potential boss and should be pretty knowledgeable on the company, so they should be able to tell you what’s up. Here’s what you’ll want to know:
- What types of activities/projects would you be involved in?
- Is this a new role? If so, what drove the company’s investment in it?
- If this role has existed in the past, how has success been measured?
- How is the team set up? Who else will you be working with, and what do they do?
- What is the scope of the role? Will you be working cross-functionally/regionally/globally, or just within your own local team?
The hiring manager will certainly ask YOU a bunch of really hard questions, so this is your chance to make this a two-way street. As you’ve seen, it’s pretty easy to script out solid questions for rounds 1 and 2, but it’s a lot harder beyond that. After clearing round 2, you’re pretty knowledgeable on the position and the company, and you won’t know who you’re meeting with next until you receive your itinerary. So, I would recommend preparing questions specific to the parties you’re meeting with. You’ll have your itinerary well in advance, so I’d recommend coming prepared with questions specific for that particular person. For example: if you’re meeting with an executive, you might keep the questions more high level about the companies: big department initiatives, cool things in the press, and how you might be able to fit into all of that. If you’re meeting with someone parallel to you (or possibly even more junior than you), you might ask about specific challenges they face and what someone like you might want to beware of as you enter the role. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how to play these angles.
Very important here: regardless of who you’re meeting with or what level they’re at in the organization, DO NOT wait until the end of the interview to start asking questions. I know that we’ve been told to do this since we were in utero, but when something comes up in conversation that you’re genuinely curious about, don’t be afraid to stop the interviewer and ask to explore that further. They will still ask you at the end if you have questions, but you’ll know you’ve had a successful conversation when your list of remaining questions is very slim by the end. With that said, when they DO ask if you have questions, you should definitely ask at least 1 or 2: this shows that you’re still engaged and eager to learn more. However, by this point, all that should be left on your list are the small details.
What might this look like live? Let’s say you’re going to be working as a service technician for a commercial HVAC company. The hiring manager says “you’d be covering a territory that covers the five boroughs, Westchester, Rockland, and anything in Jersey north of route 80.” It’s easy to glaze over and get lost in thought while you’re envisioning yourself driving your boxy, squeaky van, with a completely shot suspension, in gridlock traffic from Canarsie, Brooklyn to Hackensack at 7am, but rather than get lost in that horrible daydream, here’s where you can seize the opportunity to ask something like “You know, I was actually wondering: the vans I’d be driving, what’s the clearance on them? Am I able to fit under the overpasses on the Belt Parkway, or do I have to take the BQE and go the commercial route?”. Might sound like Greek to anyone not from the New York area, but basically the candidate here is asking a very specific question that has a HUGE influence on when they’ll need to start their day, how they’ll need to plan their customer visits, and what time they could expect to get home. The interviewer may or may not have planned on getting into these specifics, so had the candidate NOT asked that question, they could be in for a nasty surprise on day 1 when they miss their kid’s little league game.
Also, think about what else this does. Now, the focus of the conversation has been shifted to the candidate: the door is now open to ask about whether the company pays for tolls, whether route drivers can bring the company vehicle home at night, how the fuel allowance works, and a whole avalanche of other aspects of the job that are critical, but probably wouldn’t come up in those lovely “tell me about a time when” types of questions. Now, the candidate has a choice to keep pressing with their questions, or turn it back over to the interviewer to continue with their agenda. See what happened? Even if only for a brief time, the candidate has flipped the script on the interviewer and has taken the wheel in the conversation (no pun intended!) Take this same principle and apply it in the context of your specific job, whatever that happens to be, and hopefully some things come into focus now.
All good questions to ask, all good strategies to use. But what should you NOT ask during an interview? LOTS of things you should stay away from. For one, let’s talk about salary. Remember from previous episodes: this all gets handled during the phone screening, and you shouldn’t hear about it again until you receive an offer. So what’s that mean? The only thing salary-related that you may ask is about commissions or bonuses, or any other incentive-based compensation, if you have specific questions about how it’s structured relative to the specifics of the job. But otherwise, there’s absolutely no need to ask about salary again.
You’ll also want to stay away from what I call “hot air questions”. A hot air question, according to the very official consigliere definition, is a question that is focused on esoteric, lofty ideals and forces the interviewer to come up with some indirect, politically correct, theoretical answer that does nothing except emit their hot breath into the room. For example, back in one of my very first interviews early in my career, the company I was interviewing with had “Keep it Simple” as one of their corporate values. And as a 21-year old, soon to be negative net worth college graduate, I remembered what my college career counselors and text books told me: which was to ask about asinine, superfluous things like this. So my question was something like “In my research on the company, I paid close attention to the company values. Could you tell me more about “Keep it simple” and how employees at your company enact this value on a daily basis”?
Ooo boy, nails on a chalkboard. And what answer did I get? First, the guy looked at me like he just saw an alien. It was very clear that he either didn’t know the company values that well, or was so incredibly caught off guard by such a ridiculous question that he knew he’d be grasping at straws to give me a response. And folks, grasp he did. He started talking in circles saying something like “well I’ve been with the company 20 years and back in the day things were all complicated and all over the place and now they’ve been working to streamline things and......blah, blah blah, blah......I nodded....then some more blah blah from him.....and finally he goes, “does that answer your question”?
Is a question like that really going to accomplish anything? Did anything he told me in his half-assed, scrambled, mess of a response really enlighten me or make an impact on my perception of the company? No: all I did was put the poor guy on the spot and waste 2 full minutes of a tight schedule. His intentions weren’t bad: but questions like this? Asking about PR-focused, image-driven, surface-level, optical aspects of a company? Stay away from it: you have no way of truly knowing how a company operates until you start working there. This should give you an idea of the concept: keep your questions focused on the job itself. If you do ask about the company, ask about concrete things: how it’s set up, what main goals/initiatives are at play, and anything else that directly affects your role and your contribution.
Some other things to avoid: don’t ask about things like PTO or non-salary other benefits (retirement plans, insurance, other perks, all that). Things like this will be explained if/when you get an offer, and unfortunately you don’t really have much negotiation room on stuff like that. They’re usually contracted arrangements with external vendors, and you as the employee get what you get, so it’s senseless to ask about this stuff during the interview rounds. And it may sound like common sense, but DEFINITELY don’t go asking anything that makes you look like you haven’t done your research: for example – “what will I be doing in this role?” You CAN and SHOULD ask about specific projects and tasks, but asking a general question like this makes you look clueless and disengaged.
And this one is a BIG no-no, yet it’s one that I’ve had mentors and even former bosses of mine recommend I do. At the end of the interview, I was always told to “close them out” by asking something to the effect of “how did I do? Do you see any reason why this wouldn’t work out?” This is the ULTIMATE hot air question: what can they POSSIBLY tell you? “yeah bro, you rock! You know what, screw our process and all the other people we interviewed, let’s have HR draft you up an offer letter right now!” Guys, all an interviewer will EVER say in response to this question is “Well, we still have (however many) people left to interview, and we hope to have a decision by (whatever date). (name of TA person) will be in touch with next steps.” Is you putting the interviewer on the spot and being REALLY aggressive and confrontational like this supposed to make them think “look how badass they are.....such confidence....they’re the one!” Don’t even bother. If you’re looking to “close out” the interview, you can literally accomplish the same thing by simply saying “thanks for speaking with me today. I really enjoyed the conversation and hopefully we speak again soon!”. Just by saying that, you send the message that while you’re very interested, you will respect whatever decision they make and won’t turn into a stage 5 cling when they don’t answer your follow-up emails (because we all know, THAT kind of person is the type to send 14 of them). My opinion? This is a WAY better approach than putting them on the spot, making everyone uncomfortable, and in plain English, acting like kind of a jackass.
We learned a lot about interview questions today, so let’s summarize and package everything up in today’s.......consigliere call to action. During an interview, most of us were always taught to speak when spoken to, answer their questions, and essentially be a slave to the master (the interviewer). Not how it should be at all. The best way you can establish yourself and hold your own during this conversation is to artfully and tactfully ask questions as the conversation is going on. This shows curiosity, confidence, and turns the interview into more of a conversation than an inquisition. The best way to do this is to do your research ahead of time and come to the interview ready with questions specific to whoever you’re meeting with at that time. Make sure you’re asking the right people about the right stuff.
And, while you don’t want to wait until the very end to ask all your questions, you definitely still want to ask questions when prompted. But if you’ve been proactive in the conversation up to this point, your list of remaining questions should be pretty slim by the time the interview reaches this point. Being strategic with your questions can also open new doors and lead the conversation places it wouldn’t have otherwise gone: think back to our route driver example, and everything you can learn about a job or a company simply by asking the right question that sets off a chain reaction.
Finally, there’s also a bunch of stuff you SHOULDN’T ask during an interview. Avoid those lofty “hot air” questions that do nothing but warm up the room, or anything pertaining to compensation or benefits: the phone screen and the offer are the place for that. You’ll also want to stay away from any questions that make you look unprepared: no folks, the interview is not the time to go asking what the company does – you should be going in there already pretty knowledgeable from all the research you’ve done. And, DEFINITELY avoid any overly confrontational “closeouts” at the end of an interview. You’re not getting hired on the spot: the company has a process to follow, and you being extra bold, especially this day and age, does little more than make you appear cocky, and possibly even a bit desperate (a bit of an oxymoron, I realize, but these are strange times we live in).
Sadly folks, that’s all the time we have for today. But have no fears, and shed no tears, because I’ll be back with a new episode every week. As they say in the industry: no listeners, no show, so do me a favor, and stay loyal! If you find value in my content, please leave me a nice review, tell all your friends, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you use to get your podcasts. Beyond the confines of your headphones, speakers, TV screen, or any other crazy contraption with the ability to stream audio, I also provide one-on-one career assistance, so visit my website at career-consigliere.net to learn more about me, book me for one-on-one coaching, join my email list, or explore some of the other career services I offer. And to all of you out there in podcast land, remember this: Who’s the boss in your career? You, nobody else.
