Interview The Interviewer

by

The Tables Have Turned

As mentioned earlier in the chapter ‘How To Demonstrate Interest’, you will have to ask questions that matter.

It is the same as buying a car. Would you walk into the store and a buy car without asking any questions about the mileage, warranty, options etc? And if you are a woman, would you buy a washing machine without asking questions about load capacity, features? I highly doubt it in both the cases!

In similar fashion you should ask meaningful questions that will help your cause in the interview. This shows you are taking this seriously and also you are clearly interested in the position.

I have broken down the questions into groups. Depending on the situation and context you can use any of these questions in the interview. Come up with your own set of questions that make sense to you.

Company:

Ask questions or discuss around the following aspects

  1. Size
  2. Number of employees
  3. When was it founded
  4. Locations
  5. Products
  6. New products
  7. Services offered
  8. CEO
  9. Where is it headed, direction of the company – useful question if it is a startup or a small company
  10. Clients/Partners/Customers – Especially if it is a services company

I have already mentioned doing your homework about the company. The key is to show them you have some knowledge of the company and use that to ask more questions about the company.

For e.g.,

  1. I see that Acme Pvt Ltd has 3 products on CAM shafts. Are there any new ones coming for other vehicles?
  2. Or you could ask, “Who are the customers who buy these 3 products?”, “Which one sells the best?”, “Who is your biggest customer”.
  3. How many are sold?
  4. What are the new technologies being adopted by the company?
  5. Are there any new locations going to open up?
  6. What is the growth plan?

Job Position/Project:

Make sure you ask at least few questions related to the job position you are interviewing for. Especially if you were not provided with the JD beforehand. The more you ask about the job, its projects and other relevant details, the better your chances of impressing the panel. If you are being hired for a particular project in mind you can use the same questions below.

  1. Was this position newly created or they are filling up an existing position – This is more like an open ended question to see where it takes you in the discussion.
  2. How many projects will I be working on?
  3. How big is the team?
  4. What technologies will I need to know?
  5. Is there anything I can start learning that could help with the job, until the hiring decision is made? I would love to improve my skills or start learning anything new that maybe helpful for this job.
  6. What would be my immediate responsibilities?
  7. What would be my goals for the first 90 days?
  8. When do you plan to make a hiring decision?
  9. When would you like me to start in case if I am offered a job? You can ask this question if the interview has gone well.
  10. Advanced Tip: You can use questions 7 and 8 along with the following statement. The reason I ask is because, I have couple of more interviews coming up or about to schedule two more interviews and I to wanted to make sure I can finish them soon, so that it can help me make a decision. You can also add “since I am interested in this position”. By doing this you can show you are interested but without coming off as desperate or too eager. Sometimes I outright show interest in a job and let them know. It all depends on the situation. Don’t break your head over this.
  11. Project Specific: If you are being hired for a particular project. You can ask why a particular technology or piece of software is being used. For e.g., If the project uses Catia, you can ask what prompted them to use Catia over SolidWorks or whatever. If it is a project is a web application built with LAMP. You can discuss the merits of it over say Ruby-On-Rails, Python or ASP.NET. You get the idea right? Always look for things you can talk about or ask that is related to the job at hand and in the process show you are interested and eager to learn!
  12. If you are interviewing for a services company like Wipro, TCS, InfoSys you can ask about what client you are going to work for. And ask questions related to the client. If you have never heard of the client, even better. Start asking what they do, where is their HQ, technologies they use, products etc..

Interviewer/Panel:

Make sure to ask couple of opinions of the interviewer or one of the interviewers (maybe the head?) of the panel.

Some of the opinions to ask on are about the technological choice of a project (question 10 above), where are the old technologies headed, what are the upcoming technologies to look out for, you can even bring up hotly debated questions in your field. Find any polarizing topic in your field and bring it up in the interview even if it is not directly related to interview.

  1. Based on the Question 10 answer given by the interviewer, you can ask what HE thinks about Catia, will it stick around, is there something else that does better than Catia for his needs, any new competitor gaining ground. Say it was web development question, you can ask about how long he thinks PHP will last, what does he think about the new Python frameworks popping up etc.
  2. You can also ask him about what skills to learn for the type of jobs you are interviewing for or looking for. Can he recommend any particular sources to learn that, any book, blog etc?
  3. If you are facing problems or faced problems in your personal projects, you can discuss with him or ask questions on how to fix/solve it. But make sure the questions are not too basic or simple that everyone should know! You can continue the discussion provided he is receptive to the direction the talk is going and looks interested in discussing it.
  4. How long he has worked on the project, team or in the current capacity
  5. If he is a manager, you can ask how different it is from technical work and if he misses it. This is more like a curiosity question than anything else. This can possibly build rapport between you and the interviewer.

Improvise on this and make a list of your own questions that you think will be helpful. Make FULL use of this opportunity to engage the interviewer, get into a conversation and build rapport. This should give you an edge over others, most of them will be too shy or afraid to ask or just lazy to do their part to make the interview a success.

Ask a few questions about the company and focus on asking questions about the job and its projects for the remainder of the interview.

Cascading Effect: Once you ask the interviewer a question and your mind comes up with a new question as follow up to the interviewer’s answer, go for it and ask. Make sure it is not a dumb question or has an obvious answer. Do this as long as the interviewer looks interested and happily answering them. After a while switch to other questions from your pre-written list.

Warning: When you are asking questions one after the other, make sure it doesn’t look like a rapid fire round in a quiz, you may come off as robotic. Make it look like a discussion, smile once in a while. Once he answers you can add to his answer by giving him your view or what you know about it. The key is engaging the interviewer.

Once the interview has ended, thank the interviewer/panel for giving you the opportunity to interview with them. Let them know you are interested and excited about this position and will look forward to hearing from them.

If possible ask for their contact card. You can use the email to follow up with them rather than the recruiter. But don’t tell them you want the card for following up with them.

Shake hands and leave.

Next up, following up after the interview.

Next Lesson : Operation Follow up

Previous Lesson : Advanced Tip #4 – Urgent Requirement? Negotiate Hard!