Welcome back to our conversation about the art of asking questions during job interviews!
If you are just diving in, take a few moments to catch up on the first installment on this critically important topic. Recapping quickly, our focus in this article is how to ask questions during job interviews that “get the job done.” Excellent questions help you stand out from the competition, and they get you the valuable information you need to do robust due diligence in the job search process.
What follows is the flow of a typical interview process with a sequence of gatekeepers and decision-makers. In each section we talk about the goal of the interviewer, what they are listening for, and the best kinds of questions to ask to optimize your chance of moving forward in the interview process, and hopefully, winning an offer.
First gate: HR/talent acquisition/internal or external recruiter
Typically, the interview process will start with a call with an HR person, most usually someone from the talent acquisition team. Or it could be an external recruiter who is a bona fide search partner to the company, meaning they have a signed contract to work on the search.
The objective of this first “screening” interview is to see if you can “walk and talk.” Are you presentable at whatever level of professional polish they are looking for, and do you appear to credibly have the skills listed on your résumé and that are required for the job?
These interviewers often don’t know a lot about the specifics of the day-to-day of a role or team dynamics. They usually only know enough to screen candidates at a basic level. However, there are times when you speak with a knowledgeable in-house recruiter dedicated to a specific team, and that is very useful. You will be able to ask more detailed questions and get better intel from the get-go. Unfortunately, this not the norm.
For these screening interviews, good questions probe fundamental intel about the role and the objectives of the hiring leader. Here are some questions to ask:
- Why is the job open?
- What is the most critical thing the hiring leader would like this person to do?
- Who does the role report to? (If this is not stated in the job description.)
- Can you tell me about the structure of the team?
- How soon are they looking to hire?
- What does their interview process look like?
- What are the next steps?
Based on the job description and any insider information you might have from a friend or other source, you’ll want to pick and choose the three to five essential questions that will fill in gaps in your knowledge about the role. Focus on getting information that will help you perform your initial high-level evaluation of the role.
Second gate: The hiring leader (first and second rounds)
First gate passed and now you are meeting with the hiring manager. Typically, the hiring leader will set the tone and format for the call, but I have seen hiring leaders start an interview with “What questions do you have for me?” When candidates have not prepared their questions, this approach catches them off guard. This off-kilter start usually doesn’t work out well, unless the person is good at thinking on his or her feet.
Word to the wise, have your questions ready!
The hiring leader is screening you for a variety of skills and competencies, and every hiring leader has different priorities. Some may focus heavily on technical skillset; others are more interested in how you think, problem-solve, and contribute. Above all else, they are vetting your communication skills and confidence in speaking about your work and accomplishments.
Your goal for this interview is to learn more about the job, especially the objectives for the role. You may have some idea about what the team and hiring leader need this person to do, but now you can focus on the problem this hire solves. Companies hire because they have a need. Find out what that need, that pain point, is, and you can position yourself in your interviews as the person who can fill that need.
Secondly, you need to get clarity around the style in which they need the job done. A number of candidates may have suitable skills; only a few will be the rare combo of skills and stylistic match.
Finding out HOW the hiring manager wants the job done will allow you to better present your work examples as you progress through the interview, demonstrating how your style and approach aligns with what they want and how they work.
Summing up, the types of questions to ask in this meeting focus on the job, the method/style, the hiring leader’s vision, goals for the team, how this team supports and works with other corporate functions, and so forth.
Examples of questions you might ask:
- What is the critical work that this new hire will tackle in the first six months on the job?
- What would be the optimal way this work will get done? (Their process? How they work with stakeholders?)
- What is the hiring leader’s vision for their team?
- What are the highlights of projects the team has done that the manager and team are proud of?
- How does this team work cross-functionally?
- Who are other key stakeholders that interface with the role?
- As a curious and skilled professional, you’ll undoubtedly think of other questions that fit your particular interview; this is just a handful to get you started.
A question that a candidate for a cybersecurity role asked in an interview with a security director was this: “How would you describe the maturity level of cybersecurity at ABC Company? Where would you like it to be in a year?”
This question helped the candidate obtain information about the current state of the security function and the future vision, both of which were critical to her assessment of the role and how it fit with her career goals.
Second round with the hiring manager: This part of the process is likely to happen after you have met with team members, department leaders and stakeholders.
I have had candidates ask me in the past, “What could the hiring leader possibly want to talk about? We’ve talked about everything. I’ve asked all my questions.”
Really?
The hallmark of great candidates in all the disciplines that ISACA members work in – IT audit, information security, IT GRC, privacy – is intellectual curiosity. The desire to learn; to understand how things, people and processes work. Or, uncovering how they are broken and dysfunctional!
This interview is a gift. You have the chance to sit down with a prospective boss and talk deeply about the role, the team, the department, the company, future initiatives, how the team creates value, how you will create value, challenges, opportunities, the boss’ management style … the list goes on and on.
Go back to your company case study. Study your notes from your prior interviews and use all this information to create your next set of excellent questions.
This is your time to shine and demonstrate your deepened knowledge of the company and team, and ask questions that make you stand out from the competition.
While coaching an IT risk manager through the interview process, we developed a list of key questions for his second-round interview with the hiring leader, a face-to-face after an initial 30-minute phone screen.
Here are some of the questions that made his critical question list:
- What approach does XYZ Inc. take in assessing and continually improving IT performance?
- How does the company mitigate and manage projects and initiatives that have significant risk?
- What critical metrics does your team monitor? What tools do you use for your dashboards?
Third gate: team members
Here’s your opportunity to learn about the day-to-day, the working style of the team, as they see it; projects they are working on; work process and so forth.
Ask about these things!
Team culture is different from corporate culture. People generally enjoy describing the culture of their immediate team. Whereas, if you ask about the corporate culture, you are likely not to learn a lot more than what you found on the corporate website.
If you are meeting with people one-on-one, and someone stands out as an insightful interviewer, you might ask them about why they joined the company. BUT, through many years of debriefing candidates after interviews, it is apparent to me that this question doesn’t usually yield a lot of great intel. It would be better to use your limited time for questions on more important topics that you can use in future interviews.
Fourth gate: department and stakeholder leadership
Most hiring leaders want to get a read on the candidate from their peers in the department. Very often, the overall leader of the function also wants to review and approve the candidate. And many teams would like buy-in from their important stakeholders, particularly for manager-level candidates or individual contributors working cross-functionally.
Now is the time to put the information you have gleaned from all your previous interviews to full use. Review it carefully. What are the big issues that have been mentioned, the important initiatives, the challenges that the team is working on? Think about what more you can ask about these things (in a diplomatic and tactful way).
To further tailor your questions for these leaders, study their LinkedIn profiles and learn as much as you can about them, their work, their pride points and interests. You may also be able to use this information to break the ice at the beginning of the interview.
Develop questions appropriate for their level. For department heads, you want to ask about their vision for their team, important initiatives both corporate and team-wide. You are generally stepping back and asking more strategic questions.
You want to avoid the down-in-the-weeds work or role-related questions because these leaders are evaluating you for fit with the team now and fit with the enterprise in future roles.
They are assessing whether you are someone that is going to have a longer-term trajectory with the company based on what they can determine about your business, strategic, and leadership abilities – a tall order for what is usually only a 30-minute conversation. That is why your questions are so very important!
Examples of the types of questions you might ask stake holders and peers to the hiring leader:
- Tell me about your team.
- What are some of the cool things your team is working on?
- How can I best work with you and your team?
Examples of questions for department heads:
- What is the vision for the department in the coming year? How is that different from last year?
- How does this team’s work support the larger strategy of the X function?
- How would you describe the brand of your team/function? What elements of that brand would you like to build out further?
- What is the style of working with stakeholders that best supports the team’s mission and values?
- What are some of the key accomplishments for your team this year?
A candidate for an IT audit manager role with a financial services company that was in the process of transforming their audit function had these questions for the chief audit executive (CAE):
- I understand audit is undergoing a reorg. What strategic benefit will be achieved as a result?
- How frequently does audit meet with senior IT and business leadership?
- What significant initiatives will audit be engaged in the coming 12 months?
- What impact do you anticipate the financial reform legislation to have on the company?
- What risks has the economic environment introduced to the business and how has audit played a role in identifying and reporting those risks?
The wrap
With this framework you’ll be on the right path to compiling your lists of high-impact questions for each interview. Your exact questions will be determined by what you know about the industry, the company, and what you have learned about the role and the team from your previous interviews.
There are endless questions for a person with intellectual curiosity to ask during the interview process. You’ll only get to ask three to five questions per interview, so choose your best questions and ask the MOST critical question FIRST.
Great questions make you memorable and more likely to win offers. Great questions also help you make better decisions in your job search.
To make the best decision you can when it’s understood you will never have “perfect information,” you need as much insight as you can get within the constraints of the process.
Using every shred of intel you can glean by researching the company and by asking questions designed to give you useful information at every stage of the interviewing process, you can significantly improve your decision-making if an offer is extended. The information you have in hand becomes even more critical when you have competing offers and you need to evaluate them on as many similar parameters as you can.
The very cool thing for all of you is that you are in professions where asking the important questions is your bread and butter. This is the time when you apply that well-honed skill to your job search to win your next amazing career opportunity!