The one question every interviewer asks is, "Do you have any questions for me?"
Most of us forget to prepare questions, so we make up generic ones on the spot, or say, "Mmm... well... no, I think you covered everything!"
It's an incredibly important part of the interview, which I why I went ahead and compiled thoughtful questions for you!
Culture Queries gives you the best questions to ask your interviewer.
Here's an example:
👎 Don't ask: "Is there work/life balance here?"
👍 Do ask: "How responsive are people to emails/Slack over the weekends and after 6pm?"
Why? Because some interviewers will interpret the first question as an unwillingness to work hard. Plus, a yes or no question that is so direct will almost certainly get you a canned response. Instead, ask a more specific question that gives you an idea of what the expected working hours are and how team members communicate with one another without sounding like you're already trying to cut corners.
I'm still making improvements and adding content, but I hope it'll be a useful resource for anyone preparing for interviews. Culture Queries is made for developers, by a developer (aka me 🙋🏻), so all feedback (good, bad, ugly) is welcome and appreciated.
Good luck on all of your interviews! And remember: you're evaluating the company as much as they're evaluating you. 🙌
Top comments (35)
It is very nice you remind people of the importance of questions again and again, Lynne. And I am watching with delight how you promote your company here and on indiehackers. Best of luck!
Thanks Elena! Don't you find the two communities so different and interesting?! Re: promotion, it's kind of easy. Every time someone tells me that they joined a company only to discover a few weeks in that it wasn't the best choice, I'm reminded to share the resources that I have. It makes sense too, since job searching and interviewing happens in ~2-year cycles.
Absolutely makes sense. There is always someone already searching or planning to soon, and it's good if they remember about your website, right? Better know about it before the search.
Here are my notes and my questions I am asking on every interview I have. Hope you will find them useful.
kostasbariotis.com/interviewer-vs-...
I used some of these in my latest interview. Thanks. And the tips of Lynne were great too. Apparently, as the interview went well.
Thanks Kostas!!
Really nice tips, thanks!
Besides the obvious questions on payment, expected working hours, etc.
the questions I try to ask are the following:
My manager:
Work environment:
Planing and working:
These are great! 👍 Thank you for sharing!
Nice app. Your email response did get caught by my Outlook.com spam filter though.
One question I've been trying to figure out how to ask concerns age, specifically my age (late 50's), and how a company/team feels about that. I suppose that might be under bigger heading of 'Actively Practices Inclusion' but I've found some of the areas you listed under 'Daily Routines' to be more active indicators of potential ageism and other types of subtle discrimination (aka lack of 'cultural fit').
Ah! Good to know that. I think other email clients have been alright so far, so thanks for letting me know.
I tried to design questions that would get honest (unscripted) answers from an interviewer. There aren't always "right" answers, but they can at least poke holes into the fluff and get to the real details we want. Ageism (and so many other -isms in tech) can be tricky, mainly because people don't always feel comfortable asking direct questions. I think some of the questions under "Team is Diverse" and "Ideal for Parents" might touch on age. Sometimes, we just want to ask if there are "others like me" on the team, and whether we can chat w/ them even though they weren't originally included in the interview schedule.
I will think more about this though. Thanks for taking the time to reply, Frank!
Discussions around work/life balance are really interesting because people tend to enter the conversation with strong ideas of what it means to them, and rarely consider how others might define it! Ultimately, everything you just said should be discussed openly (rather than two people assuming they're on the same page).
Work/life balance to me means freedom to work when and where I want to. Personally, I'd much rather work 60-hour weeks if I could choose when and where I did those hours, vs. having a strict 9-5. To me, it means blurring the line between professional and personal too. I like when my teammates know about me as a person and not only ask me questions about what I did on the weekend, but support my other interests/passions. It's not for everyone, but I love being friends w/ my coworkers!
Asking the second question here could lead to details like, "We have a few Slack channels that aren't related to work, and people are pretty active on those after 6pm and on weekends. For example, people go climbing together, and go on hikes together on the weekends. They're always organized by different people, family friendly, and open to anyone at the company."
Point is, the goal is to get as much of the "boring" details out in the open, because that's usually where the good stuff is. 😜
The last 4 places I have worked at have all said that they use Scrum. (None of them are what I'd categorize as by the book Scrum.)
Regardless if you like or dislike Scrum as a management process, I have found it interesting to ask the details of how they do Scrum.
👍👍👍 It's all in the details!!!
I love this post! In my experience, I have found this to be one of the most important parts of the interview when I was interviewing for a position or while I was interviewing other candidates for a position at my company. If you struggle with this part of the interview, I would suggest taking everyone's beautiful examples from their lists on this thread and use them as a reference while you're coming up with your own questions.
The key to mastering this skill is to show that you are genuinely interested in who you are talking to. This shouldn't be difficult because if you're interviewing for a new position, then this is your time to determine if this is a place where you'd fit in. You can show your genuine interest by asking specific questions which show that you are engaged.
To illustrate, if I was interviewing the author of this post, Ms. Lynne Tye, I would take a little time to look at Key Values and Ms. Tye's achievements while building this incredible company from scratch. By being aware of the questions that naturally cross my mind while listening to Ms. Tye speak or through researching her, I need only to write them down. For example, consider that I'm interviewing with Ms. Tye for a software engineer position at her company, the following could be a question I may ask:
If you noticed, I asked Ms. Tye about a specific time when she had a big decision to make. In my mind, I put myself in her shoes and thought about how I would make that decision. How would I go about it? This immediately sets me apart from many other candidates because I'm revealing to Ms.Tye, that in this moment, she is the center of my focus. I'm not reading off a canned list of generic questions. I created this question specifically for Ms. Tye. Her response is going to give me a glimpse into what it's like to work with her, such as the reasoning that she uses when making decisions.
Thank you for writing this incredibly valuable post and allowing me to use you in my illustration, Ms. Tye!
I'm blown away by this comment!!!
First, thank you for providing a great example. It's true, people shouldn't stop here. They should be incredibly thoughtful when not only asking questions during their interview, but also in their initial emails/cover letters. In the same way we don't love getting recruiter emails that look like:
(^ this is an email I actually got btw, copy pasted)
It's a two-way street, the whole way through. Personalized emails, personalized questions, everything should be personalized and demonstrate that you've both taken the time to do your research and be thoughtful.
Second, thanks for your incredibly kind words John! I'm honored. ❤️🙌
I could not have said it better. You're so right, impersonalized recruiter emails are a perfect parallel. My favorite is when they forget to take out their boilerplate in the response. This is an actual one I received recently as well:
You're very welcome, Ms. Tye. Thank you for taking the time in writing such a thoughtful and valuable post!
Nooooo 🙈 Why though??
At the end of the day, everyone wants to feel valued, heard, and appreciated. It doesn't matter what it is or who it's with, we all want to feel valued by our romantic partners, friends, family members, interviewers, coworkers, managers, and shoot –– even our pets! Employers and hiring managers are no different!
Anyway, thank you again, John. And know that I appreciate you!! 😍🙌
Just found out this incredibly useful post along with Keyvalues, Thank you Lynne :-)
I agree with the impersonalized recruiter emails point John mentioned and believe with the advent of LinkedIn for information and HRM software for recruiters nowadays, researching a candidate to send a fairly customized email should be less exhaustive.
If a person realizes that they've been approached like the only one for a particular role (momentarily ignoring the fact there actually are multiple candidates), it will result in a higher response rate for the recruiters.
Thanks Vinay! And you're very right –– we all just want to feel special!
If you were interviewing and told me this, I'd find it incredibly useful. This information is the type of information we (candidates) need in order to make our decision. Not all companies have flexible work arrangements. Also, I know several developers who prefer to work a structured 9-5. The point is, there's no right or wrong answer, and I can't tell you how many conversations I've had around work/life balance since I started working on Key Values (hundreds!). Ultimately, it's like dating. The best scenario is for both parties to be upfront about who they are, what they're looking for, and openly work out whether there is compatibility!
One of my favorite questions to ask prospective employers is "How do you gauge the success of your staff?". This tends to expose their value systems. If they gauge their employees on lines of code of some arbitrary metric then that is a red flag. Code quality, test coverage, and peer reviews are all examples of things I think are much more indicative of successfully developers and are the types of things I look for when I ask these questions.
While I don't tend to ask about things like "work/life balance" in those sort of formal words, I often ask the people interviewing me what their favourite part of the job is and if they have an example of a problem they found difficult to solve during day-to-day work. They usually aren't expecting to answer those sort of questions and if they struggle to come up with anything then it's a small red flag.