“Do you have any questions for us?” Usually asked at the end of your interview, when you have used all your energy carefully constructing answers to questions and focusing on selling yourself. At this point you simply can’t think of anything you want to know, until you get home and suddenly have 20 questions.
By following these tips, you can ensure that you have the opportunity to find out the information that is important to you, after all an interview works both ways – you need to establish if the team and the organization are a good fit for your longer-term goals.
- Preparation: make a list of key information you need to know by the end of the interview. This will help you to focus and remember everything, even if you become nervous at the meeting. There’s a strong chance that the question may be pointed back at you and if you’re opening the discussion, you should be prepared to give your own take.
- Pick your moment: it’s best not to launch straight in with a question about leaving early or transferring to work at the company’s office in the Bahamas. Wait until the opportunity to ask questions arises. By this stage you will have built some rapport with the person interviewing you and will be able to ask the question more openly and comfortably. You’ll also be able to gauge whether this is the right person to ask those questions, or whether it would be more appropriate at another stage of the process.
- Be clear: don’t beat around the bush or shy away from finding out what you need to know. Remember you want to appear confident and professional so don’t be embarrassed about asking for information. You could practice asking the question aloud before you go to the interview to see how confidently you come across or ask a friend to role-play the scenario with you.
- Maintain focus on your goal. It’s far better to enquire about job parameters and working patterns at the interview stage than to get down the line to a job offer before you realise the role won’t work for you or won’t be fulfilling for you on a personal level. Identifying what is important to you will help to assess if this is the right opportunity for your career.
- Remember the human element: the person interviewing may be extremely polished and professional but underneath the guise of interviewer, they too are real people, and someone once interviewed them for this role. They too have other interests and commitments outside of work and may be more understanding than you think about pay scales or flexible working. At the very least, people who interview others regularly are generally unshockable and it’s unlikely that you will ask anything that hasn’t been asked before. Depending on the interview style and rapport built, you may even want to consider asking your interviewer(s) if there is anything which, in hindsight, they wish they had asked about or known more about before they joined the company.
