It’s been a while since I wrote an essay
about “penetrating questions” for job seekers to ask on interviews. For reference, the prior ones in the series
are Ask, Ask 2, Ask 3, Ask 4, Ask 5, Ask 6, and Ask 7. (Ask and Ask 3 were actually republished here
on Neil Patrick’s site; this one was written exclusively for him!)
As an aside, one of the questions from Ask 7 was about inviting five dinner
guests from history. I decided to answer
it, publicly, myself in an essay. I’d
thought it was a worthy intellectual
exercise.
I often get ideas for these questions from
other peoples’ essays. The essay The Interview Secret HR Doesn't Want You To
Know... by J.T.
O’Donnell, founder of WorkItDaily,
sparked a thought for another question… or two or three. I hope these prove useful to you in your
interviews.
What
on my resume caught your eye?
This is a question, to be asked of the
hiring manager only, that gets to the heart of why you’re in their office. It forces them to identify something
overwhelmingly-positive about you, and puts you in a good frame in their mind
(on the flip side of things, if they have no clue, that’s not a good sign!). And whatever they name gives you specific
things to focus on, because that gives you an opening to:
And
that, , applies to which problem you have… ?
You’re making them do the work for
you. They’ve just – presumably – named
one of the key strengths that they saw in your background. Now you’ve opened the door to their
explicitly naming one of the challenges they have and how your background
meshes with it. Not only can you now
address that problem specifically, by getting them to tie your strength to
their problem, you help get them to see you in the position.
What
last made you laugh at work?
This is a culture question. Nobody expects work to be a comedy or social
club, but it is a place where you
spend a significant portion of your waking hours. The answer doesn’t need to be detailed or
elicit a specific joke they remember hearing, but if they really have to think
hard about the last time they laughed as a result of something – e.g., “Well, the
other day my co-worker and I were ribbing each other about…” – then that’s a
potential warning sign that there’s no real joy on the part of people working
there. Even worse if they flat-out can’t
think of a single instance.
Am
I the first person you’ve brought in for this position?
Very often hiring managers don’t really
know, precisely, what they want when they first write the job description; they
have a vision, but visions don’t always comport with what’s actually
available. And it’s very typical that as
interviews go along tweaks to that vision they have are made. Gleaning some idea of where you are in the
sequence can help you understand the possibility that the real wants and needs have deviated from the published ones.
Can
you describe the last time you had to help a subordinate get through a
roadblock? And can you describe,
generally, what the issue was?
It is inevitable that projects will run
into roadblocks. Some of these can be
gotten through with persistence on the part of the individual person. Others can require managerial “pull” to get
something loose. A good manager will be
willing to help a subordinate get through these – after, of course, the
individual has tried without success.
And if an issue happened once, generally, it’s likely to happen again if
it involves a different group or function, so forewarned is forearmed about a
potential difficulty you might face.
Could
you walk me through your day yesterday?
This should be aimed at a potential
coworker. It gives you, at least in a
one-day snapshop, what a day might be like.
Also, watch facial expressions – positive or negative? And do they attempt to gloss over the
question? People who are enthusiastic
about the work and the environment will happy to talk about things at
length. People who are not, won’t.
(An example: I asked a similar question,
“What’s your typical day like?” to a potential coworker during an
interview. Their answer was revealing:
“Oh, I usually get here about 7 AM, …, and I leave about 7 PM… and sometimes I
come in on the weekends to catch up!” My
unvoiced thought was “You’re pushing 60 a week at work, and you need to catch
up on the weekends? And this is OK with you?”
Later, talking to a recruiter, I learned that this company has such a
reputation for squeezing workers for immense hours of casual OT that people
would tell this recruiter NO THANK YOU when she named the company whose job she
was pitching! One actually said “I’d
rather be homeless than work for this company”.
The recruiter ended up not accepting any more contracts from the
company.)
What
is a typical day like for one of the group?
This is a compare-and-contrast question to
the above, to be asked of the hiring manager.
What happens versus what do they think happens? It’s also an awareness question, i.e., how
connected to the group is the manager?
Are they aloof? Connected? A “helicopter boss”? The answer can give some clues.
I hope these, and my former thoughts in Ask 1 – 7, help you not only land a good
job by asking great questions, but gain insights into places that, when you
hear the answers, you decide you will pass on working there.
© 2017, David Hunt, PE
David Hunt is a Mechanical Engineer looking
for a full time position north of Boston, MA in the USA. He is seeking a job, ideally in the medical
device or defense industries, as a:
- Design Engineer (with a strength in plastics, but that’s not all he can do)
- New Product Introduction Engineer (e.g., DFMA)
- Cost Reduction Engineer
- Manufacturing / Process Engineer
