101 Smart Questions to Ask on Your Interview (3 page)

Enough preparation. Let’s get busy.

CHAPTER 1
WHEN, WHERE, WHY, AND HOW TO ASK SMART QUESTIONS

Before we start delving into specific questions to ask yourself, let’s agree on some overarching rules, if you will, that will govern them.

Shape Your Questions to the Position

Learn as much as you can about the position for which you’re interviewing—
before
you show up for
any
interview. When you ask questions about any aspect of the industry, company, department, or job, make sure they are couched in terms of the requirements of the specific job you’re seeking and the goals of the particular company at which you hope to be hired.

Don’t Ask About Time Off

Or vacations or sick days or anything other than the job at hand . . . at least not until you’re
offered
the job.

Don’t Ask About Salary or Benefits

Again, wait until you are offered the job. (See
Chapter 7
to understand why.) You don’t want money to be a factor if the interviewer is still wondering whether you’re the best person for the job . . . or even worthy of a callback.

Know What to Ask When of Whom

Questions differ depending on both where you are in the interviewing process (screening, hiring, first, second, or third interview, etc.) and, during a particular interview, where you are in the interviewer’s script.

The earlier you are in the process, the more likely you’ll be asking general questions about where the company is going, what the culture is like, and what it deems important or valuable. Your questions are an attempt to get an initial feel for how you’d fit in, where you’d fit in, whether and how you could grow, and so on.

The more time you devote to a particular company, the more targeted and probing the questions should become, both those the interviewer asks you and those you ask the interviewer. You’ll really want to start honing in on the particular information you need to decide whether this is the right company, position, and boss for you. So the further along in the process, the more individualized the questions become (since what’s most important to you may be something I wouldn’t even ask about, like the availability of on-site daycare, reimbursement of moving expenses, or tuition).

Get the Interviewer Talking

Ask open-ended questions—those that begin with “Who,” “What,” “When,” “Where,” or “How.” Your purpose is to establish a conversation, to get the interviewer talking so he volunteers the information you want (and, just maybe, to elicit some information you don’t even
know
you want). These kinds of questions do that. Closed-ended questions—those that can be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” (and undoubtedly will be)—are useful near the end of an interview, when you want to close the sale or when you
do
want specific answers to specific questions.
“Do I have to wait 90 days for medical coverage?”
A simple “yes” or “no” will suffice.

“Why” questions can be a little tricky, since if you’re not sensitive (or aware), they can make you come off as overly aggressive:
“I noticed you put a lot of books out of print last year. Why did you do that?”

You can extract the same information in a gentler way:
“It seems from your annual report that more books than usual were remaindered last year. Was that mainly the effect of 9/11?”

Ask probing, open-ended questions to extract more details and to follow up after general questions.

Consider asking questions that
aren’t
questions. Making a statement rather than asking pointed queries is a way to put a nervous interviewer at ease. It takes some practice, but it’s very effective in getting reluctant interviewers to open up:
“What would help me most would be to get a better feel for the culture I’d be walking into and the styles of the people with whom I’d be working. Could you take a couple of minutes to give me a better understanding of those issues?”

Match Your Style to the Interviewer’s Style

This doesn’t mean you have to become a total milquetoast when interviewing with a passive interviewer, but, when facing such a person, it may behoove you to tone down the “sales killer” personality a bit.

That’s why you have to be a little careful about a one-size-fits-all interview approach. Yes, employers want confident candidates and hard workers. But take the time to look around whatever office you’re visiting. Is everyone pretty laid back? Then don’t come on like a house afire! You can crow about the results you achieved without scaring everyone.

Likewise, if you’re inherently reluctant to blow your own horn anyway and a little passive and laid back yourself, an atmosphere akin to a penny stock boiler room might not be your cup of tea, even if they
are
looking for a “detail-oriented accountant type.”

Watch the Interviewer’s Body Language

You also need to gauge the interviewer’s response to what you’re saying, not just the answers you’ve given but the questions you’ve asked. Listen for verbal clues and watch for body language that will often tell you how you’re
really
doing. If it’s obvious you’ve hit a wrong note, you may even want to say something like,
“I’m sorry. That question seemed to make you uncomfortable. Is that an area you’re not yet prepared to talk about?”
Again, you don’t want to kill a potential job because you were overly aggressive during the interview.

If you know what to look for, you’ll get extra clues from the body language of an interviewer:

Lack of eye contact
or shifting eyes are usually seen as a sign of dishonesty or, at best, discomfort:
“Mr. Interviewer, are you planning any more layoffs?”
[squint, shift, shift, shift . . .]
“Uh, no, Jim. So, how about dem Bears?”

Raised eyebrows
indicate disbelief or even mild disdain, along the lines of
“Oh, really?”/“You don’t mean that, do you?”/“Gee, how’d you figure that out?”/“You don’t actually expect me to buy that, do you?”

A smile at the wrong time
can be a sign of discomfort or an indication of a complete lack of appropriate social skills!

“Closed” positions of the hands and arms
—clenched fists, arms folded across the body—are not positive. They may also indicate boredom or negativity.

An interviewer who is
slumping
or leaning back in his chair may be showing disrespect (arrogance) or disinterest. It is surely a sign that you need to ask a question to get him back into the conversation and his head back to your candidacy.

Doodling, chewing on a pencil, scratching, playing with one’s hands, moving things around on a desk, or acting distracted are typical
signs of nervousness.
Don’t interpret such signs as anything
more
than nerves unless something else tips you off. Again, ask a question to get the focus back on you or, even better, a question about
them
—everyone likes to talk about themselves (especially a not-too-experienced interviewer who seems to be nervous about interviewing
you,
believe it or not!).

Be Concise and to the Point

If your question is so long that even
you
don’t remember the beginning by the time you finally reach the end, what do you expect the poor interviewer to do? Ask one question at a time, not a series of questions masquerading as a multi-clause construction. Then follow up with some equally pointed and specific questions to elicit more information.

Assume the Position

Even when my brother, Ken, was a relatively low-level salesperson at his previous company, he constantly talked about what “we” were doing and how “we” were doing it and what “our” prospects were. Despite the fact that he was not privy to the executive ranks until late in his tenure—what “they” knew or where “they” were headed—his use of “we” certainly gave the impression that he was more involved in those decisions than he was . . . and he wasn’t involved at all in any of them!