101 SMART QUESTIONS TO ASK ON YOUR INTERVIEW
4TH EDITION
RON FRY
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2016 by Ron Fry
Cover design by Howard Grossman/12E Design
978-1-5040-3042-7
The Career Press, Inc.
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Pompton Plains, NJ 07444
www.careerpress.com
Distributed by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Introduction
How to Be a Great Prospect
Chapter 1
The Strategy of Asking Smart Questions
Chapter 2
Questions to Ask Yourself
Chapter 3
Questions to Ask During Your Research
Chapter 4
Questions to Ask “Pre-Interviewers”
Chapter 5
Questions to Ask Your New Boss
Chapter 6
Questions to Close the Sale
Chapter 7
Questions to Get the Best Deal
Epilogue
Questions That Get Real
Appendix
All the Smart Questions to Ask
Index
“Today’s economy requires job hunters to be more proactive, more sophisticated, and more willing to go through brick walls to get what they want. Employers no longer plan your career for you. You must look after yourself, and know what you want and how to get it.”
—Kate Wendleton,
Interviewing and Salary Negotiation
I included the above quote in the last edition of this book, published in 2009. So how has the job market changed? Well, according to most economists, the Great Recession that destroyed millions of jobs ended that year, in June, to be precise. I doubt that the college graduates of the last seven years noticed—most of them still faced an unwelcome and unhealthy employment environment that featured hundreds of overqualified applicants for the most menial of jobs. And their older brethren fared little better, enduring unending rounds of layoffs and consolidations. For all except the one-percent elite, wages have been virtually stagnant for the entire new century.
There has been one major development since the last edition of this book. According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of companies—including 457 of the Fortune 500—are using some form of “personality” testing that aims to correlate specific personality traits with success in a particular job. One test vendor, Infor, claims to assess more than one million candidates a month.
While tests such as Myers-Briggs and the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) were popular during the 1960s and ’70s, we are clearly in a new age that Time magazine noted “is being driven by a collision of two hot trends: Big Data and analytics…The result is a mostly unchallenged belief that lots of data combined with lots of analytics can optimize pretty much anything…even people. Hence, people analytics.” We are clearly headed to the Human Resources version of Match.com, with serious repercussions for future job candidates—what one pundit has called the “era of optimized hiring.”
I will leave it to others to argue whether it is possible (or desirable) to accurately test for job-specific “success traits.” Whatever you believe about this new trend, it is clearly another obstacle many of you will need to hurdle.
Most job candidates think of the interview in completely the wrong way—as an interrogation or police line-up. And they see themselves as suspects, not as the key prospects they really are.
This book will show you that you are, to a very large degree, in charge of the interview. It will convince you that you are there not only to sell the company on you, but to make sure that you are sold on them. It will give you the powerful questions that will work whatever your age, whatever your experience, whatever your goals.
It will not, however, spend very much time preparing you for the questions the interviewer is going to throw at you. Luckily for you, I’ve already written the companion book to this one—101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions—whose sole purpose is to do exactly that. And I have just revised it as well. Using these two books together, you will be amply armed for any interview and any interviewer.
Even though I think you should buy a copy of my other book, I am going to reveal a secret that may cost me sales: There really aren’t 101 questions you have to prepare yourself for. Not even a dozen. There are only six:
Can you do the job?
Do you have the specific qualifications I’m seeking? Do you have the right degree? The right experience? The appropriate skills? Or, to use the current in-vogue term, the appropriate competencies?
Will you do the job…
better than the other people I’m interviewing? Prove to me that you’re the best person for the job by giving me great answers to my questions and showing your interest by asking me equally detailed questions.
Will you actually take the job if I offer it to you?
How hungry are you? How much do you actually want this specific job? Or are you so desperate you’ll take any job…even this one?
Even if you are perfectly qualified and highly motivated, do I think you will fit in with the rest of the group?
The smaller the company or department, the more important this “chemistry” question becomes. In a one- or two-person office, it may be the key question. Many managers base their hiring decisions on an overemphasis of candidates’ qualifications, but then wind up firing them because of a misfit with the company culture.
Will you make me, the interviewer, look like a genius for recommending or hiring you?
Or will your miscues and missteps make me look like an idiot, kill my promotion, slash my bonus, maybe even jeopardize my own job? (The higher up on the food chain the interviewer is, the more central this question becomes to her.)
What are you going to cost me...
in money, time, and effort? How long before you actually start contributing to my bottom line? And what will I have to expend to get you there? Will you ever be asked these simple, specific questions? Probably not. Instead, you will be asked dozens of questions about your strengths and weaknesses, your successes and failures, your plans and ideas. Just remember: The answers to these five questions are what all the other questions are really trying to establish.
Crafting concise, targeted, enthusiastic, and positive responses to the interviewer’s questions gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of the company and industry and show how your qualifications would help you fit right in. Asking concise, targeted, and well-crafted questions gives you additional chances to demonstrate the extent of your research, build rapport, and align what you know and can do with what the company needs.
These questions, by their very nature, proclaim that you are interested. Likewise, the complete lack of questions will undoubtedly convince most interviewers that you are not.
Oh, you were interested? You just didn’t have any questions? Sorry, interviewers don’t consider that an option. No questions? No job offer. That’s certainly a rule with a vast majority of interviewers.
As I’m going to emphasize throughout this book, asking questions the smart way is just another way to match your skills, talents, and qualifications—your competencies—to the company’s needs, another opportunity to demonstrate that you are far and away the only candidate the interviewer should consider. By preceding many of your questions with a phrase or statement that reminds the interviewer of something you said earlier or a point you want to continually reemphasize, you have another opportunity to “blow your own horn”:
“Mr. Jones, as my stint at Eubonics, Inc., clearly shows, I have the ability to motivate a team to overachieve while staying on budget, but could you tell me a little more about the individuals I’d be working with (or supervising) here?”
Let me save the obsessive-compulsives among you some time—there are far more than 101 smart questions in this book. Because, there are a near-infinite number of specific, qualifying, clarifying questions you can ask once you receive an answer to a more general question. I will point you in the right direction, but the details of such questions are going to be determined by your exact situation, by what you’ve already said during the interview, and by what the interviewer has already said. How much (or little) research you’ve done will also expand (or limit) the depth and breadth of your questions.
Here’s an example of how to construct dozens of great questions after asking a general question and receiving a relatively innocuous reply from the interviewer:
You: Mr. Barton, I noticed in the latest issue of Publisher’s Weekly that you intend to increase the number of books you publish next year from 250 to 400.
Him: Yes, we do. (Hmmm, lot of detail there. Would it have killed him to give you something more to go on?)
Here are just some of the questions that would naturally evolve from this initial exchange:
“What led the company to make that decision?”
“Who made that decision?”
“Were you involved in that decision?”
“Do you know in what categories the additional books will be published?”
“How did you settle on 150 additional books?”
“Are you going to publish in categories other than your traditional ones?”
“Do you have a feel for the kinds of new books you’re seeking?”
“How would that expansion affect my position?
My department? My superior? My subordinates?”
“Is my position being created in whole or in part because of that decision?”
“Will others have to be hired as well? In what departments?”
“I know sales of digital editions have become a growing segment of most publishers’ revenues. Does this decision mean the company believes the market for printed books is bouncing back?”
“What is the mix of the new books, in terms of fiction versus nonfiction, hardcover versus paperback?”
“Are any of the new titles going to be published as digital editions only?”
“Is the company able to fund this expansion without going to the capital markets?”
I could go on and on. And, in fact, for every answer Mr. Barton gives to each of the above questions, another half dozen questions should easily spring to mind. Follow-up questions are the heart and soul of the interview process…from both sides of the desk.
While I’ll be talking much more about how to phrase follow-up questions in the chapters to come, let me point out one thing our hypothetical candidate did in a couple of the above questions: She assumed the position. In other words, she referred to “my department,” “my superiors,” and “my position,” implying that the job was already hers. Such a subtle strategy may have no effect if she is otherwise unqualified for the job, but it may turn out to be the “tipping point” if she winds up neck and neck with another candidate.
And, of course, many of her questions showed a good understanding of the publishing process and the current state of the industry.
In a traditionally structured interview, this question occurs very near the end of the interview. In fact, you may well assume that its appearance signals that end. Such an interview proceeds along the lines the interviewer has set in order for him to ascertain whether you have what it takes to move on to the next round.
If you are unsure of how much you want a particular job, there is nothing wrong with letting the interviewer take the reins and direct the conversation. Through her questioning, you will probably get a much clearer understanding of what exactly she is looking for…and whether that person is you (or whether you want to be that person).
But do you have to wait until the interviewer puts you through the wringer, smiles benevolently, and actually asks, “So, do you have any questions?” I really don’t think so, especially if you have decided it is a job you want and are qualified for, in which case I would be more assertive and start asking my own questions. Just keep a couple of caveats in mind.
First and foremost, always ask permission to ask the first couple of questions. Once it’s clear the interviewer has no problem with your asking questions even as she continues to pepper you with her own, you will have established some easy rapport and won’t need to ask permission each time. But it’s up to you to make sure the interviewer is comfortable with your approach. If he shows obvious signs of discomfort—frowning while saying okay, pursing his lips, or showing in any other way that he clearly is not too keen on your interrupting his supposedly well-crafted approach to the interview session—back off!
But if an interviewer suggests you are free to ask questions at any time or tells you it’s fine when you ask permission, do so! In that case, waiting for the ubiquitous “Do you have any questions?” is a bad move: The interviewer may have already downgraded you because you didn’t take her (strong) hint to be assertive right from the start.
Asking questions during the regular interview does not mean interrupting. And it doesn’t mean always answering an interviewer’s question with a question of your own, which may well thwart the interviewer’s attempts to assess your strengths.
Taking the initiative and asking questions early (with the interviewer’s permission, of course) is the scenario I prefer, both as an interviewee and an interviewer.
As an interviewer, it impresses me. It makes me believe (barring evidence to the contrary) that the person in front of me is interested, engaged, and assertive.
As an interviewee, I want to exert some control of the interview—subtly steering it in the direction I want it to go—and asking questions early and often certainly accomplishes that. Doing so is especially effective with an inept (or at least less-than-veteran) interviewer, who may welcome your help!
Another great reason to ask questions early and often is because it transforms a stilted, traditional “Q & A”—with you being the “A”—into a conversation. By definition, this makes the meeting less formal, less “you vs. me,” more “we.” And a conversation is how you explore areas of common interest, trade comments, chat rather than “talk.” In other words, the way you establish the personal chemistry that is one of the vital factors in landing any job. Once the applicant pool has been whittled down to a select two or three candidates, there is usually little difference between their qualifications. What differentiates one from another may well be the relationships established during the interview process…and the interviewers’ assessments of how each candidate will fit in.
Last but not least, asking a good question is a slick way to sidestep an uncomfortable question from the interviewer (at least for the time being). How do you explain that one-year gap in your resume? Darn. You didn’t want to have to talk about that failed dot-com bomb yet. Don’t expect the topic to die. You are, at best, buying a temporary reprieve, but at least you’ve given yourself a little time to think about how you want to defuse a potentially uncomfortable situation.
By interspersing your own smart questions throughout the interview, when the interviewer finally asks, “Do you have any (other) questions?” to signal the end of the interview, you may well be able to reply, “No, not really, I think we’ve covered all the bases.” And you wouldn’t have to worry that she will reject you for a lack of interest…since you have clearly demonstrated your interest throughout the interview.
It’s as important to know how and when to ask a question as it is to know what questions to ask. In chapter 1, we’ll talk about questioning “strategy”—general rules to follow to ensure your questions are concise, appropriate, timely, and to the point. And that they actually accomplish what you want them to.
Chapter 2 is, in my mind, the most important in the book, even though it has nothing to do with questions to ask on your interview. Rather, it details questions to ask yourself before you even make a phone call, answer an ad, peruse a job board, register on a website, meet with a recruiter or post a resume. It won’t do you much good to have a list of fantastic questions to ask an interviewer if you’re seeking the wrong job at the wrong company in the wrong industry. Chapter 2 will ensure you take the time to analyze who you are, what’s important to you, and what you ideally want in a job and a career.
Once you know where you’re going, chapter 3 will give you the help you need to begin researching the companies you intend to target.
In chapter 4, you’ll start constructing the smart questions to ask “pre-interviewers”—employment agencies, recruiters, headhunters, and Human Resources—who can’t say “yes” but can certainly say “no.”
Finally in chapters 5, 6, and 7, you’ll be ready to concentrate on the questions to ask the hiring manager—the person who can actually say those magic words, “You’re hired! When can you start?”
Chapter 5 covers “basic” questions about the company, department, and job; “probing” questions designed to elicit more and more detail; “style” questions about your potential boss and the corporate culture; and “pre-closing” questions to get a better feel for how the interview is going and what you need to do to land the job.
In chapter 6, I give you a series of great “closing” questions—to identify hidden objections, find out about the other candidates (your competition), and push for an offer.
Finally, in chapter 7, I’ll tell you what to do when you actually receive a job offer and how to get the best deal—when and how to discuss salary, bonuses, benefits, and perks and how to maximize your compensation package. I’ll also discuss how to handle the rejections endemic to the job-search process.
Just remember, like playing the piano, interviewing takes practice, and practice makes perfect. My own hours of personal interviewing experience—the tragedies and the triumphs—as well as my years as an interviewer are the basis for this book. I hope to spare you many of the indignities I suffered along the way by helping you prepare for the interview of your worst nightmares at a comfortable remove from the interviewer’s glare.
Enough preparation. Let’s get busy.
Before we start delving into specific questions to ask yourself, “pre-interviewers,” and the hiring manager, let’s agree on some overarching rules, if you will, that will govern them.
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.
Or vacations or sick days or anything other than the job at hand…at least not before you’re offered the job.
Again, wait until you are offered the job. (See chapter 7 to understand why.) You don’t want money to be a deciding factor when the interviewer is still wondering whether you’re the best person for the job...or even worthy of a callback.
Questions differ depending on both where you are in the interviewing process—screening interview, hiring interview, first, second, third, and so on—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’s going, its culture, 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 information you can get at or near the start of any interview, the easier it will be to tailor your answers accordingly:
Is there a written job description for this position?
What are the challenges you believe need immediate attention?
How would you describe your ideal candidate for this position?
What kinds of people seem to succeed in this company? This department? Working for you?
What particular traits do you value most in your subordinates?
What qualifications do you consider most essential to this position?
Naturally, you will continue to ask follow-up questions until the interviewer has given you a virtual “interview blueprint,” effectively drawing a portrait of the candidate she wants to hire.
The more time you devote to a particular company, the more targeted and probing the questions should become, both those the interviewer will ask you and those you should ask the interviewer. You’ll really want to start homing in on the particular information you need to decide whether this is the right company, position, and boss for you. So the farther along in the process, the more individualized the questions become (since what’s most important to you may be something I may not ask about, like the availability of on-site daycare, reimbursement of moving expenses or tuition, and so on).
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:
How do you see this position evolving over the next two or three years?
What do you think is happening to book publishing as a whole? Is print dead?
Who held this job previously? Was she promoted? What is her new title?
When are you hoping to make your decision?
Ask probing questions, usually open-ended, to extract more details and to follow up after general questions.
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 do fine.
“Why” questions can be a little tricky, since, if you’re not sensitive (or aware), they can make you appear more aggressive than you might want: “I noticed you have 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. Is that because digital editions are cannibalizing print sales?:
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?”
That doesn’t mean you have to become a total milquetoast when interviewing with a passive interviewer, but, if facing such a scenario, you may want to appear a little less aggressive than you actually are.
That’s why you have to be a little careful about a “one-size-fits-all” interview approach. Yes, employers want go-getters. Confident candidates. Enthusiastic, hard workers. But take the time to look around the office you’re visiting. Is everyone pretty laidback? Then dial back your fire-breathing sales personality. You can brag about the results you achieved without scorching anybody.
Likewise, if you’re inherently reluctant to blow your own horn and a little passive and laidback yourself, an Animal House–like atmosphere might not be your cup of tea.
You also need to always gauge the interviewer’s response to what you’re saying, not just to the answers you’ve given but to the questions you’ve asked. Listen for verbal clues and watch the 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 offer because you were overly aggressive on 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, squirm, blink) “Uh, no, Jim. So, how about dem Bears?”
Raised eyebrows indicate disbelief or even mild distain, 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.
A tightly clenched jaw, pursed lips or a forced smile may indicate stress, anything from a boss’s reprimand to an early morning fight with a spouse. While the cause is clearly not your problem, you need to make sure the effect does not become a distraction during your interview.
“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 have to ask a question to get him back into the conversation.
If the interviewer keeps nodding rapidly for an extended period of time while you are asking or answering a question, it may be shorthand for, “Be quiet and let me say something now.”
signs of nervousnessmoreher.you