Questions to Ask at Interviews

One of the ways to ensure your job hunting success is having prepared questions to ask at interviews? Asking thought provoking questions will prove critical to your success. These questions will demonstrate your critical thinking ability and provide your audience with keen insight into your skill set.

When preparing questions to ask at the interviews, I recommend organizing them into three distinct categories. There are excellent interview questions that will definitely set you apart from the competition and slant the playing field into your favor. There are good interview questions that need to be asked in any interview to help set the tone and scope for your interest.  Finally, there are poor questions to ask at interviews that you need to shy away from.

Examples of poor questions to ask at interviews include: “How big is your company?”; “How long have you been in business?”; “How does your benefits plan compare to…?” These are examples of poor questions because you can easily learn the answers to the first two questions through a little research.

The last question, “”How does your benefits plan compare to…?” is a poor choice because you are being presumptive that you will get to the next step and you are focusing on your needs instead of that of your audience.  This move will prove fatal.

Examples of good questions to ask at interviews include: “Please describe the corporate culture of this organization.”; “Is this position newly created or recently vacated?” These questions ask for insight into the organization and can assist you in making a decision of whether or not this particular position is a good fit for you long term.

Examples of excellent interview questions to ask are those that prove thought provoking and dig deeper than the average candidate. To create these, you have to conduct your research and be prepared. An example is: “If I understand the market trends of your industry correctly, your industry is down somewhere between 17 and 18% from the same period last year. How is your company performing compared to the industry? Depending on this response, you can ask 3-5 great follow up questions to keep the conversation moving in a positive direction.

Another example is “How does this position impact other departments?”  How you ask this question can demonstrate your team oriented approach to the position.  By asking about the company, both the internal and external environments, you are implying that you are interested in a long term relationship with ascension opportunities.

Obviously you want to stay away from poor questions. You have to ask a fair amount of good questions because the information received is important to get the conversation going and they enhance your decision making with regard to the position, the environment, long term opportunities, etc. Sprinkle in a few excellent interview questions and you will separate yourself from the competition and advance the sale!  You can learn as much about someone from the questions they ask as you can from their responses to the questions you ask of them.

I hope these questions to ask at interviews will assist you in your job search.  Good luck and happy interviewing!