What Are Some Interview Questions To Ask

What To Ask During A Job Interview

It’s your turn! As your job interview comes to a close, one of the final questions you may be asked is, “What can I answer for you?” Your interviewer will expect for you to have some questions.

Not asking any questions could make you seem unprepared or disinterested, so take the time to have some questions of your own ready to ask the hiring manager.

Plan ahead and have interview questions of your own ready to ask the interviewer.

You aren’t simply trying to get this jobyou are also interviewing the employer to assess whether this company and the position are a good fit for you.

Do You Have Prior Experience

Dont let this question scare you. If youre applying for your first job after college, its unlikely youve had a job thats identical to the one youre interviewing for. However, you do have experience! Share your relevant experience through school, volunteer work, part-time jobs, internships, and extracurriculars.

Whenever possible, try to quantify your previous accomplishments with specific outcomes and metrics it lends credibility to your response. At the same time, dont fall back on good grades. The hiring manager is more interested in your hands-on experience.

Yes, I do have prior experience in the research field. In college, I spent eight semesters interning in ABC Lab. While I was there, I co-authored two papers that ended up getting published.

Talk Me Through A Bad Professional Relationship You’ve Had Why Didn’t It Work

Everyone has had a boss that got on their nerves or a colleague that irritated them. Offices are high pressure environments, and emotions often boil over.

Ask this question to understand the root cause of the bad relationship. What was the bad feeling based in? Did the candidate work to overcome the issue and recover the relationship?

Most candidates are hesitant to badmouth their bosses and colleagues, so this question always prompts a few interesting answers.

Watch out for weaker candidates who will cite problems like being passed over for a promotion or blame for project failure as the reasons for bad relationships. This is kind of blame culture is not something that you want in your organisation.

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Tell Me About The Last Time A Co

Conflict is inevitable when a company works hard to get things done. Mistakes happen. Sure, strengths come to the fore, but weaknesses also rear their heads. And that’s OK. No one is perfect.

But a person who tends to push the blame — and the responsibility for rectifying the situation — onto someone else is a candidate to avoid. Hiring managers would much rather choose candidates who focus not on blame but on addressing and fixing the problem.

Every business needs employees who willingly admit when they are wrong, step up to take ownership for fixing the problem, and, most important, learn from the experience.

What Are Your Biggest Weaknesses

Every candidate knows how to answer this question: Just pick a theoretical weakness and magically transform that flaw into a strength in disguise!

For example: “My biggest weakness is getting so absorbed in my work that I lose all track of time. Every day I look up and realize everyone has gone home! I know I should be more aware of the clock, but when I love what I’m doing I just can’t think of anything else.”

So your “biggest weakness” is that you’ll put in more hours than everyone else? Great.

A better approach is to choose an actual weakness, but one you’re working to improve. Share what you’re doing to overcome that weakness. No one is perfect, but showing you’re willing to honestly self-assess and then seek ways to improve comes pretty darned close.

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What Type Of Work Environment Do You Prefer

No matter how you answer this question, you need to make sure it jives with the culture and reputation of the company. So, be sure to do your research beforehand. For example, you dont want to say you like a fast-paced work environment if the company youre interviewing with is known for its laidback, chill atmosphere.

Based on the company website and Glassdoor reviews, share a preference youre confident the interviewer will appreciate. Stay away from anything that might reflect poorly on you . Heres an example:

My ideal work environment is one that really values communication and input from its employees. I know that XYZ Company has Feedback Friday lunches with interested employees once a month, and I really love that. Communication and transparency are really important to me, too.

Internal Job Interview Questions To Ask To Evaluate Team Cohesion History

Learning how an internal employee communicated and collaborated with the rest of their team and other members of the firm is a significant aspect in evaluating whether or not to elevate or hire them.

• With which employees of your department did you have direct contact? What was the design brief? What factors contributed to your teams success?

• Have you ever collaborated with people from different departments at our company? Which teams were you working with? What would you say is the best way to define overall teamwork and coordination?

• Have you ever had a communication breakdown with a teammate? What would you do differently in the future to achieve a positive collaboration?

• What would your colleagues say about your communication style?

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Linked List Programming Questions

Linked list data structures complement array data structures, which makes it very common for programmers to use. A hiring manager may ask you questions about linked list data structures to determine how much experience you have working with them and how much you know about recursion. Here are some common questions about linked list programming:

• How would you merge two sorted listed links?

• What steps would you take to identify the middle element of a singly linked list?

• What is the difference between a linked list and an array data structure?

• How do you reverse a singly linked list without recursion?

• How do you find the start of a loop?

• How do you remove the Nth Node from the end of a linked list?

• How do you find a cycle’s starting node?

• Using Stack, how would you identify the sum of two linked lists?

Is There Anything Else Youd Like Us To Know

Just when you thought you were done, your interviewer asks you this open-ended doozy. Dont panicits not a trick question! You can use this as an opportunity to close out the meeting on a high note in one of two ways, Zhang says. First, if there really is something relevant that you havent had a chance to mention, do it now. Otherwise, you can briefly summarize your qualifications. For example, Zhang says, you could say: I think weve covered most of it, but just to summarize, it sounds like youre looking for someone who can really hit the ground running. And with my previous experience , I think Id be a great fit.

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B Illegal Interview Questions

This goes without saying. Using one of these illegal interview questions to ask the interviewee can damage your employer brand at best and, at worst, you might actually run afoul of the law or even get sued.

The problem with illegal questions is that they often crop up in an interview without the interviewer being aware that theyre illegal. But, often, these questions are also personal and not job-related, so its easy to learn to steer clear of them. Here are some examples of illegal questions:

• How old are you?
• Are you a native English speaker?
• Do you plan to have children?
• Are you married or plan to get married soon?
• Have you ever been arrested?
• Have you ever used any drugs?
• When did you graduate?

These interview questions have the potential of illegally disadvantaging a protected group. For example, in the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warns against making decisions based on arrest records because this may cause you to unwittingly discriminate against protected groups. Similarly, in the UK, age is one of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010. This means that a direct question about age, or even an indirect one might get you in trouble.

Why Asking Questions In An Interview Is Important

When you are being interviewed, you probably think the focus is on your qualifications or technical expertise. But it may not be. Ive talked with hundreds of executives actually doing the interviewing and this is what they tell me they are really interested in:

The questions interviewers ask are as much about who you are as what you can do.

In the same way, the questions you ask in the interview can tell you what you really want to know about the company and the job:

Knowing who the company and your potential boss are gives you the opportunity to make an informed decision about whether or not you want to invest in them. But you have to ask the right questions to find that out.

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What’s Your Management Style

Obviously this question is only applicable to people that you’re interviewing for senior or management roles.

Bad management techniques can kill company culture and employee happiness in the blink of an eye, you need to know that anyone you hire isn’t going to f*ck up the culture

Ask candidates about specific examples of times when they feel like the displayed positive a positive management style, as well as times when they got things wrong.

Good traits to look out for include a willingness to take feedback and make time for employees, a clear indicator of this are a manager running monthly one-on-one sessions with their team.

How Do You Feel About Working Weekends Or Late Hours

Youre gonna get asked this question in one of the following 2 cases:

1) Youre applying for a job that requires working odd hours.

In this case, your answer is pretty straightforward – since youre applying for such a job, you probably dont have any problems working odd hours.

Sample answer:

Sure! Im OK with working late hours or weekends, as long as you let me know about it at least a few days in advance.

2) Youre applying for just about any other type of job.

Now, you should look at this as a red flag. Is the employer just checking your dedication, or are they looking for someone thats going to work 24/7 with no overtime pay?

In this case, ask them to clarify what they mean.

Sample answer:

Given enough warning, sure. Is that something Ill be required to do often? Do you offer overtime pay for this kind of situation?

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The Biggest Question Of All In An Interview

When the interview is over and all the other questions have been asked , its time to ask yourself the biggest question of all, Do I want to work for this company?

Only you can answer that question, but if you know the best questions to ask an employer in an interview then youll be able to get all the information you need to make the right decision.

Killer Questions To Ask In An Interview That Will Help You Crush Your Competition

03 Aug 2018 | Emmalena L. Ellis

Congratulations! Your CV and covering letter look great, and now the company would like to meet you…

Whether a newly qualified graduate or a seasoned professional, the prospect of a new career can be scary as you prepare to brace the unknown. That said, so far, your hard work has paid off. Youve arrived on time, dressed to impress and have answered all of the difficult interview questions. Chatting confidently to the interviewer, youre probably picturing the desk as you inch closer to your dream role. However, then, the hiring manager asks one dreaded question.

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If You Had $40000 To Build Your Own Business What Would You Do

This question is a favorite of HubSpot Marketing Team Development Manager Emily MacIntyre. First, the type of business they choose to talk about can reveal a lot about their interests, values, and how creative they are. Second, it’ll give you insight into how business-savvy they are. By giving them a specific amount to work with , they have the opportunity to parse out how they’d spend that money.

A good answer to this question:

The best answers to this question will get specific: They’ll offer an overview of the business and get into the logistics of where that money would go, whom they’d hire first, and so on.

Are You Willing To Relocate

While this may sound like a simple yes-or-no question, its often a little bit more complicated than that. The simplest scenario is one where youre totally open to moving and would be willing to do so for this opportunity. But if the answer is no, or at least not right now, you can reiterate your enthusiasm for the role, briefly explain why you cant move at this time, and offer an alternative, like working remotely or out of a local office. Sometimes its not as clear-cut, and thats OK. You can say you prefer to stay put for xyz reasons, but would be willing to consider relocating for the right opportunity.

Read More:The Best Responses to Are You Willing to Relocate? Depending on Your Situation

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Work Habits And Working Style Interview Questions

Once youve gotten a sense of whether or not your employee is qualified to do the job you want to fill, take some time to determine what kind of worker they are.

This series of questions is a bit of everything: it looks at personality, the culture they work best in, and a little bit of their background as an employee.

Where it differs from the previous categories is by focusing on your potential new hires work style. Are they more detail oriented, or are they a big-picture thinker? What are their strengths and weaknesses as an employee? How do they deal with difficult coworkers? These kinds of questions inform what type of employee youre dealing with.

As with personality and culture, it comes down to a matter of fit. Do you prefer someone who works best collaboratively, or who keeps to him or herself? Do you want an employee who directly addresses a conflict with a colleague head-on, or who goes through you to resolve it?

There are no right answers hereit depends on the type of employee youre looking for.

What Do You Plan To Do If

Every business faces a major challenge: technological changes, competitors entering the market, shifting economic trends. There’s rarely one of Warren Buffett’s moats protecting a small business.

So while some candidates may see your company as a stepping-stone, they still hope for growth and advancement. If they do eventually leave, they want it to be on their terms, not because you were forced out of business.

Say I’m interviewing for a position at your ski shop. Another store is opening less than a mile away: How do you plan to deal with the competition? Or you run a poultry farm : What will you do to deal with rising feed costs?

Great candidates don’t just want to know what you think they want to know what you plan to do — and how they will fit into those plans.

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Tell Me About A Challenge Or Conflict Youve Faced At Work And How You Dealt With It

Youre probably not eager to talk about conflicts youve had at work during a job interview. But if youre asked directly, dont pretend youve never had one. Be honest about a difficult situation youve faced . Most people who ask are only looking for evidence that youre willing to face these kinds of issues head-on and make a sincere attempt at coming to a resolution, former recruiter Richard Moy says. Stay calm and professional as you tell the story , spend more time talking about the resolution than the conflict, and mention what youd do differently next time to show youre open to learning from tough experiences.

What Is Your Greatest Achievement

When answering interview questions like this, it is important to think carefully before you answer – you need to avoid sounding like your bragging, whilst still demonstrating your achievement in a way that makes you stand out from other candidates.

Continuing our list of common interview questions with answers, click the link below to find out why employers ask this interview question, as well as professional and non-professional greatest achievement examples, ideas and sample answers to help you construct your own answer to the interview question…

How to answer what is your greatest achievement

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