Don’t miss on your opportunities when being interviewed
Changing jobs is a significant event in your career and your personal life. It is also a quite exhausting and time consuming process. You should therefore gather all the data available to help you make the right decision. You can read online about the company, discuss with employees in your network etc., but you shouldn’t discount questions you can ask during interviews.
As an interviewer, I always try to leave 5-10 minutes where the candidate is free to ask any questions they have – and I’ll do my best to honestly answer them. The interview at that time has stopped, meaning any questions the interviewer asks won’t impact their assessment. This is the right thing to do in my opinion since:
- The candidate just spent ~50 minutes being evaluated – it’s fair to give them a break.
- As a potential coworker (and human being), I want to make sure hired candidates will thrive. I would prefer a good candidate to decline a job offer than join and quit 6 months later because something didn’t click.
The questions are often technical (e.g. what stack do you run?), about processes (what’s the process for promo/launch/etc.?) or what my day to day looks like. There are no right and wrong questions from my end, but as a candidate, you should know what you are looking for in your next gig and try to gather as much information as possible on that front.
So prepare for your interview, but not just for the technical part – also for you to become more confident that the company you are interviewing for is the right one for you. Activate to view larger image,