this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
43 points (100.0% liked)
Chat
7499 readers
61 users here now
Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Assuming this is a corporate job, come up with a couple questions for your interviewer. Get them talking about the company and they'll remember you as a good listener. My usual go-to questions are:
"What's the company culture like?"
"What aspect of the company do you see as the most enjoyable?"
"Why did you chose to work for the company, and what's made you stay?"
Questions like that. Try to make it personal and specific, since it's usually the hiring manager that you're interviewing with. You can write them down and bring them with you; as long as you're bringing multiple copies of your resume, you can stash the questions at the bottom of the stack.
If it isn't a corporate position, then it depends. I can't answer for those since I've only done labor and corporate, so I don't now how to interview for technical or artistic positions. I would assume make sure you have your portfolio on hand, though be careful about doing on-site consultations since you would be giving them designs for free and they have no obligation to hire you after that. If they try to do that to you, do not continue the interview with them. Just thank them for their time and leave.
I agree with your premise and approach to personalization, 100%...... but not those exact questions.
I run a lot of software engineering teams and I interview people every week. I get those three exact questions from almost every single candidate. Frankly, those questions do not show any particular interest in your company - they are generic questions and kind of have a negative framing to them. The company culture one is especially annoying for a lot of reasons. If company culture is important to you, there are much better ways to tease it out from the interviewer.
Try to actually show real interest in the job, try some of these ideas:
All of these kinds of questions actually show genuine interest in getting involved. Remember that a company is just a bunch of people working together. I will take an engaged, friendly, curious and smart candidate with barely any experience over a distant, disengaged, looking-for-the-least-bad-option AAA software dev any day of the week.
Hope that helps!
That is a fantastic question.
Agreed that they're relatively boring questions, but anything deeper is going to be industry-specific. For example, asking what projects you'll be working on is not particularly helpful for someone who is going into secretarial work. Since OP has never done an interview before, it's mostly important to start them thinking about how they will engage the hiring manager, since it shows at least some interest beyond just having a job. I think it's especially important to figure out where the hiring manager is positioned relative to the job they're hiring for. Are they your boss, or are they hiring for the company? That will give a better idea on if they can answer direct questions about the position or department.
Again, questions are going to be determined by the type of work, the position, the position of the person doing the interview, etc. Without more info, it's hard to tailor questions to the specific. And, quite frankly, it's a good skill to pick up. Learning how to engage your coworkers/managers/vendors/etc. is part of workplace etiquette, imo.