When my coaching clients start becoming clearer about their vision and goals, it sometimes includes a change in their career. It can be an internal move or lead to looking for a job outside their current company. While it’s clear that they should prepare well in order to present themselves, their skills, strengths and capabilities, they often forget that job interviews should be a reciprocal interview and miss out on an important opportunity. It’s the opportunity to find out more about important aspects such as company culture, team spirit as well as the personality of your potential future boss.
Important information that can support your decision whether or not you’d actually like to join the company.
In addition, asking great questions in an interview can really set you apart from the average applicant.
The job market is also a market of hopes and illusions. It’s therefore important that you make use of the opportunity to verify your assumptions about the company and job you are applying for during the interview.
Potential questions to ask about the job and the company:
- What do the day-to-day responsibilities of the role look like?
- What would be my priorities if I start the job next week?
- What are the current challenges for the company? And for my job?
- What are the key variables that are most probably to change in the job I am applying for?
- What are potential critical incidents that could happen in this job (Try to NOT talk about worst case scenarios)
- What characteristics do you look for in employees, in order to represent your values?
- How will you evaluate my performance at the end of the year? How will you tell whether I succeeded in 6 months vs. in 2 years?
- What type of criteria do you use to evaluate your employees in general?
- When looking through my CV, which aspects of my experience are most relevant for this job?
- Why did my predecessor leave the position? (i.e. was he promoted internally? Did he resign and leave the company?)
- How do you deal with upcoming conflicts? – or even better: how have you dealt with conflicts in the past?
Questions to ask the Team
(usually you get to meet the team in a second or third interview round).
- What do you personally like best about your corporate culture?
- How is the Vision, Mission and the Values you have on the website lived at work? (are they?)
- How would you describe “our” boss?
Questions on the hiring process:
- How many people are you currently interviewing for this position?
- By when do you plan to let me know the next steps?
And of course, anything that helps you better understand your specific position and helps you decide whether you and the company culture fit together.
If something is really important to you, i.e. if you could imagine working part-time soon and not being able to reduce would mean you’ll have to leave the company, you’d better take the courage and ask from the beginning. Nothing worse than starting a job based on many hopes and assumptions just to find out you do not fit there…
Are you thinking about your next career step? Are you unclear about your goals and potential next steps?
A coach can accompany you in the process and support you. If you’d like to know how it is to work with us visit our testimonials page or reach out and let’s schedule a short get-to know each other.
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