Career

Interview Questions

I found Sam Daugherty’s questions to ask during the interview process to be helpful; therefore, I wanted to repost them here:

Task-related Questions

  • What is the skills gap you’re trying to fill?
  • What are the ideal skills or experiences for someone in this role?
  • What does the day-to-day look like?
  • What are some high-level problems I’ll be working to solve?
  • What are the backlog problems I’ll need to solve?

Job-related questions

  • Is this a backfill position or a growth position?
  • What does success look like in this role?
  • What does collaboration and communication look like on your team and between teams/departments?
  • What is the average timeframe allotted to research/design a solution?
  • What is the makeup of the team and how are tasks divided?

Long-term questions

  • What kind of growth opportunities are there?
  • Where do you see this role/team in 3 years?
  • Are there opportunities for mentorship?
  • Do you see the team growing and what sort of growth do you expect?

Company questions

  • Describe the culture of the team and the company for me?
  • What made you want to work for [company] and what’s kept you here?
  • How often do you have to work late, on weekends, or feel compelled to respond after hours?
  • What does taking time off look like and are you expected to respond to messages during vacation?
  • Are there opportunities to travel and meet the team in person (if remote)?

More tips in the comment section from Jared Spool:

If you open with “When you hire the right person to join your team, what would y’all be able to accomplish that you’re not accomplishing right now?,” you’re showing that you’re very interested in the team’s success. It gives you an opening for many of the follow-up questions.

Chances are, from the answer, you won’t even have to ask many of them. For example, you’ll likely learn if the reason they’re hiring is that there’s a skill gap or that they’re just shorthanded. You’ll learn if it’s work on the backlog or if these are high-level problems being solved (or high-level problems on the backlog).

You can even ask what they’ve tried in the past to accomplish these things and explore what didn’t quite work out. That’ll give you good insights into the history of “how did you get to this moment” (something that lots of folks forget to ask about), which can be quite telling about how the team and organization works.

With every follow-up question, you can mentally build up a case as to what’s in your history that would make you an ideal candidate. You can wrap things up with a summary of that.