Questions to ask in Interviews
This post is about the different roles and what questions you can ask interviewer
Its almost the end of the interview. You are done with it. But there is one final phase to go. The interviewer will always ask you this question before wrapping up the interview : “What questions do you have for me?” And this seems like a harmless question. But asking insightful questions here determines your research, intellect and experience. And not asking any question, will actually affect you in a negative way. Now, the most ideal way to ask the best questions is by researching the interviewer and company ahead of time. Most times, the company will inform you who is the interviewer ahead of the interview. So, its easy for you to look it up.
Secondly, the interviewer will always tell you a bit about themselves before any interview. And that is also a chance, where you can take notes and ask questions based on it. And when you do, it tells the interviewer that you were listening and want to know more. Now, having said that, there could be times, when the interviewer could straight up start with : “What questions do you have for me?” This has happened to me before. Once, in consulting and once in an interview with Senior Director. It is very essential that you have questions ready in a scenario like this to avoid appearing blank. Also, there can be cases where you just don’t know what questions to ask ? And so, these questions list below can come in handy!
Note : the below questions are really standard and are at best back-ups. I wouldn’t typically ask any of these questions (except #2 and #4) unless I am really out of choice. And even if i do, I would use the insights to deep dive and ask follow-ups.
Standard questions you can ask in any interview ?
What are some of the challenges that you see with your current role?
How does career growth look like in this role?
What are the best tips you would share with me to be successful in this role?
What is your favorite part about the job ?
How is this role leveraging AI ?
Having the standard questions out of the way, I’ll now focus on the role specific questions you can ask:
CONSULTANT :
As a consultant, if everything goes, what are some advise that you can share which will help me be successful in the role in the first year?
Are your projects based in a specific sector ? If so, do you have opportunities to pursue roles in other sectors?
Is the role solely focussed on working on projects? Do you have pre-sales opportunities to grow accounts to ?
SOLUTIONS ENGINEER/ SALES ENGINEER :
Note : a Solutions Engineer role can have different flavors. Some are highly technical whereas some are pre-sales. Use your discretion before asking the questions.
How many account executives do you work with and is the role more pre-sales or post-sales?
Do you handle front book accounts or back book accounts or both ?
Are you handling specific verticals ? And are the merchants enterprise or strategic accounts?
SOFTWARE ENGINEER :
How does onboarding look like in the role ? First 90 day plan ?
How does the team work with product and how does collaboration look like ?
What is the tech stack that the team uses ? Are there opportunities to pursue manager roles in the future?
How does your team handle tech debt ?
PRODUCT MANAGER :
How does the product team collaborate with engineering, design, and other stakeholders?
How do you prioritize features and roadmap decisions?
What metrics define success for this product/team?
DATA ENGINEERING :
How does the company handle tech debt in the data space?
Which tools and technologies are core to your data pipeline?
Are there any formal processes in place for data governance or compliance?
DATA SCIENCE :
What models or algorithms are most commonly used in your current projects?
What tools and platforms are part of your data science stack?
What work is team doing in the AI space ?
DATA ANALYST :
What tools and platforms does the analytics team use regularly (e.g., SQL, Excel, Tableau, Power BI, Python)?
How is data typically sourced, cleaned, and transformed for analysis?
How does the analytics team work with other departments like product, marketing, or finance?
Hope this was helpful!