What to ask your interviewers?

Questions for the questioners

When we talk about interview prep, we often focus on how to answer technical questions. Algorithms, time and space complexity, system design, debugging, test cases, and the many other skills you need to be successful. In doing so, we often disregard the one question that we know every interviewer will ask:

Early-career engineers, and I have interviewed many, usually treat this question as an afterthought. A non-trivial number of them simply respond with “No”.

But your response to this question can be a significant differentiator for you. Consider how “ask clarifying questions” is standard advice for responding to a technical interview problem. It is, in fact, one of the first and easiest ways to separate experienced from inexperienced candidates. The same is true for asking clarifying questions about the company, team, and role!

So why should you ask?

And what should you ask?

Know what you are getting into

Your goal in an interview is the secure a great job. Some of your questions should gather information that you can use later in the process. The answers may help you:

• Decide if you are actually a good fit for the role. If there is something that would prevent you from accepting an offer, it’s best to learn about that as early as possible to save yourself time. The same goes for any information that leads you to believe you can’t make it to the offer stage.

• Prepare for later interviews. Gather any information you can about what kinds of interviews you will have and what the interviewers are looking for. This will allow you to focus your preparation and improve your success rate.

• Decide between multiple offers later. If you are in the enviable position of having more than one offer, information is power and can help you negotiate a stronger offer and match the right final decision.

You might ask direct questions about the role and interview process:

Can you tell me more about the role and the team I would be working with?

Can you give me an idea of the recruitment timeline and next steps in the process?

Or basic questions about the company:

What is the current company size? How much of that is in Engineering?

How are the engineering teams organized?

Is the company profitable? If not, how much runway is there?

Or about the daily experience:

What does onboarding look like for an engineer who is new to the team? And when do you expect a new hire to be fully up-to-speed?

What is your favorite thing about working here?

Can you tell me a story about something that happened at [Company] but wouldn't elsewhere?

Or processes:

How does this organization have meetings?

Do you have team meetings? What happens at them?

Does senior management hold all-hands meetings? What happens there?

Demonstrate interest

Other questions might not provide immediately useful information to you, but instead serve as a signal to the interviewer that you are truly interested in the role. Remember that interviews are performative. It isn’t enough to be capable, interested, and willing to work hard. You need to be able to demonstrate this to an interviewer.

To that end, you are going to ask questions that demonstrate that you did your homework, researched the company, and have a basic understanding of their business. You want the interviewer to walk away believing that you are enthusiastic about this position. It wouldn’t be the first time enthusiasm was a tie-breaker between two good candidates.

The specific questions here will vary, but here are some examples I have asked.

What does the onboarding look like for a new customer?

I especially ask this for smaller companies that are beginning to scale. I’m already thinking about the customers and how to improve things for them.

Will [Company]’s approach depend on customers' ability to maintain clean data?

Is the data pulled from customer integrations strictly read only?

You can’t go wrong with these questions if the company’s product relies on ingesting customer data. The first is a common problem; the second is a common design choice.

The website says “[quote a claim]”. Can you go into more detail about how that works?

I perused the website and am curious what this marketing-speak actually means.

In the demos, there are a lot of data tables. Has the team considered more visual treatments?

I watched a demo and want to make the product better.

What do you use for your WYSIWYG library?

I watched a demo and am curious about what tech you are using.

It appears that [Company] has customers and some traction, what do you hope to get out of Y Combinator?

I surprised a startup founder with this one. I guess most of their applicants didn’t know what Y Combinator was, much less understand the situations when a company would normally join an accelerator.

Demonstrate forward thinking

You’ve gotten the information that you need and you’ve demonstrated your enthusiasm for the role. Now you are also going to show your interviewer that you have a sense of curiosity, a proactive approach, and a level of insight that will make you a particularly valuable asset for the team.

What is the most costly technical decision made early on that the company is living with now?

I love this question. There’s always some legacy system that the engineers don’t like dealing with. The answers are usually fun and now the interviewer knows that I’ve seen some things.

What would be the most important problem you would want me to solve if I joined your team?

What is the greatest challenge currently facing your company?

What skillsets are missing from the company that you’d like to add?

The team isn’t just looking to hire someone who can code, they want someone who can solve their problems. And now it is clear to them that I understand that and want to solve those problems.

Of the roles you are trying to fill, which is the most important and why?

This is a good question for internal recruiters at larger companies. It signals that you understand how hiring works.

How do you know you are building the right thing?

How does the company decide what to work on next?

What are your highest priorities right now?

What do you measure? What are your most important product metrics?

Good prioritization is often a more senior skill. Asking about it suggests that it’s a skill that you have. Also, if you are ever interviewed by a Product Manager you must ask a question about priorities. It is a major part of their job and they will be positively inclined towards an engineer who understands that it is important.

Ask, and you shall receive

So now I ask you:

If so, drop them in a comment.

Also if you have any go-to questions you like to ask your interviewers, share them with us!

Stay curious!