Powerful questions to ask at an interview

We thought as a team we will reflect on our past 20+ years in recruitment and dive deep into what type of questions make us and our clients sit back and actually think. What better way to do that than searching for the most powerful questions to ask in an interview to really know if that workplace is right for you. Because everyone says their company is amazing to work at right?

This isn’t just a time for the interviewer to get to know you, this is the perfect time for you to interview them; is this the right place for you? Are you going to be happy here? Job satisfaction is the most important thing here at Grant Executive Search and we want our candidates to have long lasting careers and be successful. These question go deeper than “are your employees happy here?”. We are here to equip you with the right tools to own your interview and come out happy you asked everything you wanted to learn about the role.

What is the reason you are recruiting for this role?

This question will tell you the history of this role to see how the last person went – if they left you would question why, if they got promoted that is great as you can discuss the progression opportunities available.

What are the key goals for this role in the first 6 months?

This will enable you to gain insight of the challenges and opportunities you will face and what they expect from you during that time frame.

What is a day in the life of a person in this role?

One of the most important questions you could as during an interview, highlighting your day to day tasks, what the “nitty-gritty” tasks are and the small tasks that make a difference.

What does your ideal person in this role look like?

You can catch exactly what they want in this question and makes the interviewer reveal what they are actually looking for and lets you understand if you are going to make the cut. This also highlights what skills and qualifications they are looking for so if they say something you haven’t covered it is a perfect time to reiterate what you missed.

What does success look like in this role?

Understanding how they measure success is a great question as it will go into what they focus on when it comes down to business, are they KPI driven? Or are smaller achievements also recognised, you will be able to gauge if you have the same outlook on success and expectations of the role.

How do you see the role developing?

Highlighting that again you are interested and enthusiastic about the role, and also you will be able to see what the company considers to be “development” and that it supports your ideas of growth.

Give me an example of an individual who exemplifies your culture well.

Culture is often poorly articulated, so getting an example is helpful for understanding their actual way of interacting with each other. Also knowing what type of personalities “thrive” is so important as you can align yourself with that and ask yourself, can I work with that certain personality.

Tell me a time when the team has been under pressure, what did you do to handle the situation.

Getting the hiring manager to give a real life example is much more powerful than an opinion based question. This will allow you to dive a bit deeper into who they are, as no one wants a hierarchal boss who values being superior to you.

What has been your biggest achievements while working here?

This shows how the company demonstrations career progress and also you highlight your interest in the interviewer and helps to get a sense of the journey ahead of you (if the person interviewing you is your manager)

Why do you choose to work here?

This type of question can raise alarm bells but can also be really positive, if you get a dull answer that is a red flag, but if you get a really passionate answer and it aligns with your values and why you want to go to work and they show good attitude to including everyone or the company’s commitment to respecting all, take it is as a green light!

What are the next steps in the recruitment process?

This demonstrates you are interested and also clarifies what kind of time frame you can expect to wait until further next steps.

Follow and connect with us on LinkedIn and have a chat! We hope these questions have given you a good insight. We recommend to pick a few of these that align best with the role you’re going with.

Grant Executive Search is a national executive recruitment and search firm. We serve the executive mid-market (c$120k – $400k. We are specialists in the recruitment accounting & finance, strategy & transformation, superannuation, funds and wealth management as well as Product & Marketing and Digital roles.