Finding a job often feels like waiting to get asked to dance. Job seekers put themselves out there, spend time getting ready to interview, go meet new people in awkward settings, and then wait for an offer. More often than not, it feels like the company has all of the power — you’re just standing there, forcing a smile, and hoping to get picked.
But letting the company wrestle away all control isn’t going to help land you a job you love. 
Studies show that 66 percent of people are dissatisfied with their daily work lives. There are many reasons why so many find themselves in a job they dislike, and a big part of the problem begins with the interview process. Auditioning for a role isn’t just you showing the interviewer how awesome you are while also assuming that the job you want is an ideal fit. If you want to be on a positive, rewarding career trajectory, and if you want to develop professionally while also looking for a long-term home, you need to interview the interviewer. Go into your meeting with the hiring manager prepared with that set of standard questions, yes, but also go in with your personalized set of pointed, thought-provoking inquiries to help you truly decide… “If they want me for this job, do I really want to work here?”
Start with research.
As part of interviewing for a job, you should always research the company. Doing so will help to demonstrate your interest while also presenting you as a better candidate. But research has a benefit for you, too — you are very likely to discover critical things you need to know about the company in order to make an educated employment decision.
Of course, obvious things such as compensation and benefits factor significantly when choosing a job. But items like culture, work lifestyle, and flexibility, company mission and values, employee stability/turnover, etc., are also major considerations, particularly when you are trying to determine whether or not you will be truly “happy” in a new position.
This type of stuff isn’t often covered in depth by your interviewer, so you will need to rely on self-led research. Check out the company’s “About Us” page on the website. Peruse job boards and company rating websites for feedback from others. If you know people (or know people who know people) who work for the company, ask for insight, feedback, and off-the-record intel. Once all of that data has been collected, you should have more than enough information to assemble your personalized list of deeper-dive interview questions.
Ask useful questions.
Strategic questions help to set up a meaningful dialogue, and that’s what you’re going to need when it comes to deciding whether or not an opportunity is for you. As an example, when meeting with the hiring manager at a startup or early-stage small company, you might want to ask how long they’ve been in business, where they are with funding and burn rate, what the exit strategy looks like, etc. You may not get answers to all of your questions, but the interviewer will surely appreciate your level of prep and interest, and you won’t get caught by surprise accepting a job with a startup that is 90 days away from not being able to make payroll.
Fairly recently, a candidate we were helping needed to find work pretty fast. She interviewed on her own with a company where sales team turnover was a known issue and part of how the organization operated. While pockets of employees in certain segments of the company were happy, the sales team had a notoriously high churn rate. However, the company was in growth mode, with new investment funding and several new leadership hires. Employees felt hopeful that the change in management would alter internal culture for the better, thus helping to alleviate the turnover problem. This candidate received an offer and took the job. Unfortunately, the one thing that did not change when the funding landed was the person at the head of revenue. Ultimately, she came back to us after less than a year and said: “I tried my best. I bought into the changes promised in the interview and didn’t listen to the marketplace or to my peers who had worked there before. Can you help me again?”
In this case, could questions generated from her research of the marketplace and via Q&A with her peers have helped with the decision here? Very possibly. But new $$$ and new leadership always brings hope of change for the better, so an interviewer answering her probing inquiries in that way may still have been able to quell heightened turnover concerns. Nonetheless, we don’t know how that interview would or could have played out differently because the personally-useful questions were never asked.
What are some good questions?
Your phrasing, tone, and approach will matter greatly. Be thoughtful about what you ask and how you ask it. And in some cases, the answer might already be available online, so if you haven’t done your deep-dive homework first, you run the risk of damaging your interview chances by appearing underprepared. Here are some examples of questions you can ask:
Assess the answers.
Answers to your personally-focused questions will absolutely help to give you an educated indication of whether or not an opportunity is a good potential fit. Gather together everything you’ve learned, organize it, make a “pluses and minuses” spreadsheet (if you dig visuals), and study and process all of the data. There is a science to choosing the right job, and it shouldn’t be the nervous, unpredictable experience of waiting blindly to get picked to dance. Interview your interviewers, and try to gain as much control as you can over your own job exploration adventure.
If you’re looking for your next career move, please give us a call for help.
Hear about our latest job openings and get other job search advice in our monthly newsletter. Sign up.
How long does it take for your company to hire someone? From the day you post the job ad to the day someone starts? This process may take several weeks — and if so, that’s keeping you from successfully acquiring the market’s best talent.
It continues to be a candidates’ market, with demand for available and appropriately-skilled service industry employees outstripping supply, particularly in software, technology, etc. Job seekers are getting a lot of attention and have more interviews lined up than 12 months ago or even six months ago. That means these folks aren’t going to wait for your company to call before making multiple, decisive interview moves. The majority of the people you’re interviewing are passive seekers, meaning they have a job. If your total opportunity turns out to be markedly better (if your porridge is “just right!”), they’ll come on over. But no worries to them if not. On to the next highly-interested suitor.
So what is one sure-fire tactic to help those in the hiring game win in such a candidate-leaning marketplace? Speed. Yep, it’s that simple. Speed. We’re currently involved in interview processes for clients where candidates have multiple phone screens and on-sites lined up with other companies — in the same week. And not through us. By the next week, if our clients do not move quickly enough from evaluation to screen to an in-person meeting, those candidates may be gone. Some will have an offer after one interaction with a company; others could choose to pull out of our process because they are already further along with multiple other opportunities. While our client is stuck in committee evaluation mode (“do we really like this resume?”), their top option is often already scanning a signed offer back over to the company that moved the fastest.
Speed, folks. If your entire interview-to-offer recruiting process cannot be compressed into two weeks or less, you are going to watch the lion’s share of your ideal candidates slip away.
Accelerating the hiring process means streamlining your internal processes before you post a job ad or call a recruiter (we’d love to hear from you!). Here are the typical key factors we encounter and attempt to assist with:
Some might say that “speed kills.” Moving an interview process faster than average may feel uncomfortable for some hiring teams. “Are we rushing to judgment?” “What about having comparison candidates?” “We don’t want to move too fast and make the wrong hire.” Well, we’re here to tell you that speed WINS — at least in today’s race to hire. You might just have to get uncomfortable if you want to bring on the best people.
If you’re struggling to find the best sales or marketing people, contact us for help.
