Question about interviewing the interviewers

April 29, 2012 4:25 PM

Question about interviewing the interviewers: International differences?..I was taught at uni that its a good idea to treat the interview as a bit of a test run, in other words interview the interviewers to see if you really would like the job that is being offered by asking a few interesting questions etc....but when I tell people (In Australia) about this idea they are horrified and seem to think that's a sure fire way to talk yourself out of a potential job. What do mefites think? Can anyone give me a good rationale why you should pretend you are interviewing the employer? Was I taught the wrong thing? Am I explaining it wrong?
posted by sparkle55 to work & money (18 answers total)

This is a fine idea within limits. An interview is not a time to start making demands and it is not an appropriate time for pontificating about what your ideal workplace is. But by all means, ask questions. Most interviewers will take it as a sign of having done research and engagement with the company, assuming they're good questions. (e.g. don't ask questions that are answered on the "About Us" page of the company's website.)
posted by GuyZero at 4:33 PM on April 29, 2012

Can anyone give me a good rationale why you should pretend you are interviewing the employer?

I am in the US. For me it's not "pretending" that I am interviewing the employer. It is that any time you are interviewing, you have options and you want to make sure you take a job that you will be happy with, that will be a good fit for you, that fulfills what you are looking for, and so on. So naturally there will be things you would want to know under those circumstances, right?

Even if you are totally desperate or totally apathetic and don't care, and just want any job, in the US IME it would be weird to NOT ask any questions because you would seem exactly like you were desperate or totally apathetic.
posted by cairdeas at 4:37 PM on April 29, 2012

I'm an Australian, and I have always been taught that showing an interest in the job and organisation communicates:

1. That you are serious about the job
2. That you are able to demonstrate (hopefully!) that you share some priorities with organisation and/or organisational culture.
3. That you've done a bare minimum of research and are able to talk about organisation, organisation's history, presence in the media, future directions etc.

Certainly not a bad thing, per se. I think it really comes down to what you - and they - think of as "interesting" questions. That may be the actual cultural difference here, rather than the asking of question itself.
posted by smoke at 4:38 PM on April 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

It depends a bit on whether you just want a job, any job or if you want a job that's a good fit for you. If you're after the former, it's not the best strategy. If you're after the latter, than you need to do a bit of interviewing yourself.

Having said that, the goal should be to assess fit, not to grill them and give the interviewer a taste of their own medicine. I've also found that the more senior the position, the more you should interview the interviewer (at higher levels you have more at stake if you land in a bad match.)
posted by scrute at 4:39 PM on April 29, 2012

but when I tell people (In Australia) about this idea they are horrified and seem to think that's a sure fire way to talk yourself out of a potential job.

If you were giving people specific examples of interesting questions you might ask, and they were reacting with horror, you can post your example questions here, and we can tell you our opinions on whether or not they would be appropriate in an interview for the sorts of jobs you are looking for.
posted by cairdeas at 4:42 PM on April 29, 2012

Yea, you are right, but calling these "interesting questions" may be confusing other folks. You want to ask things that help you figure out if you're going to have the boss calling you all weekend and if people actually get to take coffee breaks, not, ask the interviewers the same types of questions they ask you ("where do you see yourself in 5 years" and "what are your biggest strengths" and such).
posted by holyrood at 4:46 PM on April 29, 2012

well, for example one question i thought up concerned an initiative by a senior manager at the company...i had read the journal article he wrote about it and had a fairly innocuous question that i hoped displayed my interest....


sometimes i might ask about the organisation culture, what kind of teams they favour...for example.


Another question at another firm was about how their stated need to have candidates available 7 days a week on call worked in practice...


I try not to be a smart alec with my questions, i take the point that I am after all hoping to get the job.

Some reactions from the interviewers have been complete poker faces and no response.
posted by sparkle55 at 4:49 PM on April 29, 2012

I think the first two questions are fine, and the second one is very important. The third question may be perceived as not wanting to be as available as they want you to be, and might be best left until you had an offer. You can then ask questions like this before accepting.

Also, if you know that it is a multi-interview process, you might want to leave the second question to the second round.
posted by scrute at 5:07 PM on April 29, 2012

actually i have an interview coming up that is a panel ...i dont think there will be a 2 stage process. Its an admin/research job at a university and might only be short term or casual....i dont know and there was no one listed as a contact person on the ad. Really struggling to think of good questions to ask in that situation
posted by sparkle55 at 5:11 PM on April 29, 2012

Interviews are a two-way street.

I always ask thorough questions about the environment, team dynamics, technology stack, budgeting process, life cycle management funding, change processes, monitoring systems, help desk escalation procedures etc. there is a lot to consider when moving to a new organization and asking those questions shows that you are considerate.
posted by roboton666 at 5:48 PM on April 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I am an Australian in Australia and used to do recruitment (albeit in a fairly specialised area). I thought more highly of candidates who displayed a genuine interest in the company via questions, and people who seemed to be on a fact finding mission of their own. That is what interviews about. You can do both of these things without being obnoxious or assuming you have the job. Maybe your friends are missing this part.

With a temp job it is harder to 'manufacture' questions when it isn't the kind of job you sign your life over for. It just isn't as important to interview back in these situations. You could still ask if it is a new position why it has been created, or if it is a replacement, what support you might have or what aspect of the job is first priority (if the people interviewing have any contact with the area you'd be working in). You could still ask about the work or team culture, but they are hardly going to tell you if it is toxic or otherwise dysfunctional. I'm assuming information about the type of work they do is easy to find, maybe you could ask future projects.

The only downside to asking questions in your interview is if you come across as fussy about lots of things or too high maintenance to bother with. Nothing you've said here suggests you are.
posted by Trivia Newton John at 5:51 PM on April 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I also think your first two questions are good generally. But it's hard to tell if they relate at all to your job itself or the job duties you would have? I think it's better to have questions that relate to your job itself. Ideally these should be things that you genuinely want to know. So if you think up a really interesting question, try to think of why someone in your position in the company would want to know that.

So for an admin job, I would probably ask about the trajectory normally taken by people in those admin positions. In some places you are a junior admin at first and then move up after a year, or there are a pool of admins who rotate around to different job functions after a set period of time, etc. Or your job title will not change but after a certain amount of time you will be expected to have X skills and handle Y functions. So that's one general kind of thing I might ask about.
posted by cairdeas at 5:57 PM on April 29, 2012

thanks trivia, yes its a fine balance. obnoxious versus sincere interest.

Thanks for the questions, they sound like good ones and I will use them:)
posted by sparkle55 at 5:58 PM on April 29, 2012

Well, it might be a bit of a stretch to expect the panel to be across the first one, unless you could reasonably expect the people on it to be across the manager's publications (e.g. small organisation, one of that managers direct reports, or similar). As scrute says, the second is important - having been on interview panels, albeit it in a semi-government organisation, it's almost expected that applicants should ask something like that.

And the third, while perfectly reasonably, can leave interviewers with the impression that you're not particularly amenable to being on-call. A little background to the culture of work in Australia is possibly in order: unlike some other parts of the world, work is not seen as an extension and integral part of life here. Work is something you do, then go home from; you "care" about the company from 9-5, then mostly ignore it outside those hours. Which is not to say that things like overtime, on-call, or meeting workmates outside of work is not done - it's common enough, particularly the latter when there's a bar nearby - but, apart from socialising, it's an considered an imposition except in a few specific cases where smooching and networking is an explicit part of the job. And even then, as a few solicitors of my acquaintance will attest…

So that's the basis. Imagine, then, that on top of that you have a management culture and principles borrowed from elsewhere that doesn't quite mesh with that. One of that imported culture's expectations is that, while you may not be on the clock, you should be prepared to "step up for the team" whenever asked - and sometimes even when not asked, if the culture's expectation is that you should automatically step up.

That doesn't fly here. Yet, instead of adapting the management culture to this, the usual organisational response is to get angry at and suspicious of the workforce that doesn't match the culture. So, when someone in an interview asks an innocuous question about the on-call roster, instead of thinking "OK, they're seeing if their personal situation meshes with this organisations situation", the immediate thought can be "they're not interested in participating the way we want them to; score 10 points against them".

So, while it may not be immediately obvious, that's one example of the sort of cross-cross-cultural minefield you can be dealing with. For questions like that, it pays to either do your homework amongst the existing staff or find a very tactful way of asking the question in an interview.
posted by Pinback at 6:05 PM on April 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I agree with Pinback and yet at the same time, I think it's still important to ask the question if you are not desperate and you are not absolutely dying to get the job. Because if it really is their expectation that you will be on call all the time, so much so that they will be put off by anyone who asks questions it in an interview - and you do not want to be on call all the time - it is best for you to know that so you can look elsewhere. It's really a plus and if you do not do this I think you run much more of a risk of ending up in horrid work situations.
posted by cairdeas at 6:08 PM on April 29, 2012

when i interview i usually ask a few questions dealing with initiative and supervision to gauge whether or not it's a good environment for me--lester likes to do his own thing and not all employers want that. basically i'm asking questions to make sure it's a job that i want.

to put it differently--i'm not someone who likes to follow procedures and rules and whatnot. when i interview with a company i need to make sure that they don't expect me do so all the time.

as a side note lester doesn't get a lot of job offers.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 7:24 PM on April 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I always ask basically the same questions you have - what are the company's priorities, what's the culture like, how often am I likely to need to be available on the weekends or in the evenings, etc. And it has never bit me (couple of times the interviewer and I have mutually decided that the job is not a great fit for me, but they usually come to that conclusion after I do).

That said, if I'm OK or potentially OK with the job description, I always make sure to mention it. For example, "I see this job description mentions being on call - that's not a problem at all, I was on call at my previous job. About how often should I expect to get called in?" Or "I see this job has frequent travel. I actually think it might be exciting to do some travel. What is a typical travel schedule like for someone in this position?"

It depends on reading the interviewer a bit, but as a rule, they'd rather hire someone who actually understands the situation than someone who is going to get blindsided, hate the job, and either suck at it due to hating it or immediately start looking for work elsewhere.
posted by Lady Li at 8:13 PM on April 29, 2012

A little background to the culture of work in Australia is possibly in order: unlike some other parts of the world, work is not seen as an extension and integral part of life here. Work is something you do, then go home from; you "care" about the company from 9-5, then mostly ignore it outside those hours. Which is not to say that things like overtime, on-call, or meeting workmates outside of work is not done - it's common enough, particularly the latter when there's a bar nearby - but, apart from socialising, it's an considered an imposition except in a few specific cases where smooching and networking is an explicit part of the job. And even then, as a few solicitors of my acquaintance will attest…

Not to derail, but Australia sounds like Heaven, Pinback. The pressure to ask questions here in the States is sometimes onerous. In fact, interviewers quite often cover all of my questions. I do sometimes make reference to things I already know about the company, to show my interest. And occasionally I'll need a clarification. But at the end of most interviews when they ask me if I have any questions, it's often as rote feeling as standard-issue interviewers' questions about five-year plans and whatnot. It sometimes feels like a curse to be born American.
posted by Violet Blue at 1:36 AM on April 30, 2012 [1 favorite]