Thursday, November 14, 2013

What Questions Should I Ask at Interviews?

"Do you have any questions for us?" This is a question almost every interviewer asks near the end of the interview. Everyone agrees that the candidate should always ask questions, but the motivation for asking the questions differ.

I've heard that I should ask questions so that the interviewer thinks that I am interested in the company. I should do research on the company and ask questions about what I found out to show that I've done my research and am motivated to work for the company.After having done a few interviews, I disagree with this. 

Personally, I could care less if you've done research or not. We need high quality developers, and we can't find enough who are willing to join us. I will never reject someone because he didn't ask any questions. As for the rest of the team, we've never rejected anyone because they had no idea what we are making. At our candidate summary meetings, we never said we don't want him because he didn't ask any questions.

My wife disagrees with me on this. In her industry, it does matter how much you know about the company. She would like to see that the candidate has done research into the company to know more about the goals and principles of the company. In my experiences with this company, this does not matter at all.

Now I am not suggesting you shouldn't ask questions, just that you shouldn't ask questions just to prove your interest. There are plenty of other questions to ask. You should find out if you're a good fit. In particular, you want to find out things like overtime, weekends, management, evaluations, or typical day. Specifically for programmers, you should ask things like source control, development process, build process, support roles, and involvement in making bigger decisions. There are other sites with some good questions, and you should definitely check them out.

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