Maybe I’m crazy or out of touch, but I’ve never asked these questions… because all of them but #6 and #7 should have been in the information given out long before I even get to the interview. Two/Five should at least be addressed by someone selling the company to you during the interview.
Six could be worded a bit better, because the interviewer is already going to have to clarify with you what pressure and laid back look like to you, and seven is probably better once the negotiation starts after the offer is begun.
On any jobs interviews i do, i always ask if the applicant has questions because they are interviewing us as much as we are them.
Yup. It’s an interview. Not a viewing.
Right! I don’t want you to be here if you’re going to hate it anymore than you do.
How fucking dare that applicant ask what hours they will be working.
or if they will get insurance through work.
I feel like the answer to some of these questions would/should be answered in either the job application or the job offer. I get not wanting to wait for the job offer, but a company not offering that info is a red flag imo. Personally, I’d ask before signing the official offer, and not at the job interview. I’d also probably go for more general questions.
“What does a typical work day look like?”
“What is the overall compensation package?” Though this one can be a bit taboo
And trying to get a feel for the workplace culture‽ Absolutely outrageous!!!
the workplace culture‽
Such a loaded phrase lol
Is the culture yogurt or Clostridium botulinum?
Hopefully a good mix of Firmicutes and Bacteriodes.
One reason why finding a job is such a hassle. So many employers just want to interview people to hit a quota of “candidates reviewed” without taking any given candidate seriously.
You get a bunch of false positives in the search and waste time going through the motions with people who aren’t actually in charge of anything.
Straight out of college I had an eight hour interview process once, for an IT job that paid $25k starting. Round after round of quizes and queries that ate up my whole day.
Then I got picked up by a boutique medical IT firm a few weeks later after two calls and a 30 minute walk in, for nearly twice the salary. When I got the rejection letter from the first people six months later all I could do was laugh.
I had a place tell me I wasn’t selected almost exactly a year after I had spoken with them. I set a timer for as long as they had waited to send me that, and replied to it myself a year later.
Probably no one saw it or understood, but it made me chuckle.
My experience in engineering on both sides of the table is similar. As a hiring manager, my goal is to move as fast as possible because talented folks are going to be looking at lots of places and I need present the best option to them very quickly so I don’t lose them. I don’t fuck around with haggling or candidate pools; two, maybe three max interviews depending on the role and we’re rejecting or making the best possible offer we can. I picked this up from companies I have preferred to work at. I think massive enterprises get bogged down in their internal processes and procedures and red tape while forgetting the employee experience begins during the candidate experience. If I have to go through many rounds of interviews I can only assume working there will be miles of bureaucracy before I can do anything more than sneeze.
I am personally fine with the old onsite process where you’d go to the company and have a day or half a day of interviews with not only the team but the stakeholders as well. Post-COVID that turned into a remote onsite and slowly turned into weeks of interviews which I don’t like but is more flexible for serious candidates. When I was running those, each group had specific areas to cover so we got a good sense of the boundaries of your skills. You got to meet many people you’d work with and get a sense of how things run. Always practical, though, never any of that leetcode bullshit. Also always two way. You don’t just stare at a candidate; they need to understand you to make a good decision. And, most importantly, the scale is based on seniority/pay. I’m not going to spend more than an hour or two with a junior interview because it’s a fucking junior interview.
“These ARE the important questions, though based on your reaction I don’t believe you are the employer to value a skilled employee.”
I’m on the job hunt right now and I cannot stress enough how much I do not care what company leadership needs to tell themselves so they can sleep at night. All I need to know are the pay, the benefits, and if the job aligns with my interest
Good thing the session was already wrapping up. I couldn’t take a candidate employer seriously after that.
I may take the job if I needed the money, but you bet your ass I’m jumping ship the moment I get another offer, and there won’t be any notice.
They’re important questions but lots of these are pay and benefit related. Usually I discuss that after getting an offer, and I think that’s what companies expect too.
eh, I’m hiring for my team right now and I have zero problem with these questions.
I tend to bring similar things up myself at the end of the interview if the candidate doesn’t ask just because I don’t like wasting time down the line.
we shouldn’t make people jump through a bunch of hoops to see if they fit the job itself without being willing to consider that they might not want to waste time on a work environment that won’t fit for them even if they could do the job.
I get it that pay is negotiable, but i would expect benefits to be based on general policy for all employees.
And in a place like the US, whether you get healthcare or not is a huge deal. If the company cannot tell you that straight away, the HR just wants to waste everyones time.
Pay and benefits should be in the job description.
As someone who lives in one of the two or three states where pay being listed in the job posting is now a legal requirement. Yes, ideally they should be. But our state just put this into law this year. And prior to that I think there was only one other US state with the requirement.
It’s a step in the right direction but still isn’t perfect because they’ll have huge ranges of salaries which are all made up and that is not in their budget. These make it into your filters but tell you nothing because of how unrealistic it is. Like $55k - $180k. When you get to the salary, they offer $60k and tell you that you’d need to be a god to get higher.
No problem in anticipating them. But the OP might not be asking them to a person that is allowed to answer them.
Yes but that is very simple to redirect.
Unfortunately I’m not able to answer all of your questions, you would need to refer to our HR specialist for those answers.
Very simple and polite. Going and posting on the Internet that they didn’t hire someone because they had 100% legitimate questions make them look like an absolute moron, or simply someone that is looking for a slave that won’t complain or inquire into anything. When the reality is, a person knowing those answers is helpful to both the company and the individual in terms of finding a good fit.
Oh, it seems I’m getting thread-structure blindness.
I only saw the person complaining that the questions weren’t answered. I didn’t notice the one bragging about not answering them.
Exactly what questions would this person consider “more important”?
The obvious ones duh.
Should I be referring to you as sir or master?
When I bend over should I hold my cheeks open or will you do that?
Can I lick your boots before others so I can eat more shit?Waitaminute. Were you at my last interview?
None. None questions are important to somebody like that.
“When is your lunch?” is probably somewhere in there.
“What’s the career trajectory in the unit?” Which is a polite way of asking what happened to the last person. Another classic is if they are looking to sustain their current performance, make small improvements, or do an overhaul.
That interviewer should be fired immediately for not being intelligent enough to recognize more important questions when asked them. Whoever let that one into the corporation should be fired as well, also with immediate effect.
Nine to six? Dolly Parton is spinning in her grave
She is not dead.
Made you look.
Gotta get that siesta, comrade.
If it’s while I’m working, it’s on their time.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime…
These are questions for after receiving an offer.
The questions you should ask now would be along the lines of management style, corporate culture, and team dynamics. It’s the first few dates, not a marriage proposal.
lol no. If a company can’t answer what my work hours are gonna before we even have the first interview, I’m not wasting my time.
To stay in the dating metaphor:
Would you want the other party to be upfront about serious issues, or prefer to get to know that down the line?
In dating terms these are topics like “do you have children from a previous relationship” or “i plan to move to a different state in a few months”.
If you dont respect the other side enough to discuss these things right away, the relationship is destinend to fail.
I disagree. They’re important for me to know if I want to keep pursuing this job opportunity or if I should stop wasting our time. I don’t want to do a second or third interview only to find out afterwards about all these factors. I could be out there interviewing for other jobs in the meantime, not in a second interview at this shitty company that doesn’t want to tell me how shitty it is until they’ve offered e the job.
If you have market power, make sure you demand the terms upfront.
People who have market power and don’t do it, are bootlickers
I don’t see how answering any of these question in s straight forward and honest way would reveal if this company is shitty or not. Their ability to provide free parking is far an indicator of quality.
Interesting that you cherry picked that one… I would consider work hours and whether or not you’ll get health insurance to be pretty consequential
That’s how corpos want this process structured…
Why should people waste their time to go through the dating process only to find counterparty is an idiot.
They can do that because they have the power. You only have power after an offer is made. Then leverage that power to get what you need.
That’s the reality and companies are abusing this process by making hiring process a dick sucking, boot licking hunger games style process
It is disgusting
I don’t disagree with any of this, but I don’t know how this is connected to when it’s appropriate to ask these questions. What am I missing?
If worker are able to shift the power balance to where employer has to tell term of the employment on the front end, we would NOT get abused as much during interview process.
For example as middle age cuck, I don’t even talk to recurieter unless we agree on salary range that is acceptable to me. I am not wasting my time.
Obviously entry level can’t do that but adults should be a lot hard on these corporate IMHO
It is our job to the drive this. Boomers unwillingness to do this got us into this situation.
But yes, as person on bad luck, young or otherwise unemployed, has to play the game how you outlined.
Well, good luck organizing the union of the unemployed people. That’s not a category that is easy to gather.
Or you can play the individual game, and save your power to use when it will have some effect on your ongoing life, instead of just some psychological comfort on the short duration of an interview.
Yes, it sucks that you have to choose.
Unpopular opinion: the candidate shouldn’t have asked any of those questions. Those are offer negotiations because you can trade off salary for parking etc.
That first interview is a chance to be strategic and ask about growth in the department or development pathways/programs. I was always told that first you get the ring, then you negotiate the prenup.
It doesn’t say this is a first interview.
Good point. On a callback I’d be all about expectations and details. That having been said I’m changing jobs this month and I still don’t know if there is a bike cage or showers at the the new place. But it wasn’t part of my decision criteria so I’ll find out when I start
Some of them maybe, but asking the working hours, the health insurance, and whether the company will wait or buy out the two months might be complete deal-breakers, and saves both sides time by asking up front (and for the first two, should have been offered up front prior to the interview, to prevent wasted time).
It’s like being offended if, on a first date, one person asks if the other ever wants to have kids. If you know the long term potential is dependent on something, getting that question out there up front saves both parties, and anybody getting upset over it is scamming (getting them invested before being willing to discuss it). Same as not talking about general (not specific) payscale for the position, medical coverage, hours, or whatever until the second or third interview.
