Top Questions to Ask in Your Next Job Interview
Why Asking Questions in Job Interviews Matters
When you are interviewing for a role, it’s important to remember that you are in fact interviewing each other.
While I’m sure a company may want to ask you questions to see if you are suitable for the role, you should also be asking the company questions to see if you think it will be suitable for you.
In a previous blog post, I wrote 5 Interview Tips to Help You Nail Your Next Job Interview, where I shared some interview questions you could ask a potential employer.
In this post, I’ll share a list of questions that you can ask a potential employer. You may not care about the answers to all of them, so feel free to pick and choose from this smorgåsbord of questions.
Maybe you don’t need this list of questions now, but be sure to bookmark this page for when you do look for another role.
Before diving into this, there are a few things I want you to note first:
- Most of these questions are best directed at the hiring manager, not at the screening stage where a recruiter would be interviewing you.
- These questions are primarily targeted at people working with software testing, but others who work in IT will find that about 90% of the questions below apply to them as well.
- Do your research before the interview. Some of these questions may already show on the job ad page (or somewhere else very obvious).
There is a separate section for questions that you can bring up in the screening stage.
Questions for the Recruiter (Screening Stage)
- What is the application process like? What steps will there be?
- When can I expect to get an answer to hear if I make it through to the next stage?
- Is this a newly-created role or would I be replacing someone?
Questions Particular to the Role
- What’s the biggest problem you’d like the new hire to solve? 1
- What will it look like when the new hire is successful in the role? 1
- What’s driving the need to hire for this position? 1
Career Growth Questions
- What are the career growth opportunities like at this company?
- Can you share with me some examples of people being promoted?
- Is there a clear career framework at this company which explains how I can progress at this company?
- What opportunities exist for mentoring others?
Specific to the Interviewer
Note: These questions could be both to a hiring manager but also an internal recruiter at the company.
- What brought you to this company?
- What do you most enjoy about working at this company?
- If you’re best friend was deciding whether or not to apply to work here, how would you sell it to them? 1
Work Location
- (If the role is hybrid) How many days a week are people expected in the office?
- (If the role is currently hybrid or remote) I see the role is hybrid/remote, is the plan to keep this long term?
- How does the company handle remote team collaboration?
Way of Working
- Can you describe the typical software testing process in the company?
- What testing tools are commonly used here and who decides what they are?
- What are the common challenges your team/testers face at your company when it comes to approach testing and/or quality?
- What autonomy do people/teams have in deciding their test approach?
- How do testers (at your company) know if they are doing a good job?
- How often do you deploy to production?
- How do you handle dependencies between teams?
- How early is the testing team involved in the development lifecycle?2
- Are testers encouraged to participate in code reviews or contribute to CI/CD pipelines? 2
Working with People
- Who will I report directly to?
- How is the relationship between developers and testers at your company? What testing activities do they do together?
- How is the testing team structured and what is the size of the team?
- How is the communication between testers, devs and other stakeholders? 2
Company Processes
- Is there a training budget? If so, how much is it and what is the approval process like?
- What professional development opportunities exist beyond the training budget?
- Who decides what each team works on and when?
- What’s the onboarding process like?
Questions to Ask a Consultancy
- How much of my time have to be billable hours at the client? 3
- How do you deal with toxic work environments at clients? 3
- How long do projects usually last? Can I change projects regularly, even though a project hasn’t finished yet? 3
Questions on Work Culture
- What’s the team’s working culture like? 4
- How do you celebrate success? 4
- How does the company ensure healthy work-life balance? 2
- How does the company promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace? How diverse the team is? 2
- Is there any space/time for feedback? 2
- How easy is it for people to participate in learning activites? i.e. Do they have the space to learn? 1
- How much does the leadership team care about quality? (Followed by: What do you hear or see that tells you that?) 1
I will make an effort to update this page when I think of more questions.