As someone who has given such interviews, and been taught to give such interviews, the first version works. Your version doesn't. This is illustrated by my sin

As someone who has given such interviews, and been taught to give such interviews, the first version works. Your version doesn't. This is illustrated by my single favorite interview question was someone being interviewed for a senior devops role. The question was, "What was the worst disaster that you've personally caused?" The purpose of the question is, "When the shit hits the fan, will you be in CYA mode?" The only wrong answer was no answer. Anyone who has worked with production for a long time, has made mistakes that cause a disaster. You should have a good example, explain how you screwed up, and what you learned from it. If you ask people whether they will behave defensively. Everyone will say that they don't. Ask them to come up with a hypothetical where they don't behave defensively, and they'll give you a great answer. But ask them to remember and talk about a situation which it is natural to feel defensive about, and you'll get an honest answer.| That particular question extreme. If you haven't worked with production systems for a long time, you probably don't have any major disasters. But the same idea applies. And the best tool interviewing I know of to get there is the STAR method. In turn you ask for: (S)ituation. What was the situation? (T)ask. What task were you given in this situation (A)ction. What did you do? (R)esult. What was the outcome? People have a really hard time faking it. Seriously try it. Interestingly, the converse is also true. If someone asks a question, a STAR response looks good. So much so that interviewees are coached to do it. If the devops question is off limits, what specific questions can you ask? Well here is a real example. Amazon has a set of leadership principles, you can find them at https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-..., by which they judge employees. If you interview with them, the recruiter will tell you to prepare examples for all of them. You'll literally get questions of the form, "Tell me about a time in the last 5 years that you demonstrated (principle X)." That then walk through the STAR method. I have many complaints about different parts of Amazon. I have no complaints about the effectiveness of their interviewing system.