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I ask these indirectly. "What types of people tend to succeed and do well with your team? What types of people tend to struggle in your team?" (Am I goin

I ask these indirectly. "What types of people tend to succeed and do well with your team? What types of people tend to struggle in your team?" (Am I going to be a culture and work/life balance fit?) "What are your main objectives in the next 6 to 12 months? What's your plan to meet those objectives?" (Do these guys have their act together and an actual plan? Is the work going to be interesting?) "How do you see the candidate in this role contributing to that objective?" (Are their expectations for this role realistic? Do I fit those expectations? Do I want to be on that ride?) "Tell me about how the team collaborates and coordinates work" (Am I going to be stuck in 1 hour all-hands daily "stand-ups" every day?)

the_real_cher 2y ago
Brilliant
dpb001 2y ago
I have always asked the first part of your first question, but it never occurred to me to ask the second part as a follow-up. It reveals a lot about a manager - if there isn’t a thoughtful answer that’s a red flag for me.
cj 2y ago
One question candidates like to ask me: "What's your biggest challenge over the next year? Next 5 years?" and then.. "How is this role contributing toward solving that challenge?" (Sometimes people replace "challenges" with "vision" or "goal") These question catches me off guard sometimes. But if I were the candidate, they are great questions to expose whether a company is hiring this role to fix a problem (if so there are probably very specific expectations) or are they hiring the role to make a good thing better. Dirty secret about interviews: there are very few questions a candidate can ask that would leave a negative impression. You can literally ask "Are you profitable?" or "What is the turnover rate of your team?" or "If you had to improve our team culture, what's one thing you would change?" or even "I've worked at a lot of companies that don't know what they're doing. What's your plan?" On the interviewer side, there's also very few questions candidates won't answer. I always ask what their salary expectations are, where they are in the process with other companies, how they like to be managed, etc --- occasionally there's someone who's dodgy with these questions, but 95% of candidates are extremely transparent. I return the favor by happily answering any questions a candidate asks. It's a big decision on both sides to hire someone or accept an offer, so no point in putting on a facade.
- mcny 2y ago
  Thank you for the insightful comment. One small nit though > I always ask what their salary expectations are I thought we were supposed to never answer this question. Why do you even bother asking this question? You have a budget for any role, right? Why not share this information instead of asking people how much they want? Does it matter if I want a million dollars a year?
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    What? Have you ever hired before? This sounds exactly like the unrealistically simple view of someone that’s never been in this position before. You thought people were never supposed to answer that question? Well, they do. Especially developers, who are more introverted than average, on average, and are easy to catch off guard. I have a budget, sure. Unless your corporate setup is one that especially takes all power away from hiring managers, it’s almost always more complex than that. Maybe I could move some money around to free more budget up. Maybe someone on my team is a retention risk and I need to weigh up priorities. Maybe a billion billion other things. Your personal budget, no matter how implicit or explicit it is, almost certainly isn’t this simple so I have no idea why anyone thinks it works this way at work. Any organisation that is that simple and rigid isn’t capable of rolling with the punches, and isn’t somewhere anyone should want to work.
  - cj 2y ago
    > Why do you even bother asking this question? If someone is asking for $250k and we're budgeting $150k, I don't want to waste their (and my) time.
    - throwaway6977 2y ago
      If that's the case perhaps you could, I don't know, state that up front and save everyone some time...
      - cj 2y ago
        (Last reply I’ll post here): I guess just to be ultra clear so there’s no ambiguity. At our company no candidate talks to anyone at our company before talking to our 3rd party recruiter who screens all candidates before they make it to us. The recruiter has short 15-20 min pre-screening calls with candidates and she’s responsible for weeding out candidates who are likely to not be a fit. A major category to evaluate is mutual compensation expectations (what are they expecting to be paid, what are we expecting to pay). I don’t have full visibility into how our recruiter articulates this part of the screening call. She says some candidates don’t have a salary in mind, in which case she shares the lower bound of our range to feel them out. All roles have a salary range, e.g. could be $130-160k. We don’t just come out and say that, otherwise everyone will want the top end of the range, even if (in our opinion) their experience matches closer to the bottom or middle of the range. It’s an art, not a science. My goal is to not overpay for a role if we don’t have to. (Important: overpay doesn’t mean underpay!) more importantly, I want the person we’re hiring to be happy with the compensation. I don’t want to hire someone who’s going to quit in 6 months for a higher paying role. It’s a negotiation and both sides are trying to find the “market rate” through the process. You can be bitter about this fact, but it’s a simple reality in business. That’s just how things work.
ricktdotorg 2y ago
> "Tell me about how the team collaborates and coordinates work" worth it's weight in GOLD
ryandrake 2y ago
It would be nice to have a question that reliably revealed whether the company was always fighting day-to-day fires, or whether they had a nice blend of short, medium, and long term goals that they actually work on. Your second question kind of does this, but a sharp interviewer could easily tell the truth about their stated objectives and plans that they have no capacity to implement because they're always pants-on-fire.
dangsux 2y ago
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the_real_cher 2y ago

Brilliant

dpb001 2y ago

I have always asked the first part of your first question, but it never occurred to me to ask the second part as a follow-up. It reveals a lot about a manager - if there isn’t a thoughtful answer that’s a red flag for me.

cj 2y ago

One question candidates like to ask me: "What's your biggest challenge over the next year? Next 5 years?" and then.. "How is this role contributing toward solving that challenge?" (Sometimes people replace "challenges" with "vision" or "goal") These question catches me off guard sometimes. But if I were the candidate, they are great questions to expose whether a company is hiring this role to fix a problem (if so there are probably very specific expectations) or are they hiring the role to make a good thing better. Dirty secret about interviews: there are very few questions a candidate can ask that would leave a negative impression. You can literally ask "Are you profitable?" or "What is the turnover rate of your team?" or "If you had to improve our team culture, what's one thing you would change?" or even "I've worked at a lot of companies that don't know what they're doing. What's your plan?" On the interviewer side, there's also very few questions candidates won't answer. I always ask what their salary expectations are, where they are in the process with other companies, how they like to be managed, etc --- occasionally there's someone who's dodgy with these questions, but 95% of candidates are extremely transparent. I return the favor by happily answering any questions a candidate asks. It's a big decision on both sides to hire someone or accept an offer, so no point in putting on a facade.

mcny 2y ago
Thank you for the insightful comment. One small nit though > I always ask what their salary expectations are I thought we were supposed to never answer this question. Why do you even bother asking this question? You have a budget for any role, right? Why not share this information instead of asking people how much they want? Does it matter if I want a million dollars a year?
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  What? Have you ever hired before? This sounds exactly like the unrealistically simple view of someone that’s never been in this position before. You thought people were never supposed to answer that question? Well, they do. Especially developers, who are more introverted than average, on average, and are easy to catch off guard. I have a budget, sure. Unless your corporate setup is one that especially takes all power away from hiring managers, it’s almost always more complex than that. Maybe I could move some money around to free more budget up. Maybe someone on my team is a retention risk and I need to weigh up priorities. Maybe a billion billion other things. Your personal budget, no matter how implicit or explicit it is, almost certainly isn’t this simple so I have no idea why anyone thinks it works this way at work. Any organisation that is that simple and rigid isn’t capable of rolling with the punches, and isn’t somewhere anyone should want to work.
- cj 2y ago
  > Why do you even bother asking this question? If someone is asking for $250k and we're budgeting $150k, I don't want to waste their (and my) time.
  - throwaway6977 2y ago
    If that's the case perhaps you could, I don't know, state that up front and save everyone some time...
    - cj 2y ago
      (Last reply I’ll post here): I guess just to be ultra clear so there’s no ambiguity. At our company no candidate talks to anyone at our company before talking to our 3rd party recruiter who screens all candidates before they make it to us. The recruiter has short 15-20 min pre-screening calls with candidates and she’s responsible for weeding out candidates who are likely to not be a fit. A major category to evaluate is mutual compensation expectations (what are they expecting to be paid, what are we expecting to pay). I don’t have full visibility into how our recruiter articulates this part of the screening call. She says some candidates don’t have a salary in mind, in which case she shares the lower bound of our range to feel them out. All roles have a salary range, e.g. could be $130-160k. We don’t just come out and say that, otherwise everyone will want the top end of the range, even if (in our opinion) their experience matches closer to the bottom or middle of the range. It’s an art, not a science. My goal is to not overpay for a role if we don’t have to. (Important: overpay doesn’t mean underpay!) more importantly, I want the person we’re hiring to be happy with the compensation. I don’t want to hire someone who’s going to quit in 6 months for a higher paying role. It’s a negotiation and both sides are trying to find the “market rate” through the process. You can be bitter about this fact, but it’s a simple reality in business. That’s just how things work.

ricktdotorg 2y ago

> "Tell me about how the team collaborates and coordinates work" worth it's weight in GOLD

ryandrake 2y ago

It would be nice to have a question that reliably revealed whether the company was always fighting day-to-day fires, or whether they had a nice blend of short, medium, and long term goals that they actually work on. Your second question kind of does this, but a sharp interviewer could easily tell the truth about their stated objectives and plans that they have no capacity to implement because they're always pants-on-fire.

dangsux 2y ago

[dead]