characterize the company’s overall management style?
What can you tell me about the interviewer?
What can you tell me about my boss?
What can you tell me about the people with whom I’ll be working?
What can you tell me about the people I’ll be managing?
If you’re going to be managing a significant number of people, it’s unlikely you’d be forced to start in HR, but I’ve included this question here anyway.
Does the company have a mission statement or written philosophy? May I have a copy?
If not, consider the Chairman’s message in the annual report or the corporate mission statement.
Are there any challenges facing this department right now? (Your department, not HR.)
Do you have a written description of the position? I want to make sure I understand my duties and responsibilities and the results you expect me to achieve.
This is a good question to pose to the screening interviewer (and a great way to ask it). It will help you prepare to face the hiring manager. If a written description doesn’t exist, ask the interviewer to tell you what she considers the primary functions of the job.
Watch out for job descriptions that are too general, too elaborate, or too far-fetched. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t schedule an interview, but it does mean you have to ask some clarifying questions. Why do companies lay out such god-awful descriptions? Why doesn’t the hiring manager take the time to more clearly define the role he wants you to play (and then tell those poor people in Human Resources so they can do a better job screening candidates)? It’s a mystery.
What other positions at the company should this job prepare me for? Is that the career track my predecessors followed?
You don’t want to blindly stumble into a dead-end job. So find out how you can expect to advance after you land this job. What happened to the person you would be replacing? Is he or she still with the company? If so, doing what?
Try to pursue this line of questioning without giving the impression that you can’t wait to get out of a job you don’t even have yet! If you ask questions like this in a completely nonthreatening manner, your ambition will be understood, even welcomed.
At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a more comprehensive list of questions to ask about the company, department, and position. Use it to craft your own list for Human Resources.
Am I overqualified?
This, of course, is a question you really should ask yourself before you go on any interview. It’s essential to admit, at least to yourself, if you are seriously overqualified for a position. Many of you might think it’s easier to get a job beneath your qualifications—to work as an accounting assistant when you’ve been a full-charge bookkeeper, to be a receptionist when you’ve been an office manager, to go back to sales after rising to sales manager.
It isn’t. You may have more qualifications than the job requires, but you may no longer have the specific qualifications it demands. While you may have overseen a 20-person sales force and be known far and wide as an ace motivator, you will have trouble getting a job selling copy machines. Why? Because they don’t care about your management and motivational credentials. Nor do they need them. They want to know how many copy machines you’re capable of selling a month. And they do care that you’ve never sold one!
Employers may question the motivation of someone willing to “do almost anything.” Will such an employee just show up, doing what’s asked and little more? What about someone willing to work “for almost nothing”? To quote another cliché: You get what you pay for. And that’s exactly what “almost nothing” is worth.
Especially in lower-level jobs, employers want people happy to be doing what they were hired to do, not constantly looking around and commenting how they could do the boss’s job better than he could. The office manager wants to treat the receptionist as
What can you tell me about the interviewer?
What can you tell me about my boss?
What can you tell me about the people with whom I’ll be working?
What can you tell me about the people I’ll be managing?
If you’re going to be managing a significant number of people, it’s unlikely you’d be forced to start in HR, but I’ve included this question here anyway.
Does the company have a mission statement or written philosophy? May I have a copy?
If not, consider the Chairman’s message in the annual report or the corporate mission statement.
Are there any challenges facing this department right now? (Your department, not HR.)
Do you have a written description of the position? I want to make sure I understand my duties and responsibilities and the results you expect me to achieve.
This is a good question to pose to the screening interviewer (and a great way to ask it). It will help you prepare to face the hiring manager. If a written description doesn’t exist, ask the interviewer to tell you what she considers the primary functions of the job.
Watch out for job descriptions that are too general, too elaborate, or too far-fetched. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t schedule an interview, but it does mean you have to ask some clarifying questions. Why do companies lay out such god-awful descriptions? Why doesn’t the hiring manager take the time to more clearly define the role he wants you to play (and then tell those poor people in Human Resources so they can do a better job screening candidates)? It’s a mystery.
What other positions at the company should this job prepare me for? Is that the career track my predecessors followed?
You don’t want to blindly stumble into a dead-end job. So find out how you can expect to advance after you land this job. What happened to the person you would be replacing? Is he or she still with the company? If so, doing what?
Try to pursue this line of questioning without giving the impression that you can’t wait to get out of a job you don’t even have yet! If you ask questions like this in a completely nonthreatening manner, your ambition will be understood, even welcomed.
At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a more comprehensive list of questions to ask about the company, department, and position. Use it to craft your own list for Human Resources.
Am I overqualified?
This, of course, is a question you really should ask yourself before you go on any interview. It’s essential to admit, at least to yourself, if you are seriously overqualified for a position. Many of you might think it’s easier to get a job beneath your qualifications—to work as an accounting assistant when you’ve been a full-charge bookkeeper, to be a receptionist when you’ve been an office manager, to go back to sales after rising to sales manager.
It isn’t. You may have more qualifications than the job requires, but you may no longer have the specific qualifications it demands. While you may have overseen a 20-person sales force and be known far and wide as an ace motivator, you will have trouble getting a job selling copy machines. Why? Because they don’t care about your management and motivational credentials. Nor do they need them. They want to know how many copy machines you’re capable of selling a month. And they do care that you’ve never sold one!
Employers may question the motivation of someone willing to “do almost anything.” Will such an employee just show up, doing what’s asked and little more? What about someone willing to work “for almost nothing”? To quote another cliché: You get what you pay for. And that’s exactly what “almost nothing” is worth.
Especially in lower-level jobs, employers want people happy to be doing what they were hired to do, not constantly looking around and commenting how they could do the boss’s job better than he could. The office manager wants to treat the receptionist as
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