Interviewee Questions

Goal

Create a set of good, specific questions questions that you would ask an interviewer about the company you are interviewing at.

Outline

Introduction (5 minutes)

You are interviewing this company too. The interview is one of the only chances they get to interview the company back. It’s okay for them to think about the kind of environment where they will be the most successful. Everyone says they want to keep learning and have mentorship, but what does that mean? Pair programming? Code reviews?

What we have seen before: “What is your culture like?” “How do you mentor junior developers?” “What kinds of projects will I work on?”

Vague questions lead to vague answers.

Why is this important?

This impacts you as a student - for assessing mock interviews, we expect you have good questions for us as well.

Again, the interview is one of the only chances they get to interview the company back.

What Makes You Successful? (10 minutes)

After all, you are going to this new job so that you can grow and be successful.

Explore what you need for a successful work environment. Where have you been most successful in the past? Why? Get ideas about mentorship, workspace, collaboration, leadership styles, culture…

Think back to the Flower Exercise/”What Color is Your Parachute” exercise.

Come up with 5 of your top requirements for a successful environment.

Discuss in your groups what makes you successful (10 minutes).

Form 5 Questions (10 minutes)

Based on your successful environment, what questions would you ask?

You can test if they are too vague if you can ask how/why a couple times until you get to a more tangible question.

For example, “How do you mentor junior developers?” I need to think what about mentorship is important to me? Is it pair programming, code reviews, going to conferences? If it’s going to conferences, then I’ll ask something like “Tell me about your continuing education policies? Is there a budget for attending conferences?”

Closing (5 minutes)

Having a set of questions they ask every company/team will help them norm and distinguish between them. If they ask a base set of questions to every team, they will have a clearer understanding of how those teams differ from one another.