I love this post! In my experience, I have found this to be one of the most important parts of the interview when I was interviewing for a position or while I was interviewing other candidates for a position at my company. If you struggle with this part of the interview, I would suggest taking everyone's beautiful examples from their lists on this thread and use them as a reference while you're coming up with your own questions.
The key to mastering this skill is to show that you are genuinely interested in who you are talking to. This shouldn't be difficult because if you're interviewing for a new position, then this is your time to determine if this is a place where you'd fit in. You can show your genuine interest by asking specific questions which show that you are engaged.
To illustrate, if I was interviewing the author of this post, Ms. Lynne Tye, I would take a little time to look at Key Values and Ms. Tye's achievements while building this incredible company from scratch. By being aware of the questions that naturally cross my mind while listening to Ms. Tye speak or through researching her, I need only to write them down. For example, consider that I'm interviewing with Ms. Tye for a software engineer position at her company, the following could be a question I may ask:
"I checked out the website you created for Key Values and I have to tell you, it looks incredible. I love the beautiful and simplistic design, as well as how intuitive it is to use. I saw that you created Key Values because you felt like there was something missing when evaluating how you felt about joining a new engineering team. I can't tell you how many times I've had the same frustration. You said that you were relatively new to programming when you began Key Values, so I'm really interested in how you decided on each level of your technology stack for the site, given the overwhelming abundance of options out there?"
If you noticed, I asked Ms. Tye about a specific time when she had a big decision to make. In my mind, I put myself in her shoes and thought about how I would make that decision. How would I go about it? This immediately sets me apart from many other candidates because I'm revealing to Ms.Tye, that in this moment, she is the center of my focus. I'm not reading off a canned list of generic questions. I created this question specifically for Ms. Tye. Her response is going to give me a glimpse into what it's like to work with her, such as the reasoning that she uses when making decisions.
Thank you for writing this incredibly valuable post and allowing me to use you in my illustration, Ms. Tye!
Lynne is the creator of Key Values, a website that helps engineers find teams that share their values. She lives in San Francisco, is an Iron(wo)man, and loves meeting new peeps!
Location
San Francisco
Education
MIT'10 Brain and Cognitive Sciences, UCSF'12 Neuroscience
First, thank you for providing a great example. It's true, people shouldn't stop here. They should be incredibly thoughtful when not only asking questions during their interview, but also in their initial emails/cover letters. In the same way we don't love getting recruiter emails that look like:
Hi Lynne,
Would you like to discuss an exciting Frontend Engineer opportunity with a World Class company in San Francisco, CA? If so, please let me know so I can send you the name of the company as well as the job description to see if it would be a good fit for you.
Cheers,
Lloyd
(^ this is an email I actually got btw, copy pasted)
It's a two-way street, the whole way through. Personalized emails, personalized questions, everything should be personalized and demonstrate that you've both taken the time to do your research and be thoughtful.
Second, thanks for your incredibly kind words John! I'm honored. ❤️🙌
I could not have said it better. You're so right, impersonalized recruiter emails are a perfect parallel. My favorite is when they forget to take out their boilerplate in the response. This is an actual one I received recently as well:
Dear,
This is Sharmilee from , we are looking to hire entry level software developer, if you’re interested please get back to me with your contact number and mailid.
Thank You.
You're very welcome, Ms. Tye. Thank you for taking the time in writing such a thoughtful and valuable post!
Lynne is the creator of Key Values, a website that helps engineers find teams that share their values. She lives in San Francisco, is an Iron(wo)man, and loves meeting new peeps!
Location
San Francisco
Education
MIT'10 Brain and Cognitive Sciences, UCSF'12 Neuroscience
At the end of the day, everyone wants to feel valued, heard, and appreciated. It doesn't matter what it is or who it's with, we all want to feel valued by our romantic partners, friends, family members, interviewers, coworkers, managers, and shoot –– even our pets! Employers and hiring managers are no different!
Anyway, thank you again, John. And know that I appreciate you!! 😍🙌
Senior DevOps Engineer with 8.5+ years of experience. Otherwise an avid artist, reader, cinephile & football fan. Looking forward to connecting with everyone :)
Just found out this incredibly useful post along with Keyvalues, Thank you Lynne :-)
I agree with the impersonalized recruiter emails point John mentioned and believe with the advent of LinkedIn for information and HRM software for recruiters nowadays, researching a candidate to send a fairly customized email should be less exhaustive.
If a person realizes that they've been approached like the only one for a particular role (momentarily ignoring the fact there actually are multiple candidates), it will result in a higher response rate for the recruiters.
Lynne is the creator of Key Values, a website that helps engineers find teams that share their values. She lives in San Francisco, is an Iron(wo)man, and loves meeting new peeps!
Location
San Francisco
Education
MIT'10 Brain and Cognitive Sciences, UCSF'12 Neuroscience
I love this post! In my experience, I have found this to be one of the most important parts of the interview when I was interviewing for a position or while I was interviewing other candidates for a position at my company. If you struggle with this part of the interview, I would suggest taking everyone's beautiful examples from their lists on this thread and use them as a reference while you're coming up with your own questions.
The key to mastering this skill is to show that you are genuinely interested in who you are talking to. This shouldn't be difficult because if you're interviewing for a new position, then this is your time to determine if this is a place where you'd fit in. You can show your genuine interest by asking specific questions which show that you are engaged.
To illustrate, if I was interviewing the author of this post, Ms. Lynne Tye, I would take a little time to look at Key Values and Ms. Tye's achievements while building this incredible company from scratch. By being aware of the questions that naturally cross my mind while listening to Ms. Tye speak or through researching her, I need only to write them down. For example, consider that I'm interviewing with Ms. Tye for a software engineer position at her company, the following could be a question I may ask:
If you noticed, I asked Ms. Tye about a specific time when she had a big decision to make. In my mind, I put myself in her shoes and thought about how I would make that decision. How would I go about it? This immediately sets me apart from many other candidates because I'm revealing to Ms.Tye, that in this moment, she is the center of my focus. I'm not reading off a canned list of generic questions. I created this question specifically for Ms. Tye. Her response is going to give me a glimpse into what it's like to work with her, such as the reasoning that she uses when making decisions.
Thank you for writing this incredibly valuable post and allowing me to use you in my illustration, Ms. Tye!
I'm blown away by this comment!!!
First, thank you for providing a great example. It's true, people shouldn't stop here. They should be incredibly thoughtful when not only asking questions during their interview, but also in their initial emails/cover letters. In the same way we don't love getting recruiter emails that look like:
(^ this is an email I actually got btw, copy pasted)
It's a two-way street, the whole way through. Personalized emails, personalized questions, everything should be personalized and demonstrate that you've both taken the time to do your research and be thoughtful.
Second, thanks for your incredibly kind words John! I'm honored. ❤️🙌
I could not have said it better. You're so right, impersonalized recruiter emails are a perfect parallel. My favorite is when they forget to take out their boilerplate in the response. This is an actual one I received recently as well:
You're very welcome, Ms. Tye. Thank you for taking the time in writing such a thoughtful and valuable post!
Nooooo 🙈 Why though??
At the end of the day, everyone wants to feel valued, heard, and appreciated. It doesn't matter what it is or who it's with, we all want to feel valued by our romantic partners, friends, family members, interviewers, coworkers, managers, and shoot –– even our pets! Employers and hiring managers are no different!
Anyway, thank you again, John. And know that I appreciate you!! 😍🙌
Just found out this incredibly useful post along with Keyvalues, Thank you Lynne :-)
I agree with the impersonalized recruiter emails point John mentioned and believe with the advent of LinkedIn for information and HRM software for recruiters nowadays, researching a candidate to send a fairly customized email should be less exhaustive.
If a person realizes that they've been approached like the only one for a particular role (momentarily ignoring the fact there actually are multiple candidates), it will result in a higher response rate for the recruiters.
Thanks Vinay! And you're very right –– we all just want to feel special!