5 questions to ask your interviewer during a remote job interview
Zoom interviews are the white-collar equivalent of a mating dance.?Both parties dance around each other, showing their most glamorous facade (you don’t even see the person’s full body in a zoom call!), while cautiously trying to decipher the other’s ability to produce, provide and progress in the upcoming years.
Despite the great effort any company puts into the hiring process to front-load skills assessments, or give the candidates a glimpse of real work,?nothing beats the first 1–3 weeks at work when you finally figure out the company culture, daily routine, and your manager's perks.
What if there is a way to discover all that during the interview?
After interviewing hundreds of candidates in the past year, I made a list of top 5 questions that I wish the candidates would have asked me or my hiring manager colleagues during interviews — which we would have gladly answered in great detail!
Work. Life. Balance. I simply cannot stress this enough.
There are remote jobs where you start the day with an 8am team stand-up, quickly grab a coffee before diving into another 4 hours of zoom calls until it’s time for that cold lunch sandwich. When days are really busy, you are chained to your laptop for 8–10 hours straight without a chance to stretch your legs.
There are also other remote jobs where you are free to run an errand at 10am, pick up the kids at 3pm, and if need be continue working during the evening or on a Saturday morning while the family is lazing in bed.
One scenario gives you the freedom to close your laptop at 5pm sharp and enjoy the rest of the evening off; the other grants you more mobility throughout the day while drags the work week longer. I am not advocating for one over the other — both are 100x better than waking up at 6am and commuting 1.5h to work. But it’s an important factor to take into consideration when you apply for a remote job.
2. Who is your favorite colleague (for a peer interviewer) / top performer (for hiring manager)? Why do you enjoy working with them?
Forget about the “what kind of profile will be successful in this role” or “what do you expect from me” type of questions. All interviewers will answer the same: hard-working, motivated, a great team player but not afraid of taking on responsibilities. “Just bring your superman self, and you’ll do just fine, I promise”.
Ask them for a concrete example of a real person they enjoy working with. The answers will tell you so much more about the team culture, the manager, and the types of work they do.
Imagine one interviewer answers: my top performer is great because she is always responsive — no matter how late the customer’s request comes in, she always jumps on it within 30 minutes and won’t sleep until the problem is solved. She never lets the team down.
While another one says: my top performer always gives critical feedback and tries to streamline the work so that everyone on the team can be as efficient as her. She has a super-high quality bar and helps improve the team output quality.
Both of these top performers are hard-working, motivated, great team players and not afraid of taking on responsibilities, yet they can’t be more different in their work approaches.
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3. Can you tell me about the last termination (for an opening in a team that needs multiple hires)/ my predecessor (for a unique manager position)? What mistakes did they make?
Do not stop when the interviewer says the last person resigned for personal reasons; ask them what they liked or disliked about that person’s work.
This is the moment you need to use your judgment and listen to yourself.
Was the last person overly technical and missed out on business aspects? If someone from your past job also gave you the same feedback, don’t expect yourself to suddenly improve and do magically better this time. Take the hint and back off. The role is not for you.
Was the last person a micro-manager, and upon hearing about their mistakes, you whisper “good riddance”? Congrats, you’ve found a potential fit. Express that and float your improvement ideas with the hiring manager, if they also nod in accordance, you’d most likely have a great time working together in the near future.
4. Can you describe a challenging project that you are working on right now? Why is it exciting?
Call me a horrible writer, but I literally wrote this in a job description for my analyst team “This role allows you to tackle real business challenges and provide solutions to senior stakeholders from all parts of the organization, providing you with hands-on experience in multiple functions”.
Now ask me about a real business challenge we are tackling right now, I’d tell you about how the role changed from last year’s “go explore a new market for this product” to this year’s “deep-dive the hiring function and why it’s inefficient” or “scale personalized performance coaching for 1000 students”.
All of these are hands-on, high-profile and fast-paced, but I assure you there are tons of candidates who’d be hyper-excited to join one of the projects, and wish to stay as far away as possible from the other ones.
5. Ask about a real example that forced you out of your last job, and how the interviewer would tackle it
I’m going to leave this last one entirely up to you.
You decided to quit your last job because of one most particular reason — there might be multiple swirling at the back of your head, but there’s only one most important. You don’t want to get it wrong this time.
It could be company politics, personal development, equal pay, stubborn management, or something that only you know. Ask it, and confirm it, before jumping into the same mode of failure, especially in this fully remote environment where you only have a 60-minute window to understand the person smiling from your screen.
Visit?https://www.crossover.com/ ?for more 100% remote openings.
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2 年https://www.fiverr.com/s2/7fd0d1c4b3
Executive Assistant|Customer Support Specialist
2 年Joseph Adams
Digital Transformer ?? Coach ?? Advisor ??♀? Leadership Buddy ?? Turning your business drama into a lean mean business machine ??
2 年Not sure if these are THE ones that make all the difference (in a positive way) at all ?? Why would anyone care why someone before them got fired? That's kind of ridiculous... I would consider that applicant as a nosy person insecure in his/her capabilities... In fact 2 of these questions should not be posed to interviewer if trying to leave a good impression and 3 of them should be answered during onboarding without anybody asking.... So I am wondering if this article is a reflection of thinking and doing things in Crossover, which is disappointing, or Crossover just copy-pasted someone else's thoughts (which are not impressive nor show critical thinking) thinking it would be a great impact-making post? Not sure which one is worse ?? Crossover boasts that they select the top 1% talent in every field, but this kind of posts don't show you found your top 1% in social marketing... Sorry for being blunt but that's how it often ends when you don't put your money ?? where your mouth is ??
Digital Marketing & Social Meda
2 年what ever happened to the Age old, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years time" ?? Golden Oldie Thanks for sharing this post, always insightful to see possible questions, I always tell myself before an interview "Be true to who you are, if it's meant to be, it will be."
Digital marketing|E- commerce website| Woo-Commerce| Online Store
2 年Helpful! This will