Madeline Mann walks through five types of questions to ask a recruiter on a phone screen: about the role's main challenges, whether it's new or backfill, team structure, company culture, and what comes next. Ask these to gather details you can use to tailor your answers in later rounds.
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Hey everyone. The self made millennial. I'm Madeline Mann and today I'm going to tell you five questions to ask in that first round job interview with a company. I'm going to go into the why behind why. You should ask these specific questions as well as the answers that the company gives you. That is going to give you a cheat sheet about how to maneuver your future interviews with them. These questions may sound simplistic, but the way you use the information from their answers strategic. Now, the first interview is generally a screener done by HR or recruiting, so they might not know all the nitty gritty details about the role that you're going into. So all of these questions are a little bit more high level and then you can dig in deeper in future interviews. Okay, so first type of question you should ask is ask specifics about the role, such as what have been the biggest challenges for this role. You want to know the top of mind biggest pain points so that your future interviews for focus on how you are the right person to address that specific pain. Another question you can ask about the role is, is this a new role or are you backfilling? Ask this because you want to get an understanding of the situation you're walking into. For instance, if they are backfilling the role, then why did the person who's in this role leave? Or maybe that person got promoted to be your boss. That's interesting context. If this is a new role, then that generally means one of two things. First, this is potentially a role that's never existed in this. If that's true, be on high alert because they may not understand completely how your role would fit in with the organization and it may not be as well defined as you think it is. So ask lots of questions. Or two, they already have people in this type of role, but they're adding headcount to grow that team. If that's true, make sure you interview with someone who would be a peer, someone who has the exact role that you're interviewing for. And they will give you lots of great context about what it would actually be like to work at this company. The second type of question you gotta ask is ask about the team. Some of those questions could include what does the structure of the team look like, who would I be reporting to? And are they a Scorpio? I'm just kidding about the last question, but the point is that we often assume a lot of things about the way a team is structured or the way a team works. But make sure you get clarity on that. The Third type of question to ask is ask about the company. A great question for any situation is what does it mean to be a culture fit? Here, Ask this question for three reasons. The first is asking about the culture shows that you're looking at this opportunity holistically and it leaves a good impression. Second, you can then mirror these values in your future interviews with the company, such as, let's say the person interviewing you says that their culture is all about collaboration. Great. Yeah. Hang up the phone and you come up with two different situations from your career where you've been an exceptional collaborator. Then on your next interview, you weave these stories into your answers with the interviewer, and then bing, bang, boom, you're a culture fit. Being a culture fit is not that simple, but at least you're focusing on the things that matter most to them. And the third reason is this is a super important question for you to ask to figure out if this company even matches your personal values. The fourth type of question to ask is ask personal questions about the interviewer. Here's a couple questions to get straight in your basket. I did a little research and saw that you've been at the company for two years. How has your role evolved in that time and how has the company changed? What makes you excited to come to work in the morning? Either of these are gold. You're showing a personal interest in them. You're allowing them to talk by themselves, which is usually a person's favorite topic. And you show that you did a little bit of research by saying how long that they've been at the company. You know, it's very simple, but even that leaves an impression. And the fifth type of question to ask, and now you can't forget about this one, is ask about the process. Ask things such as what does the interview process look like? What are next steps? When should I expect to hear back about next steps? This last one is really important because this will give you the date that you should then follow up with them if you haven't heard back yet. Now, if you're a little shy about knowing how to follow up, what to write, in that email, I have a full video on exactly how to follow up, and I give you the templates of what to say. So I'll link that video in the description and know that if you're not following up, you are losing out. Well, now it's my turn to ask you all if you could please like this video as well as subscribe. We have new videos coming out every week. That's the only way you're gonna find this channel again is if you hit that subscribe button. Thanks so much, everyone. Wi Fi high five.
