What Questions Should a Prospective Employee Ask?

Mortimer.CA writes "Even though things aren't great in the economy, it's prudent to plan ahead to when things (hopefully) pick up. In light of that, I'd like to update a previously asked question in case things have changed over the last four years: What do you ask every new (prospective) employer? When you're sitting in the interview room after they've finished grilling you, there's usually an opportunity to reciprocate. There will be some niche questions for specializations (sys admin, programming, PM, QA, etc.), but there are some generic ones that come to mind, such as: what is the (official) dress code?" Similarly, what questions should you avoid? Read on for the rest of Mortimer.CA's thoughts. He continues with these suggestions:
"What about my resume caught your eye? What hardware/software am I expected to use at my desktop (e-mail, OS, editor, source control, etc.)? Are there team lunches or get-togethers? What are your goals for the next six months, one year, three years? What ticket/issue tracking system do you use? Do you have separate build/stage/QA/etc. environments? How do you keep track of documentation? What are your full names (so I can Google them)? What are the typical hours of the team members? Those are some of the ones I've thought of after some digging around. Are there the generic ones that you ask? What are some question for various niches? (e.g., for sysadmins: what config mgmt software do you use?)"

Comments

What's for lunch?

[zyxwvutsr]

Where do we eat?

Are there a lot of people with kids here?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

If you want to know how much overtime you're going to work, and how family-friendly a workplace is, find out what the demographics of the company are. If you are single, you may find that an overly family-oriented workplace is going to put extra pressure on you to stay late due to parents needing to take time off to be with their family (doctor visits, holidays, etc). On the other hand, if you have a family, a family-friendly workplace may afford you more time to spend with your family.

Another good question is to ask your interviewer how many times a week he talks to customers. It will give you a good idea of how insulated you will be from customers, and that can give you an idea of whether you want the job or not. A non-customer centric position will probably be slower in promotion, but much lower pressure. A customer centric position will be higher pressure, but the opportunity for professional growth (even if all you want to be is a developer) is enormous.

Re:Are there a lot of people with kids here?

[Rogerborg]

Virtual "+1, best answer yet" from me.

In a similar vein, ask about the policy on flexible working (i.e. a compressed or extended working week), and home working. That should give you a good indication of whether you're working for people who want to see results, or just to see you at your desk.

Re:Are there a lot of people with kids here?

[Eskarel]

In my personal experience, unless you're so in demand that you really don't need an interview anyway, the first person who mentions a monetary figure loses, and if it's the potential employee it's usually worse.

The reasons for this is rather simple. If you underbid, you lose out on cash, no employer on earth will offer you more than you asked for. If you overbid, especially if it's by too much, you risk alienating the employer and are likely to end up not getting what you want.

If on the other hand, they overbid, they don't need to know that and you score. If they underbid, you can refuse, without looking like a greedy asshole and blowing a potential later contact, and if they want you enough, they'll up it.

Salary questions are definitely important, but they're not the be all and end all of getting a job. I value a whole bunch of things above straight dollar figures(so long as the dollars are reasonable of course). Even more importantly, unless you're really strapped for time and don't need the job, negotiating them after they've made an offer will put you in a much stronger position.

As to the general question, the questions you should ask an employer are the questions where the wrong answer means you won't take the job. If you need to have weekends off 100% of the time, ask that, if you need to be able to work flexible hours, ask if you can. If all you're looking for is a paycheck so you don't end up on the street, and you don't really care about anything else. Then you can stick to the pointless crap you ask to show you're interested in the company. Check any employment agency web site and they'll give you a list of them, all they're for is to show you're keen.

The basic rule is that, asking for too much can make you look greedy and cause you problems. Asking too little gets you a job that doesn't meet your needs. The most important skill in life is to know what you need, as opposed to what you want and how far you can go down the want pile and get away with it.

Re:How often do people get promoted

[kenh]

No, that makes it sound like you already don't like the job you haven't even been offered yet. Instead, ask about career paths, ask where your co-workers came from (internal new-hires, transfers/promotions, etc.), and where former group members are now. Asking how often people get promoted makes you sound like a civil servant "wannabe", probably not your best interview tactic.

Re:COnsider how it comes across

[turbidostato]

"The goal of the interview is to get the offer"

It is not, unless you really want *any* job they could offer (flipping burgers included). If that's not the case, the goal of the interview is not to get the offer but to get the offer *if* it fits both parties. If you can naturally get the questions you are interested in rised during the interview, good, if not, directly question them shows professionality and that you are really interested on the job, not only the paycheck.

Basic rule

[dkleinsc]

You want your question to demonstrate your ability to do the job as well as allow you to assess your future bosses and coworkers. So technical questions like "What version control system do you use?" or "What kind of backup system would I be expected to maintain?" are good for talking to technically-oriented managers. For non-technical managers, some good questions might be "How does my work get tested before getting sent out to the users?" and "How are project schedules determined, and what approaches are typically used to keep projects on schedule?".

Re:How often do people get promoted

[finalrain]

Instead of asking how often people are promoted, I ask what percentage of their management comes from people promoted within the company. I think it mitigates the idea that you're just using a position as a stepping stone while still getting you the answer you want.

Plus, I think it's important to know that there's a good possibility that your manager was at one point capable of doing the job you're applying for. Honestly, knowing my potential manager doesn't have unrealistic expectations is a lot more important to me than hypotheticals about whether I'm getting his job when he moves up or on.

If I'm set up for failure, I'm not going to get his job either way. Effective schmoozers might, but I'm not one of them.

Re:Details on benefits

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You suggest that your government telling you that you may not contract with an employer for a job for less than three weeks vacation, no matter how much you'd like to do so, makes you more free.

We suggest that when you are told that you aren't allowed to do something that is otherwise legitimate, you have less choice/less options and are thus less free.

Which would be fine, if negotiations were between parties of equal power.

However, the employment market in many industries is close to an oligopsony. Consequently, prospective employers have far more say in contract writing than prospective employees, there is little effective competition between employers to drive working conditions to a reasonable level, and the negotiating power isn't equal.

One of the valuable roles a government can play in maintaining a healthy society is that it can act as an equaliser in such circumstances. If you're going to allow the creation of artificial legal entities (corporations/shareholders) that disrupt the natural financial system (you work, you get paid; you don't pay, no-one works for you) then there has to be a flip side so that individual citizens don't get screwed as a result.

It's just like monopoly abuse/anticompetitive behaviour, but the other way around: while I'm generally not a fan of excessive regulation of businesses, I also recognise that the natural end result of an unbalanced system will be very bad for most people, so I don't mind the balancing provisions.

You may counter that the companies have all the power in the relationship, so you need the government to have the power and protect you instead. Generally, when the government and companies get together, it's not the employees and customers that win as a result. As long as there are plenty of competitors (the government hasn't set up one company as a monopoly nor over-regulated things to prevent competitors from joining the market), you are better off negotiating with several companies that can use your skills, because they have to compete for your labor.

That's a lovely theory that is nothing like practice, for the reasons above.

You are also entitled to start your own company if you think you can do it better.

I did, thanks, and I'm working fewer hours, for more money, and (here's the telling one) making better products with more satisfied clients.

But the amount of paperwork and admin required to do so, not because it's necessary for the job but because it's necessary to deal with all the government-imposed bureaucracy, is staggering. If you're going to argue that there should be more small, independent companies to keep the system honest and the real workers getting the real rewards, I'll be the first to agree with you, but changes would be needed to allow that on a significantly wider scale than today as well.

Do you mentally make any connection between being forced to give 3 weeks vacation minimum (increasing the cost of employees to employers) and a high unemployment rate among the less skilled? Economists do.

Erm... Right. Or we could just compare the notoriously bad working conditions in countries like the US and Japan with the conditions in places like Europe, Scandanavia, Australia and New Zealand. It's a shame I can't post the little chart I just built from a couple of Wikipedia tables showing unemployment rate and statutory minimum holidays by country, but if you're in any doubt, you might like to try the same exercise.

Granted, this is looking at total unemployment and not just the rate among the less skilled, which is what you mentioned. Even so, with such huge variations in total unemployment levels with the same (higher) level of statutory minimum paid time off, I struggle to believe that increasing that statutory minimum would be economically damaging on any level.

As an alternative theory, I suggest to you that people work better when properly rested an