(Thank you to Craig Palli for his suggestion to turn this list of questions into a post. If any others who read my posts would like to suggest other topics, please let me know. If I can do the topic justice, I will be happy to put it on my list.)
I think we all want to ask good, if not great, questions in a job interview. This shows the interviewer what you are made of but also helps you figure out if you want to work there. There are plenty of web sites and experts that give you advice on what to ask a potential employer. For instance, here are a few:
1. What skills and experiences would make an ideal candidate?
2. What is the single largest problem facing your staff and would I be in a position to help you solve this problem?
3. What have you enjoyed most about working here?
4. What constitutes success at this position and this firm or nonprofit?
While these are good, these types of questions have never been fully satisfying to me as the answer to any one question may not be representative of the reality you face when you start working there. An example to drive home this point is what I learned about how to interview prospects for Product/Market fit by asking great questions the right way. It is not only the question you ask but the way you ask that is critical.
For instance, if you ask someone what kind of movies they like go to, they may answer “Spotlight” or “Boyhood” or “12 years a Slave”. However, if you ask them what movies they went to in the past few months, they may be more likely say, “Warcraft” or “Central Intelligence” or “The Conjuring 2”. If we went with the first set, then we would think our prospect had a certain type of taste in movies and likely get the wrong impression. The second set represents a different direction altogether. Their needs are more likely ascertained by asking questions about what they do versus what they aspire to do.
What we aspire to is not always how we act or what we need.
It is in this spirit that I offer you a set of 10 questions to pick from that hopefully give you insight into the company to help you make your decision. I have compiled these after and over a 30-year career starting in inside sales up through being a GM, VP, WW Sales, CMO for a $120MM company and finally a trained business growth advisor.
I hope they are useful to you.
- What are the company’s core values? What are some of the ways you keep them alive within the organization? Look to see if the senior team has created a set of rules to live by. This can give you a sense of whether they are top down in their thinking where a few people make all or most of the decisions or they are more likely to push authority closer to where the information and knowledge are so necessary decisions can be made quickly based upon pre-determined guidelines. Keeping them alive is key.
- Can you explain to me the process you go through when making critical decisions? This can have many answers. Look for the difference between a leader that believes s/he already knows the right answer and steers/persuades the team towards that and one that knows the direction and/or destination they are headed. These managers will seek different perspectives and may even split the group up to research and defend certain possibilities and set up a devil’s advocate contingency to find the best answer. S/he may already have something in mind but is open to being persuaded by others versus the other way around. Ask for an example.
- Why did you start the company? (Best asked of Founder but others may know) Look for core purpose here. Did s/he start this business to solve a problem, does s/he love the customer more than the current idea? This is especially key for startups. I believe that one of the main reasons why most startups fail is they fall in love with their idea and not with the customer whose problem(s) they are supposed to be solving. Another reason why many companies fail or falter is that they have forgotten the main reason they started the company in the first place. Please see previous blog post for more info here.
- How do you bridge the gap between strategy and execution? This will likely be a surprising question but it is interesting to see how it is handled. You will have to judge for yourself whether or not the answer is good enough for you as there is no perfect answer. If someone has a great answer to this or really any reasonable answer showing how they have thought this through, take that job! These are the kind of people you want to work with!
- What is the company’s strategy? If I were to ask a few others in the company, how consistent might the answers be? The second question is more useful than the first as most folks will give you some answer to the first question. You may also want to ask this of several folks to compare how closely they are related. Again, you are looking to see what type of organization you are looking to join. If they are good at communicating important items like strategy in a simple and coherent way that anyone in the company can articulate then they are more likely to value their employees and are great at communicating in general.
- Please describe your team to me. Look for title and function versus capabilities/assets. If they go into a job description and title versus the value each member brings to the team/company they are more likely to see less value in the individual and care more about bottom line. This may reveal how they view others. Possibly how others are there to serve their needs or the needs of the company versus how they create an environment where everyone is valued and their job as leader is to create a safe environment to facilitate input from everyone and to find ways to make everyone around them better.
- Describe to me a typical weekly management meeting. Look for status updates versus problem solving, discussion, debate and resolutions. Do they make decisions during the meeting? Are they likely to call someone in to clarify a point in order to move things forward? Great management teams use this time together to get things done and do not end the meeting until they accomplish what they set out to accomplish at the beginning of the meeting. This meeting should be more like a spirited game of hockey versus a hushed game of golf (which most of them are).
- How do you leverage your core competencies to grow your business? Great companies leverage their distinct capabilities and are able to grow in unique but powerful ways. They typically value teams over departments and are less “siloed”. They scale and solve more problems for more customers because they leverage fundamental capabilities that apply across any customer base, division, etc. Having this “capabilities” approach allows these companies to find the next growth curve well before the existing one begins to tail off. My next blog post(~11,000 companies born each hour! …..) will go into more detail here based upon recent research.
- How often do you get feedback or request input from the team that is 2,3 or more layers below? Do they value employees that are closer to the customer and the market dynamics or are they more about making decisions on high with little to no input from others? You can also see if they are a flatter organization versus hierarchical.
- How would you describe your change/improvement management process? It is unlikely that they have one but this shows how willing they are to inviting input from anyone and everyone. If they do have one, then this would be a great company for those who want to learn leadership skills and be valued as a contributor to the ultimate success of the company.
I hope this was useful. If you have other great questions that you ask, please put them down in the comments section with your rationale for asking them. I would love to learn other great questions.
Be Exceptional!
(catalystgrowthadvisors.com; bill@catalystgrowthadvisors.com)
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