CMU School of Drama


Thursday, November 18, 2021

15 Clever Questions To Ask During A Job Interview To Make The Tables Turn, As Shared By Folks On Twitter

Bored Panda: Sweaty palms, bouncing legs, but very confident speech, it’s not a mystery — we all know how dreadful the whole process of getting hired is. We overstep ourselves every single time, and for some reason, the process doesn’t get easier. However, we seem to have found a golden middle, which helps us “platter” ourselves to our potential employers.

10 comments:

Brooke said...

I think that a lot of these questions are great! In the past three years or so, I started asking employers what their favorite part of the job is and it always makes them stop for a second. You can tell that a lot of interviewers were not ready for that question to be asked. I think that interviews have a lot of anxiety surrounding them for some people. For me, I love interviews as I feel that they are my strong point. However, I think that for those people who have anxiety surrounding interviews, asking these types of questions might be scary and daunting to them. Some of the questions that are mentioned in this article, depending on how they are asked, can come off as rude and might actually make you not get offered the job if you come off as rude during the interview. I do like the point that was mentioned in the article about asking where people eat lunch, I never thought about how much that can affect the workplace atmosphere and I certainly wouldn't want to work at a company where all the employees ate lunch in their car.

Zachary Everett-Lane said...

This article makes a very good point: that a job interview is not just for you to show how qualified you are for a position, but for you to learn more about the job itself. It does this by presenting a number of questions twitter users like to ask their interviewers when applying for a job, turning the tables on them, so to speak. Some of these questions include what their turnover rate is like, what they enjoy about their job, what they don’t, and why the position is open. I think these are all excellent, important questions to ask before working for a business. However, I’d warn against using some of the exact phrasing presented by these tweets. It’s possible to come off rude while asking these questions, and if you’re applying for a position you really want, it’s vital to seem polite. So be inquisitive, but also be careful!

Keen said...

If there is one thing I can trust, it is for Twitter to absolutely fuck over the corporate beast. Obviously, if I ever come into a position of needing any of these questions, I will exercise a little more tact than has been demonstrated in the embedded Tweets. Unrelatedly, I am currently watching Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl, and it makes me really want a pirate shirt. And also a big tricorn hat. I think, if a company cannot provide me with those things, it may not be the best fit for me. Ideally, there is a Jack Sparrow-esque figure within the company, to keep things fresh — fun, funky, and fresh. Jack Sparrow would absolutely pose the questions in the above article, albeit in a much less tactful way that would also get the point across pretty well. All to say, I will be keeping these questions in mind if I find myself interviewing for a job.

Alexa Janoschka said...

I think that as a person, no matter if it is applying for a job, finding a college, or just choosing what you want to eat for dinner you need to know what you want. I don’t really think that it needs to be a huge debate good life lesson: know what you want and figure out a way to get it. In the job hiring process, you need to know what you want and what your goals are within the company. Is it a job you see yourself working at for a long time, is it a job just to put food on the table, is a resume builder, is it passion work and the fulfillment of what you are doing outweighs what pay, etc. Know what you want and ask the right questions to get that insight. Applying for college is like applying for a job. Do you think we chose CMU because we knew we were going to have a fun time and enjoy classes? Hell no, we knew it was a rigors program and that you have to sacrifice to be here. Sometimes you are going to ask a question and you may not like the answer but also you can know if the sacrifice is worth the job. Like the question about having lunch in the car, you may want to look into having lunch in your car if there are other benefits to the job. I think that the Twitter post is comical but at the same time, you shouldn’t be going into interviews believing that the process is fully 50/50 because in the end… who has the money? It sucks but that is the job field. So yes ask good questions but know what you want and if you are willing to sacrifice if the interviewer gives you an answer you dislike.

Sawyer Anderson said...

This article was very useful. I had heard a lot of the information mentioned, such as I knew to ask interviewers questions following an interview, however I think a lot of the questions these people asked were far more targeted than the questions I had heard before. Maybe it was the phrasing but on the “can you explain why 99 of 125 reviews state that your company does not pay for all hours worked.” Well for starters, that doesn’t seem like a great way to get a job. It seems like they’ll feel attacked and just not want you to work for them. Also if you genuinely feel this way why interview with them at all. If you really like the company there might be a better way to phrase the concern so rather than attacking or interrogating it comes off as though you are concerned for their public image.

Nick Huettig said...

This article is sorely needed information in today's job market, especially with many Gen Z folks entering the workforce. I think a lot of people, recruiters, job-seekers, and plenty of upper management, seem to think that employment is a divine privilege, like it's god's gift to be able to work at this company. The company is perfect as is, so why should we hire you? Never mind the fact that it's always some garbage job paying $9 an hour. This article gives very good advice, though the phrasing of some of these questions is a bit much (but it's twitter, you get what you get). Why is the company a good fit for you? What's it like to work at this company? How many people have left in the past 6 months? Chances are if the recruiter gets annoyed, it might not be a good place to work. Having respect for yourself is important, and no self-respecting person should willingly throw themselves into a toxic environment like that.

Sidney R. said...

Even though this definitely has the quality of humor and the style of a meme, these tweets have value and provoke thought on the hiring front. Many mention that yeah, they didn't get a call back and were offended. While that definitely says something about the hiring team, I wonder how many companies would actually feel totally okay with being called out like this. Or even how a university would respond if potential students asked questions like these in college interviews. These tweets show a candor that I think some employers would actually value, but it feels strange to imagine this in an academic setting. There's a level of fearlessness and savagery here that I've never associated with interviewing, even though I constantly perceive it from the interviewers side. I hope these questions become more and more commonplace in the interviewing process, and it prompts companies to think more deeply about how they treat the people who work for them.

Allison Gerecke said...

I love these, and I think these sorts of questions are particularly useful right now when every employer seems to be short-staffed and desperate for work. I think that while some of the questions on here are unrealistic (the one about glassdoor reviews, for example - if you’ve done that research and seen that trend, why are you applying in the first place?), many of them are legitimately good, solid questions to help you gauge the company culture. I’ve worked both jobs I love and jobs I hate, and it’s funny to imagine these questions being asked to those different managers because of the difference in what their responses would be. I totally agree with the concept that a job interview should also have aspects of you interviewing the company right back, and questions like these can definitely help you determine if it’s a good fit for you and if it’s a company that actually cares about its employees.

Owen Sahnow said...

The last job I interviewed for I actually asked one of these questions! I asked what set the company apart from other companies in the area and they actually had an answer and could describe what it was that made them awesome to work for and that was absolutely a deal sealer so doing it definitely seems worthwhile to use those questions to find out more. There’s a company I know of in Maryland that is always looking to hire and it seems like a really good job, but someone pointed out to me that I should think about why there are so many openings. The asking to talk to current employees is a great idea and it seems like that should be offered assuming no one has anything to hide. Colleges do this by giving you a chance to talk to the students and it doesn’t seem that far-fetched that this could be a planned part of the interview process.

Kaylie C. said...

I’ll be honest, I would never ask most of these questions. A lot of them are tailored to upset the person you are interviewing for or make it sound like you already think poorly of the company. I agree that you should also interview them and ask them questions to figure out if the position is a good fit, but if you already know it isn’t a good fit, I don’t see the point in interviewing. If you are still interviewing because you need the job, I would not risk it by antagonizing the interviewer. I think some of these could be good questions though. Anything to so with work culture that you don’t already know are great to ask like what people do for lunch, what they like about working there, and maybe what reason people usually have for leaving or how long most people stay with the company.