November 28, 2017, by Carla

Interview Questions: Answering “Have You Got Any Questions for Us?”

By Kathryn Moss, Employability Officer, Jubilee Campus

So, you’ve sent in your application and have received an email inviting you to an interview. Great news!

You might have all sorts of things or ideas or worries buzzing around in your head, but now you need to focus on getting yourself prepared. By this point, it’s pretty safe to say that the employer deems your qualifications and experience good enough for you to be able to do the job. Now they want to meet you and find out what you are like in person, so they can make their decision about whether you will fit into the company and the role.

This is where you need to make sure you shine…

You should have spent time researching the employer before submitting your application, so should already have a good idea of what the job will involve. At interview, you’ll probably be asked “have you got any questions for us?” – use this as your opportunity to dig a bit deeper.

It is a good idea to prepare a few interview questions in advance as this is where most people come unstuck. There is nothing wrong with writing these questions down and taking them in with you. 99.9% of the time, if you tell the employer that you have prepared a few questions in advance and would like to refer to them, they will not have a problem with this.

So, what should I ask?

It might be sensible to start with what you shouldn’t be asking first. You do not want to ruin your good work at interview by asking a question you should already know the answer to. If it is a question that you could have easily found by doing a quick Google search, they might start to question the depth of your research. You should also try to avoid asking too many questions about the holidays, benefits, and salary at the interview stage too. These are all things that can be negotiated once you’ve actually got the job!

Good questions are ones that show a genuine interest in the company and the role. For example, you could ask something about the expectations of the newly-hired employee during their first six months, or how they would describe a typical first project in the job. You might even want to ask the employer about the structure of the department that you will be working in and what sort of projects are coming up. This way, you are showing interest in what you might be working on.

But what if the interviewer has already answered my questions throughout the interview?

This can sometimes happen naturally throughout the course of the interview. This is why it is important to over prepare. Maybe prepare a few more than you think you will need to ensure  you have something else to ask if you need it. You could also pick up on something that they spoke to you about at the start of the interview. For example, you could say “you mentioned earlier that the company is involved in [X], could you tell me a bit more about this please?”

If they have genuinely answered everything that you were planning to ask, you could answer this by saying ” had made a note to ask you about [X], but we went over this earlier in the interview and I feel that you have covered everything that I wanted to know at this stage, thank you.”

Would you like some help preparing interview questions? Perhaps you’d like to take a trial run with one of our mock interviews? Find out how to book a one-to-one here or get some more general advice about interviews on our website.

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