{"id":80850,"date":"2014-09-10T08:00:54","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T13:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=80850"},"modified":"2014-09-09T19:30:04","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T00:30:04","slug":"good-questions-to-ask-interviewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=80850","title":{"rendered":"Good Questions to ask Interviewers"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Lauren Bourdages, Senior Assistant, INALJ Ontario<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Good Questions to ask Interviewers<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"laurenbourdages\"<\/a>Some of you probably already know that I recently ended my job search by getting hired. I\u2019m now in\u00a0my first full time position in the industry as a Reserves and User Services Associate at the library of\u00a0one of my alma maters. I\u2019m super excited and thrilled to be in the position and back at this university. I\u00a0thought now would be a good time to share with all of you the set of questions that I took with me to every\u00a0interview I\u2019ve had in the last 3 years.<\/p>\n

Many of my interviewers over the course of my search were impressed by the questions I would ask, with\u00a0more than one actually being stopped in their tracks to look at me and say seriously something along the\u00a0lines of, \u201cThat is a really good question,\u201d and having to take a moment to think of the answer.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of these questions have been culled and modified\/paraphrased from various blogs that\u00a0I follow when they posted about GOOD questions to ask interviewers, Ask a Manager, Evil HR Lady,\u00a0Brazen Careerist, and YouTern mostly.<\/p>\n

Obviously you\u2019re not going to have the chance, nor will you want to, ask all of the questions on the page;\u00a0but I like having the full page because we may or may not have already discussed something I want to\u00a0ask about and having the full page means I have prompts for all of the important things. What I usually do\u00a0is, after doing all of my research for an interview, the night before the interview I sit down, open the word\u00a0doc where I keep this list, and highlight\/bold the 5 questions I think I will most want to ask so that they\u2019re\u00a0easier to focus in on during the interview.<\/p>\n

Questions about the position<\/strong><\/p>\n

You already know about the general responsibilities and duties, these are questions to help you get a\u00a0sense of what it will take to actually be successful in carrying out those responsibilities and duties. Here\u00a0is your chance to find out about opportunities for advancement etc. Find out specifically how this role fits\u00a0into the team\/department it is part of.<\/p>\n

1. Could you describe what a typical day at this position would be like?<\/p>\n

2. Could you describe the ideal candidate for this position?<\/p>\n

3. Does this position provide opportunities for advancement within this organization in the future?<\/p>\n

4. What main challenges will I encounter at this position?<\/p>\n

5. What would a successful first year in the position look like?<\/p>\n

6. How will the success of the person in this position be measured?<\/p>\n

7. How often should I expect to receive a performance review?<\/p>\n

8. How much travel, if any, is involved in this position?<\/p>\n

9. How do you envision this position supporting you?<\/p>\n

10. Have successful employees previously in this position progressed to within the organization?<\/p>\n

Questions about the organisation\/culture\/management<\/strong><\/p>\n

The point of these types of questions is to help you figure out if this library\/organization is going to\u00a0be a good fit for you. To help you find out about the team and manager. If professional development,\u00a0continuing education, conferences, research and publishing support etc. are things that are important\u00a0to you this is the time to ask about those things. Find out how the team\/department fits into the larger\u00a0organization.<\/p>\n

11. What do you like best about working for this organization? Worst?<\/p>\n

12. What are the goals of this branch\/department\/library? How do they fit into the overall goals of the\u00a0larger organization\/whole library, etc.?<\/p>\n

13. What successes has this department\/branch\/library had in the last 5 years?<\/p>\n

14. How big is the team I\u2019d be working with?<\/p>\n

15. What do you like best about your job?<\/p>\n

16. Can you describe the typical client\/customer I might be working with and their expectations?<\/p>\n

17. What are the opportunities at this organization for training, further education, and professional\u00a0development?<\/p>\n

18. What happened to the person who previously held this job?<\/p>\n

19. How long did the previous person in the role hold the position? What has turnover in the role\u00a0generally been like?<\/p>\n

20. How would you describe the culture here? What type of people tend to really thrive, and what\u00a0type don’t do as well?<\/p>\n

21. How would you describe your management style?<\/p>\n

22. Thinking back to the person who you’ve seen do this job best, what made their performance so\u00a0outstanding?<\/p>\n

Questions about the hiring process<\/strong><\/p>\n

These two questions are of vital importance!! You want to know if you\u2019re going to have to go through any\u00a0other interviews, tours etc. and you also want to know an approximate timeline for how long that\u2019s going\u00a0to take. Once you have this information you are better able to continue planning your own hunt, and then\u00a0you have a rough estimate of when it\u2019s okay to follow up with them without looking like you\u2019re hounding\u00a0them<\/p>\n

23. What are the next steps for the interview process?<\/p>\n

24. What is your time line for getting back to candidates about those next steps?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Lauren Bourdages, Senior Assistant, INALJ Ontario Good Questions to ask Interviewers Some of you probably already know that I recently ended my job search by getting hired. I\u2019m now in\u00a0my first full time position in the industry as a Reserves and User Services Associate at the library of\u00a0one of my alma maters. I\u2019m super…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":28554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,3603,217,4514,3841,228,4896,111],"class_list":["post-80850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-inalj-ontario","tag-interview-questions","tag-interview-tips","tag-lauren-bourdages","tag-questions","tag-questions-for-interviewer","tag-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/laurenbourdages.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-l22","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}