Questions to Ask After an Interview

Looking for a list of questions to ask after an interview? Edmund Lau featured an excellent list at the end of his Quora post on this topic. I’ve featured my favorite end-of-interview questions from his blog post here:

Working at the company
What’s your typical work day like?
What’s the process of taking an idea you have from an inception and shipping it to production?
What fraction of your time is spent building new things versus maintaining old ones?
How do product / business / engineering decisions get made at the company?

Team culture
What’s one thing you really like about working at the company and one thing you’d like to improve?
What’s being done about the thing you’d like to improve?
How would you describe the culture of the company?
What are the core values of the company, and what are some examples of how they’re reflected day-to-day?

Product
How did this particular product feature get designed and launched?
Why did you decide to launch this particular version instead of this other one?
How has the product evolved since launch based on user feedback?

Career growth
What’s the most unexpected lesson that you’ve learned on the job?
How is knowledge across projects documented and shared at the company?
What is the onboarding or mentoring process like (if any) for new hires?
What opportunities have you had to work with different people and projects during your time at the company?

Corporate challenges
What are the biggest obstacles to this company becoming massively successful?
What are the current priorities and focus areas at the company?
Where would I be able to add the most value?

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Addendum: Business Insider featured another set of excellent questions to ask after the interview. I’ve excerpted my favorite ones here.

1. What can I help to clarify that would make hiring me an easy decision? —Dan Pickett, cofounder of Launch Academy

2. How do you see this position evolving in the next three years? —Jared Brown, cofounder of Hubstaff

3. What’s the most frustrating part of working here? —Avery Fisher, president of Remedify

4. Who’s your ideal candidate and how can I make myself more like them? —Phil Laboon, president of Eyeflow Internet Marketing

5. How did you get your start? —Jayna Cooke, CEO of EVENTup

6. What keeps you up at night? —Kofi Kankam, CEO of Admit.me
7. What concerns/reservations do you have about me for this position? —John Berkowitz, cofounder and Chief Revenue Officer of Yodle

8. How will the work I’ll be doing contribute to the organization’s mission? —Dave Kerpen, founder and CEO of Likeable Local.

Photo credit: Ethan Lofton