If you’re job-hunting as a junior, you may find that you don’t actually care about the answers to any of these – you just want a job. Even if that’s the case, consider what would be a red flag for you and ask questions that tease that information out of your interviewers.
Who sets the vision for this company?
“The founder” seems like a fine answer for a small company, and “the board” and management as you get into larger companies.
- Blank stares would be bad here – you want to work at a company that knows where it’s going.
How do you measure the success of the development team / individuals / the company?
Ask how your work will be evaluated
Questions for the final interview
If they make you an offer, get really clear on what is on the table – bonuses, pension, equity, vacation days, starting date, etc
Bonus: What are the plans for onboarding new hires?
Ask if they have considered what it is like for new developers to start.
- Related, ask if they hire juniors and how they work with them, but only if we are already solid that I am not a junior.
What is the hiring process?
Hiring process
Tell me a little about the tech team
How many members, makeup junior vs. senior, and any hierarchies should be easy for the HR person to explain.
- Make sure you know the next step before you get off the phone with your screener.
Who is your ideal candidate for this role?
Gives you a better idea of what is expected of you
- Sometimes they will describe you to a T and other times you’ll hear a lot that doesn’t align with your background / skills / preferences
- Frame the question differently to see if you’d be a good fit at the company
The typical process
Screening call / potentially on-site interview
- Typically done by someone in HR
- Technical interview – will dig into your knowledge
- Assessment / homework / pair programming
- Final interview, meeting the rest of the team
- Usually replaced with an offer
Are there any internal politics I need to watch out for?
A smaller company is more likely to tell you there are no problems.
- Show that you care about fitting into the company and properly negotiating all the personalities floating around by being willing to give a little dirt.
Questions for your screener
Have someone non-technical do the first interview.
- They already have your CV, but they’ll expect an introduction.
- Make sure you have a good and concise story to tell about your work history. You’ll be repeating this story ad nauseum while interviewing.
What is the most enjoyable / frustrating thing about working here?
Ask it as two questions, back-to-back
- You’ll often see patterns come up – everyone is annoyed about the same things
- Getting people to talk about a negative is always hard in interviews, but I find this one is difficult for people to side-step
Describe the code review process
PRs, colleague reviews on GitHub
What are the biggest challenges for this role?
Pay close attention to what they think will be difficult in this role, and evaluate if you’re the right person to meet those challenges
Questions for the technical interview
They’re assessing you, but you’re also assessing them
- Let your interviewers drive the conversation, but it’s fine to jump in with a question or two along the way
- At the end of the meeting, they should ask if you have any questions and you can ask as many of these as feels right for the moment
How does an idea go from “out in the world” into the backlog and finally to code and production?
Talk me through your feature development process
- Where do new ideas come from? Is it the data and then building based on an informed worldview? Or does the founder get an idea and then everyone jumps to meet his expectations?
Explain a technical challenge you’ve recently faced
Example: concrete example of recent work they’ve done
Final notes
These questions can lead to some great discussions
- Start with the most important or most informative ones and go from there
- It’s much better to have a back-and-forth than fire off each question
- Find out would I enjoy working here? and would they want me as a colleague / employee
