Five Key Questions You'll Want Answered Before You Take a Job

Yahoo suggests five key questions you'll want answered before you take a job as follows:

• What makes employees join this company and stay here?
• How are people treated here?
• What are the unspoken rules?
• What happens when people make mistakes?
• What is a typical week like?

In other words, you're trying to find out as much as you can about the corporate culture and if it is one that you will like/enjoy. If so, there may be a match. If not, you may want to consider other employment options.

Unfortunately, many of these questions are hard to answer and it's often difficult to get a straight answer from someone who's trying their best to put a good face on their company. I have three strategies for dealing with this:

• Ask EVERYONE you interview with "what do you like about working here?" and "what would you change about this company if you could?" Ask enough people these two questions and you'll eventually get a clear picture of what it's like to work at this company.

• There's usually a breakfast, lunch or dinner where a company representative takes you out and gets to know you. I've found that people have their guard down more at these times and are more willing to "spill the beans" about what it's really like to work there. Casually bring up the topic between chatting about sports teams and vacation plans and you'll likely get the real scoop.

• Concentrate on younger/less experienced employees. Older workers/executives are more savvy/guarded about what they say, but younger, less experienced employees will often tell you exactly what they think. They simply don't know any better! Use this to your advantage to see what this company is really like.

Any other tips out there for determining what a company culture is like?

Comments

[Dave]

Only two major questions you need to ask during these times
1. Will you hire me please?
2. Do you pay on time?
Everything else can be worked out later.

[thomas]

Good questions.

[Lorraine]

Thanks for the list - these are important questions to consider, and can affect you working life considerably. No-one wants to be unhappy in their job. I would also add 'gut-feel'. You can generally pick up on any atmosphere, when being introduced to other members of staff, and how they respond to you.

[JC]

One thing I would do is check to make sure that the company generally has good reviews. Do a google search and you can pretty much always find out how former employees enjoyed/hated the job. Make sure reasons are valid and not just complaints because they got fired!

[F]

Great question! (i.e. 'what do you like / what would you change')

Another issue is getting a realistic view of the job you'd be doing, because it's usually described in a very abstract way that in the end tells you nothing about whether you'll like it (assuming you haven't held a similar job before). Asking questions will clear up some things but never enough. So I've been wondering what questions to ask to get a really insightful answer:
- what have you (i.e. my future boss) and your team done, and how did you proceed, over the last few weeks? What's ahead for the next couple of weeks?
- what did yesterday look like for you?