Use Questions as a Basis for Selling Yourself

Yahoo lists six questions you should ask at an interview as follows:

• What are the opportunities for advancement, and do you typically promote from within?
• What types of training programs do you offer?
• While researching your firm I learned that the company recently [fill in the blank]. Can you tell me a little bit more about this development?
• Will I primarily be working independently or as part of a team?
• Can you tell me what my average day would be like?
• What do you enjoy most about working here?

I like these, but the part of the piece I really want to focus on is what you should do after you get an answer to one of the questions. Here's what Yahoo suggests:

[Asking questions] offers a golden opportunity to set yourself apart from other applicants. Asking smart and pertinent questions allows you to steer the conversation and expand upon your top skills, qualifications, and attributes.

Exactly! If you ask the right questions, you'll not only get some information you can use to decide if you like this company or not, but they will also open up the door for you to again (like you've already done in your interview) emphasize why you're the best candidate for the job (backed up with numbers, of course.)

Here's a simple (not complete or exact in words, but you'll get the meaning) example of what I mean:

Interviewer: Do you have any questions for me?

You: Will I primarily be working independently or as part of a team?

Interviewer: Mainly with a team. (There's usually more "blah, blah, blah" that goes on here, but this is the real answer cut short.)

You: That's great, because a team situation is where I've seen my greatest accomplishments in my career. As I told you earlier, I was the leader of the cost-cutting team when we found two ideas that saved my last company over $250,000 a year. And a couple years ago my sales team was responsible for growing sales 14% faster than any other group. I was pleased to have delivered those results and having others share the accomplishments made them even more meaningful.

Again, not the exact words (I'd need to play with them for awhile before I found the exact phrases I'd use), but you get the idea. You get the information you want (you will be working in teams) as well as the chance to re-emphasize your accomplishments. And. of course, you've practiced these responses so much that they come out smooth as silk -- making you look professional and well-spoken to boot. It's a win all the way around.

Comments

[Colin]

Not bad. I generally feel that the more "give and take" you can intoduce into an interview, the better.

That said, a couple of these are kind of throwaway questions, like:

•What are the opportunities for advancement, and do you typically promote from within?

Who is going to admit to not promoting from within, particularly in an interview where they're trying to sell you on the company?

"To be honest, the job we're hiring for you is a bit of a dead end. If you wanted to advance into management, we mostly bring in outside consultants who know next to nothing about our company..."

•Will I primarily be working independently or as part of a team?

Almost every interviewer will say "part of a team".

"We're actually looking for social misfits who don't much like interacting with the outside world. At our company, you will barely talk to the person the next cubicle over."

Not that these are necessarily bad questions - they function from a signalling perspective. Asking about promotion signals that you are interested in long-term prospects with the company, asking about teamwork can signal that you are a "team player", which seems to be a popular job requirement these days, though I find it to be a little empty.

[Andy]

Colin,
I think the fact that you already know the answers to your questions is part of the game. Either you are asking the stupid questions or the interviewer is, but the person asking the questions is the person driving the conversation. Since you know what they are going to answer, you can have very well thought out followups. You don't really want them steering the conversation in a direction you weren't expecting.