Page 29 - John Kador - 201 Best Questions to Ask on Your Interview-McGraw-Hill (2002)

THE RULES OF THE GAME

Not one of these impressions works in your favor. Of course, not
any old questions will do. If you don’t think about this in advance, you
run the risk of missing a critical opportunity by not asking intelligent
questions or by planting your foot in your mouth by asking stupid
ones. Good questions show the interviewer that you are interested in
the job. Great questions tell the interviewer that you are a force to be
reckoned with.

VESTED IN THE INTERVIEW

“I want to know that the candidate in front of me is vested in the job in-
terview,” says Janice Bryant Howroyd, founder, CEO, and chairman of
Torrance, California–based ACT-1, the largest female, minority-owned
employment service in the country. “If the candidate doesn’t have any
questions, that really clouds my estimation of their interest and ability to
engage.”
In fact, Bryant Howroyd’s practice is to ask just one question, and
then immediately throw the ball to the job seeker. Bryant Howroyd’s
first question, after greeting the job seeker, is:
What is your understanding of our meeting today?

How’s that for turning the interview topsy-turvy?
But Bryant Howroyd understands she can tell more from candidates
by the quality of their questions than by the quality of their answers. So
the next instruction is:

I would now like you to ask me seven questions.

Depending on the quality of the applicant’s response to the first query,
Bryant Howroyd invites the applicant to ask her from three to seven spe-
cific questions. The higher her initial estimation of the applicant, the
more questions she requests. What’s more, Bryant Howroyd gives the
applicant permission to ask her any questions at all. No limits. And then
she listens. “I learn a lot more about people by allowing them to ask me
what they want to know than by having them tell me what they think I
want to know,” she says. True, the hiring company ultimately selects the
applicant, but “the applicants I most admire insist on being full part-
ners in the selection process,” she says.

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