Examples for Various Departments on Your Agenda
In an interview there is an often-overlooked opportunity when an interviewer asks, “What questions do you have for me?”, and we don’t want you to be caught off-guard.
It can come across lazy or disinterested if you don’t have anything prepared. The interviewer may think you didn’t do your homework, or just didn’t care enough to prepare anything.
Understandably, it can be tricky to ask insightful questions when you aren’t 100% sure on everyone’s roles, how they interact with different departments, and what their top objectives are.
DO SOME HOMEWORK:
You want to do a little research on your interviewers ahead of time to know who you’ll be meeting with and try to ascertain some details about their role and functions. From there, you can try to formulate some insightful questions that would relate to the role you’re applying for, things you’re genuinely interested to know. When in doubt, feel free to ask more about the interviewer’s position to try to gain a better understanding. Example: “Since titles at each company are a little different, can you share more about what your role as “Medical Affairs Manager” encompasses?”
CONSIDER YOUR DELIVERY:
In my opinion, there aren’t many questions or topics that are totally off-limits- it’s more about the framing, context, and delivery of the question that tends to be super impactful. For example: “What are your metrics?” vs. “Can you share more about how you measure the success of your MSLs?”.
**Please note- there are questions you don’t want to ask in an interview scenario. Use your best judgment and common sense.**
BUILD:
Another trick you can use if you’re having trouble coming up with questions, is to build from the previous interviews you’ve had with different interviewers at the company and use those as foundations for new questions. It can be as simple as, “In my meeting with Crecia she mentioned there was potential team expansion on the horizon. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and didn’t have too much time to dig into the details, would you be able to share more about what the potential expansion may entail?”. You can also mention a project/topic that came up in an earlier interview and just ask about their perspective since they are in a different role/department and might have different information to share. Again, it’s all about context and delivery.
ANOTHER TIP:
Be sure to consider all the nuance of the role you’re applying for and try to incorporate some of those pieces into your questions. That can go a long way to demonstrate your interest and engagement in the process.
For further example questions for different departments, please look at our companion resource “Interview Questions You Can Ask! Examples for Various Departments on Your Agenda”. You can access the FREE resource here.
This won’t be an all-inclusive or exhaustive list of questions of course, but the goal is to help get your mind working in the right direction and help inspire you to formulate some thought-provoking questions of your own.
Best of luck in your job search!
-Crecia