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Job search interview questions: a script for two calls
Job search interview questions to ask the recruiter in the screening call and the manager in the next, with why each works and how to handle a restricted one.
Most advice about job search interview questions is about answering them. Candidates who prepare only answers arrive at the end of a process with a decision to make and no information to make it with. This page is a script for the two calls where asking matters most.
What to take away
- The screening call and the manager conversation are different interviews, and the questions worth asking differ.
- Specific questions about the recent past get facts. General questions about culture get slogans.
- The questions you ask are also assessed, which is a reason to make them real rather than clever.
- Decide in advance how you will handle a restricted question, and know what a fake process looks like.
The screening call
This is usually a recruiter, working from a list, with three purposes: confirm you meet the stated requirements, establish that you are available and reachable, and find out whether the pay range works. It is short and it is a filter.
Four questions are especially useful in this call because the recruiter is more likely than the manager to know the process and hiring details.
- What is the approved salary range, and is it base salary or total compensation?
- What level and scope is the role approved for?
- What are the remaining interview steps and expected timing?
- Is this a new role or a backfill, and what prompted the opening?
Four questions for the recruiter screen
- What is the range, base or total?
- How many stages, and what are they?
- Is there an internal candidate?
- When was the role approved, and why open?
The last question is the most useful and the least asked. A backfill for someone who left, a role created after a reorganization, and a role that has been open for four months are three different situations, and each changes how you should read everything that follows.
The manager conversation
Here the useful questions are about the recent past rather than about intentions. Intentions are free and everyone has good ones. Each of the five questions below is aimed at something the team has already done.
Manager questions and why they work
Question
- Last quarter
- What team spent time on
- Broken now
- What this hire must fix
- Decide alone
- What you can decide
- Previous seat
- Who was here before
- One year
- What must be true
Why it works
- Last quarter
- Cannot be an aspiration
- Broken now
- Everyone knows what it is
- Decide alone
- Real scope, not the title
- Previous seat
- Evidence of where role leads
- One year
- Turns job description into target
| Question | Why it works |
|---|---|
| What has the team actually spent the last quarter on? | Cannot be answered with an aspiration |
| What is currently broken that this hire is expected to fix? | There is always something, and everyone knows what it is |
| What would I be able to decide without asking? | Establishes real scope, not the title's |
| Who was in this seat before, and where did they go? | The best available evidence about where the role leads |
| What has to be true in a year for this hire to have worked? | Turns the job description into a target |
The fourth is the question that most often changes a candidate's mind, in either direction. A seat that has produced three internal promotions and a seat that has produced three resignations are the same job on paper.
After each call, write down what you were told, in their words, within the hour. By the fourth conversation, details blur, and you compare impressions, not facts. Notes also show whether the level, the scope and the range stay the same across the process.
Choosing how many questions to bring
Bring more questions than you will use, chosen so that most survive being answered earlier in the conversation. Five that matter beats a list of twenty. If yours are answered before you ask, say so and ask a follow-up on the thing that interested you most.
That reads better than working through a list that has already been addressed. The interviews guide covers general preparation across formats, and what the hiring process reveals covers the stages themselves.
When a restricted question lands
Several categories of question are prohibited or restricted in United States hiring. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's overview of prohibited employment practices sets out the federal position, including protections under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act add further protections. Know which apply where you live before the call. State and local rules add to them; California law and New York City's rules, for example, restrict salary-history inquiries.
When a restricted question lands
A prohibited or restricted question is asked
Answer it -> you give the information
Decline politely -> you set a boundary
If one lands, you have three reasonable options: answer it, decline politely, or answer the legitimate concern underneath it. A question about children can be answered with your availability, and one about where you are from with your right to work.
Deciding in advance which option you will use is worth more than any script. In the room, the difficulty is surprise, not wording.
When the interview is not real
Signs a process is not real
- Offer with no interview
- Pay for equipment or training
- Bank details before a contract
- Interview by message
- Urgency
The Federal Trade Commission's account of job scams covers current variants. The pattern is stable.
The related case is the process that is real but is not hiring: a competitor gathering information, or a firm collecting ideas through an unpaid exercise. Ask who reads a take-home task and whether the output will be used. An honest employer answers immediately.
For running several processes at once without losing track of which one is real, see the job search guide.
Common questions
Is it rude to ask about pay in the first call?
No. The recruiter has a range written down and expects the question. Asking it late is what causes problems, because both sides have then invested time.
Should I ask about working arrangements before an offer?
Yes, and factually rather than tentatively: what the actual pattern is for the team now, not what the policy permits. Policies and practice diverge and only one of them affects your week.
They would not answer the question about the previous occupant. What does that mean?
Sometimes confidentiality, and sometimes that the answer is unhelpful. Ask instead how long the role has existed and how many people have held it. That is rarely refused and gets you most of the way.
