If you’re seeking for opportunities to grow or caring about delivering high-quality product, what are the critical things you need to know about a company? The vision, the culture, the process?
Choosing a company, a team, a good manager means a lot for everyone. In order to evaluate the opportunity, asking questions to the hiring manager would be a great way to learn. Here are 5 tough questions I asked my managers before.
(Picture from Unsplash)
1. How does your team or company make decisions?
This question can help you to get a glance of how the process goes. By listening how your manager answers that, you want to pay attention to a couple of things:
Do they rely on someone on the top to dig into every detail to make the final approval? Do they rely on nitty-gritty documents to make decisions? If yes, you might spend tons of times on working on details instead of more important things, such as figuring out users’ needs or solving problems. These are way more important than details in my perspective.
Does the leadership give enough trust for people to make their own decisions? If not, micromanaging from top could exist.
Will the company blame people if the project fails? Do higher level employees have more power to the decision? An equal and trusted working environment will promote collaboration and success.
Or more fundamentally, do they even know product decision should be made based on research? It should be yes. Otherwise you’re working as an artist, not a UX designer.
2. How would you help your team members to grow?
By asking this question, you’ll know if your manager understands how to help you being promoted. Your manager could be new. They don’t have to have the experience to help you grow. A person with growth mindset can always learn from their managers.
Your manager doesn’t have to provide one solution fits all. But at least they will not leave you there, keeping working on project without giving you guidance on what to improve and how to improve.
If you have your career plan in mind, any area you want to grow, any skill you want to build, this is also a good time to bring to the table. A good manager knows how to coach you instead of laboring you.
3. How do you prevent people working in a silo? How does your team collaborate with other stakeholders and teams?
It’s a pretty common problem for cross-geo team or even now everyone is working from home. A good manager will support the team to communicate some essential needs and help the team to work on clarification.
Do the product team communicate frequently? Do they expect to communicate through meetings? Or do they expect you to read docs and comments on your own? From my past experience, I think a good product team should have the expectation that team goals don’t just rely on updating docs. It’s a good record though. But it can not replace person-to-person communications. You can’t expect people won’t have questions. And there are always more effective ways to communicate.
4. What are you expecting me to bringing to the team?
Is your manager aware of your strength? Does your strength match your manager’s expectations? I believe a good manager will value your strengths instead of focus on your “weaknesses”. If they understand that how to maximize your skills, your everyday work will become more enjoyable and your efforts will be appreciated.
If the manager’s expectation matches your skills, you can also think about: Is this something you want to keep doing for the next 3–5 years? Do you enjoy being yourself or do you want to try something new? Does your manager support your goal? A supportive leader will say you can do it, rather than making you feel you can’t do it. Once you believe you can achieve your goals, you’ll start paying attention on how to achieve it.
5. How would you compare your current company VS your previous one?
Managers are usually very experienced. If your future manager came from another company before, they must have lots of insights on different operation styles and how those operation level stuff affects their own career development.
If your manager is being transparent and honest (this is also an essential element when building a trusted relationship between you and your manager), his or her answer can help you get an overview about this company. And hopefully, you’ll get excited about this new opportunity, which also means your manager is a motivated leader. Who don’t want to work with a motivated person?
Final thoughts
Interviewing for a job is like dating. By asking some critical questions, you’re also evaluating how the team works, seeing if there is growing and learning opportunities, and understanding their management style.
