Questions to ask at the end of an interview

The questions at the end feel like the interview winding down, but the panel is still listening. What you ask shows how much you have thought about the role, and whether you are weighing it up seriously or just hoping for an offer. Saying you have no questions rarely ends an interview well, even when you mean that everything has been covered.

It works in your favour too. It is the one part of the interview you control completely, and it is your best chance to find out whether you want the job. A good question gets you information you could not have found anywhere else.

• Prepare five or six questions and expect to ask two or three, because some will be answered during the interview.
• Write them down and take them in with you. Glancing at a list is fine, and it shows you prepared.
• If everything really has been covered, say which question they already answered, and ask one of the others.

The most useful questions are about the work itself: what you would actually spend your time on, and what the person interviewing you would count as a job well done. The answers tell you whether the role matches the advert, and they often hand you one last chance to connect your experience to what they need.

• What would you want the person in this role to have achieved in their first three months?
• How will performance in this role be measured?
• Is this a new role, or is it replacing someone? If it is new, what led to it?
• Which part of the job do people find hardest to get right?
• What does a typical week look like?

You will spend more time with the team than with anything in the job description, so ask about it. These questions suit the hiring manager best. If your interviewer is from HR or another team, ask instead what they know of how the team works, or save these for a later stage.

• How big is the team, and how is the work split?
• Who would I work with most closely outside the team?
• How would you describe the way you manage?
• How does the team give and receive feedback?
• What do the people who do well in this team tend to have in common?

Questions about the bigger picture show you are thinking beyond the first day. Make them specific by building on your research: a question that mentions something you read about the organisation shows the homework without having to point at it.

• Where is the organisation heading over the next year or two, and how does this team fit into that?
• What training or support is there for someone new to the role?
• How do people here usually develop or progress?
• What has changed most for the team over the last year?

Finish by asking about the next steps, so you leave knowing when to expect news and do not spend the following week guessing. If you feel brave, you can also ask whether there is anything in your background they would like you to expand on. It gives you a last chance to answer a doubt before they discuss you, and an interviewer who has none will usually say so.

• What are the next steps, and when should I expect to hear?
• Is there anything about my experience you would like me to expand on?

Some questions are better left out of a first interview:

• Anything the organisation's website already answers, such as what it does. It suggests you did not look.
• Salary, benefits and holiday, unless the interviewer raises them. There is time for those once the interest is clearly mutual.
• Questions with a yes or no answer, which close a conversation instead of opening one.
• Questions that suggest you are already looking past the job, such as how soon you could move to another team.