Questions Candidates Should Ask You in an Interview

This article is written for both sides of the interview table.

If you're a candidate, it's a guide to the questions you should be asking in every interview. Not to impress the interviewer, but because these are the questions that actually help you decide whether to join a company.

If you're a hiring manager or recruiter, it's a heads-up about what strong candidates will ask, and how to be ready with answers that don't sound like a recruiting deck. The quality of the candidate's questions is one of the most reliable signals in an interview. And the quality of your answers is one of the most reliable signals candidates use to decide whether to accept an offer.

Either way, this is the part of the interview most teams underinvest in. Fix it.

Why the candidate's questions matter so much

When an interviewer asks "do you have any questions for me," two things are being tested at once.

For the candidate: Have they genuinely engaged with the role and the company, or are they applying broadly and hoping something sticks?

For the employer: Can you actually answer the hard questions about your company, or do you fall back on generic talking points?

Both sides are being evaluated. This is the stage of the interview where mediocre candidates and mediocre companies both get exposed. Strong candidates ask sharp, specific questions. Strong companies give honest, specific answers. If either side falls back on generic statements, it's a flag.

What strong candidates ask (and why)

Here are the questions the best candidates ask in interviews, organized by what they reveal.

Questions about the role

• "What does success look like in this role 90 days in? 12 months in?" Why it's strong: The candidate is checking whether the role has clear expectations. Vague answers from the interviewer signal a role that isn't well defined, which often means a miserable first year.

• "What would the person in this role need to do in the first 90 days to be considered a great hire?" Why it's strong: Forces the interviewer to articulate concrete outcomes, not just responsibilities. Reveals whether the hiring manager has actually thought through what they need.

• "Why is this role open? Is it a new position or a backfill?" Why it's strong: A backfill of a long-tenured employee is a very different situation from a brand new role, and both are very different from a backfill of someone who left under difficult circumstances. This question surfaces the context.

• "What's the biggest challenge someone in this role would face in the first six months?" Why it's strong: Good interviewers give a real, specific answer. Weak interviewers give a generic "well, we're growing fast so it's always dynamic." That generic answer is useful signal.

Questions about the team

• "Can you tell me about the team I'd be joining? Who would I work with most closely?" Why it's strong: Every role exists inside a team. The candidate is trying to understand the human context, not just the abstract job description.

• "How does the team communicate day to day? What does a typical week look like?" Why it's strong: Surfaces team culture without asking the generic "what's the culture like" question that produces generic answers.

• "What's one thing about the team that you wouldn't put in a job posting but that someone joining should know?" Why it's strong: Forces honesty. Every team has quirks, tensions, or realities that don't make it onto the careers page. This question opens the door to a real conversation.

Questions about the hiring manager

• "How would you describe your management style?" Why it's strong: Candidates need to know whether they'll work well with this person. Vague or defensive answers here are a real warning sign.

• "What do the most successful people on your team have in common?" Why it's strong: Reveals what the hiring manager actually values, not what they say they value on a recruiting deck.

• "How do you give feedback to your team? How often, and in what format?" Why it's strong: Manager quality is one of the biggest predictors of job satisfaction. This question tests whether the manager has thought about this at all.

Questions about the company

• "What's the company betting on right now? What has to go right in the next 12 months?" Why it's strong: Gets past the surface-level pitch and into the actual strategic context. Strong leaders answer this crisply. Weak ones deflect.

• "What's the hardest thing about working here?" Why it's strong: Every company has real downsides. An interviewer who can't name one is either misinformed or being dishonest. Neither is a good sign.

• "How have things changed here in the last year? What's different now from a year ago?" Why it's strong: Especially important for fast-growing companies. Signals whether the interviewer has a clear-eyed view of the company's evolution.

Questions about the interview process

• "What are the next steps, and when should I expect to hear back?" Why it's strong: Not just about logistics. Companies that can't answer this clearly tend to run chaotic hiring processes, which is often a preview of how they operate generally.

• "Who else will I be meeting with, and what will each of them be assessing?" Why it's strong: Signals whether the company has a structured interview process or whether each interviewer does their own thing. The latter is a warning sign.

Questions candidates should probably avoid asking (or at least, not first)

Not every question that feels insightful actually lands well. These aren't forbidden, but timing matters.

• "What does the company do?" — Research it before the interview. Asking this is a red flag.

• "What's the salary?" — Fine to ask, but not as your first question. Ask it after you've shown genuine interest in the role. Better yet, raise it in the screening call with the recruiter.

• "How much vacation time do you offer?" — Legitimate question, but asking it before building rapport signals you're shopping more than engaging. Save it for when an offer is close.

• "Can I work remotely?" — Clarify this early through the recruiter or job description. If it's a make-or-break, surface it in the phone screen, not mid-interview.

The general principle: benefits and logistics questions are fine, just not in the first round. Early interviews should focus on role fit, team, and company.

What the interviewer should prepare for

If you're on the hiring side, here's what to have ready.

A concrete answer to "what does success look like in this role." Not "delivering results." Specific outcomes a strong hire would achieve in 90 days and 12 months. If you don't have these, write them down before your next interview.

A specific, honest answer to "what's the biggest challenge of this role." Every role has one. Candidates can tell when you're ducking the question.

A real answer to "what's the hardest thing about working here." This is the one that most interviewers fumble. The answer should be genuine, framed constructively, and short. Something like: "We move fast, which means priorities shift. People who need very stable, predictable work sometimes find that hard." Honest without being negative.

Specifics about the team. Who they are, what they do, how they work. Candidates joining a team want to know the humans they'll work with, not just the org chart.

Clarity on process and next steps. Candidates remember companies that communicate clearly. They really remember the ones that don't.

The two-way nature of good interviews

The best interviews feel like mutual evaluation, not an interrogation.

Candidates who ask good questions signal that they're being selective, which often correlates with strong candidates. Companies that answer questions honestly signal that they have nothing to hide, which often correlates with companies worth joining.

If an interview ends with the candidate asking no questions or the interviewer unable to give real answers, both sides should treat it as a warning.

A quick note on scoring the candidate's questions

If you're scoring a structured interview, include a section for the candidate's questions. Two to three points of signal to listen for:

• Specificity: Did they ask about things particular to this role, or generic questions?

• Engagement: Did they follow up on answers and ask clarifying questions?

• Judgment: Did they ask questions that showed they understand the role, or did they ask things they could have learned by reading the job posting?

This is often the easiest part of the interview to score because the signal is unusually clear. Strong candidates produce a noticeably different set of questions.

For more on how to build scoring into interviews, see [Interview Scorecard Template: How to Evaluate Candidates Fairly].

Build it into your interview guide

Give every interviewer a reminder in their guide: ten minutes at the end for the candidate's questions, and a prompt to score the quality of those questions. Candidates will notice the space, use it better, and give you sharper signal.