| I try to always formulate my questions using the classic STAR behavioral question format (specific situation, task, action, and result). You can look this up, there's plenty of articles about it online. Then I ask questions that give me insights on the company's culture and how they perceive themselves. Below are some examples of the themes and questions I use. I generally ask only 2-3 questions at the end of an interview because of time limitation, so I always pick the ones that will give me information about the aspects I have the most concerns about and feel the need to dig into. One extra trick: when I know I'll be meeting multiple people in multiple interview rounds, then I keep one of the questions the same across all rounds. I do this to see what different types of data I get from various people, and if the information converges or diverges. If they all have the same answer more or less it's a good sign, but if the answers differ, it means they're either mis-aligned internally, or they're trying to bullshit me in some way (sometimes they might have randomly different answers, and it doesn't mean anything). Also, I sometimes use the answer to one of my questions from one round to narrow down another question in another round. For example, once I asked a developer about recent unpopular decisions (see below), to which he replied the founder asked all employees to show up no later than 10am, and the tone was perceived as top-down and not well received. So then in my chat with the founder, I asked him what he thought of the reaction people when he announced his ask for them to show up no later than 10am, and I was able to get insights as to what makes him tick (which I wouldn't have been able to ask if I had not collected that information in a previous interview). Here are some examples of questions I ask, categorized per themes: ### Success - How do you evaluate success? What was the last big achievement that was celebrated? - Can you give me an example of a person or a team who did something that was very successful in the past year? How was this person rewarded for it? ### Conflict resolution - Can you tell me of a time when you had a disagreement with someone on your team? - What tends to create conflict, and how does it get resolved? ### Decision making - How are decisions made when there’s disagreement and stakes are high? - Can you describe an unpopular decision that was taken recently, and what was the result? ### Working with the founders (if a startup) - What do you like the most about working with the founders? - Do you have an example in mind of how the founders involved the employees in an important decision? ### Process - Can you give me an example of the lifecycle of a feature? How do you go from idea to final implementation? ### Motivation - Can you tell me of something that you're really proud of/not proud of? - What do you like the most about working here? - What is the one thing you would change about the company? ### Opportunity - What was the company/department’s biggest challenge last year and what did you learn from it? |