[rjd]

Spending years as a short term on site contractor I've picked up one question I find invaluable. I always ask "what are the pain points you have to deal with"

I've asked it so often and been in so many different teams I can more or less tell what the working environment and management will be like now.

Generally they aren't expecting this question so you catch them flat footed and get a clear unfiltered emotional response. The emotion on there faces betrays them. Every team has pain points, they have to answer the question with something negative, but its how they react with them that gives away a lot about the work place.

From a good teams you'll get a chuckle or story, which indicates to me a culture of understanding and dealing with things sensibly. Sometimes just a smile followed by a negative statement like "well releasing is problematic". But its that initial positive reaction.

From bad teams I've seen panicked looks between interviewers to make sure they don't divulge something, people turning white/clammy/sweaty, refusals to answer/insisting to move on/changing topics, silent stars at me LOL anything thats not openly a positive emotion.

[laughfactory]

I agree that's an excellent question. It's not fool proof, but no question is. Given my experience, I think it'd catch 90%+ of the bad apples.

Thanks for sharing. I'll use it from now on in job interviews.

[mooreds]

Wow. This is a great question. Not just for interviewers, though.

I manage a small team and was wondering what I would say if asked this question--probably that our pain points are our server hardware/software, which are a bit, shall we say, "antique". Some of the other pain points fall out of that one.

[rmc]

I like it. It's the flip side of "So what's your greatest weakness" bullshit question that's sometimes asked of employees.