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When an interviewer asks, “What questions do you have for us?”, choose a few that reveal how the job works, how success is judged, who you will work with, and what happens next. You do not need to ask every question on this checklist. Prepare a broad menu, mark the questions that remain unanswered during the conversation, and finish with the three to five that matter most to your decision.
Use the role description and the employer’s mission, values, products, services, clients, and leadership to make your wording specific. Career centers at UC Davis and UW–Madison recommend this two-way approach: your questions help you evaluate the position while showing that you prepared.
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How to use this interview-question checklist
Print the table or copy it into your notes app. Before the interview, read the job description twice: first for duties and required skills, then for clues about priorities, reporting lines, and measures of success. Research the organization’s mission, values, products or services, clients, and leadership, as the UC Davis Career Center advises. Prepare brief examples from your experience that connect to the skills the role requires.
During the interview, listen for answers that remove questions from your list. A question that was already answered can be replaced with one that explores an unresolved issue. The objective is not to perform a script; it is to leave with information you can use to judge the opportunity and to show informed interest.
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The University of California, Riverside Career Center’s graduate guidance suggests preparing five questions, including one about culture and one about what success looks like in the first 90 days. Treat five and 90 days as that center’s practical example, not a rule for every interview. A shorter, better-targeted list is appropriate when the conversation has already covered your priorities.
Printable master checklist
Tick a question only if you still need an answer. Leave the notes column blank when printing, or use it to record names, examples, and follow-up items.
| Select | Question to ask | What it helps you learn | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| □ | What would you want the person in this role to accomplish in the first few months? | Immediate priorities and onboarding expectations | |
| □ | How will you assess whether someone is succeeding in this position? | Measures, review practices, and accountability | |
| □ | What are the most important responsibilities in a typical week? | Actual work compared with the posting | |
| □ | What challenges should a new person expect to take on? | Constraints, risk, and the first problems to solve | |
| □ | Who would I work with most closely? | Team structure and key relationships | |
| □ | How does the team typically collaborate and share feedback? | Communication and feedback habits | |
| □ | What is the work environment or culture like in practice? | How stated values appear in daily work | |
| □ | What qualities help someone work well with this team? | Behaviors and interpersonal expectations | |
| □ | What opportunities are there to learn or build skills in this role? | Training, stretch work, and skill development | |
| □ | How have people in similar roles developed over time? | Examples of progression and changing scope | |
| □ | What would you hope the person in this role learns during the first year? | Learning priorities beyond immediate tasks | |
| □ | What are the next steps in the process? | Remaining stages and who is involved | |
| □ | When do you expect to make a decision? | Indicative timing, without assuming a universal schedule | |
| □ | Is there anything about my experience you would like me to clarify? | Chance to address a concern with evidence |
These prompts combine themes used by UC Davis, UC Riverside, Tufts, and DePaul. They are starting points: replace a broad phrase with a detail from the organization’s job description or public work.
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Clarify the work behind the title
Job titles vary widely between employers. Ask about a typical week to discover the balance of planned work, urgent requests, meetings, documentation, customer contact, or independent time. Follow up on any responsibility that appears unusually important in the posting: “The description emphasizes process improvement. Which process needs attention first?” This turns a generic question into evidence of preparation.
Define early expectations
Ask what the hiring manager wants accomplished in the first few months and how success will be assessed. Listen for concrete outputs, decision rights, review dates, and the people who set priorities. Vague answers may mean the role is still being defined; that is not automatically negative, but you should understand how ambiguity will be managed.
Surface the hard parts
“What challenges should a new person expect?” invites a realistic answer without presuming that the job is dysfunctional. Ask what has made the challenge difficult, what resources are available, and which trade-offs the team has chosen. Compare the answer with your own experience so you can explain how you would approach a similar situation.
Questions about the team and working environment
Understand relationships and reporting
Find out who you will collaborate with most often, who approves work, and which teams depend on your output. If the interviewer names several groups, ask how priorities are reconciled when requests conflict. This reveals the operating structure more reliably than a culture slogan.
Ask how collaboration happens
“How does the team typically collaborate and share feedback?” can cover meetings, written updates, reviews, documentation, and disagreement. Ask for a recent example if the answer stays abstract: “How did the team handle a change in direction on the last project?” The example shows whether the stated process is actually used.
Make culture observable
Culture is easier to evaluate through behavior than adjectives. Ask what qualities help someone work well with the team and what a successful colleague does when priorities change. You can also ask how managers recognize good work or respond when a project misses its target. Riverside’s graduate-interview guidance specifically recommends including a culture question, while Tufts lists the skills and qualities employers seek.
Questions about learning and career growth
Match development to your goals
Ask what opportunities exist to build skills, then clarify the form they take: coaching, formal training, project rotation, conference attendance, peer review, or increasing ownership. Do not assume an opportunity exists because the employer uses words such as “growth” or “learning” in its posting; ask for an example.
Ask how scope changes
“How have people in similar roles developed over time?” can reveal whether progression means deeper expertise, broader responsibility, people management, or a move to another team. Ask how performance conversations connect to that progression and what evidence is considered. DePaul’s examples for experienced candidates include questions about career growth and suggestions made to management.
Set a first-year learning target
Asking what the employer hopes the new hire learns during the first year helps you compare the role with your own goals. A useful answer identifies capabilities, relationships, or business knowledge rather than promising a particular promotion. Treat any timeline as an expectation to discuss, not a guarantee.
Questions about the hiring process
Close with practical next steps
If the interviewer has not explained the process, ask what stages remain, who will participate, and what preparation is expected. “When do you expect to make a decision?” is reasonable when phrased as an estimate; hiring schedules can change and there is no universal timeline.
Invite clarification
“Is there anything about my experience you would like me to clarify?” gives the interviewer a chance to raise a concern while you still have time to answer with a specific example. Keep the response focused: identify the relevant skill, describe what you did, and state the result or lesson.
Use the available time wisely
UW–Madison notes that the final 10–15 minutes often provide an opportunity for questions, but the length varies by interview and format. If time is short, ask the question that affects your decision most, then one that demonstrates knowledge of the role. Do not rush through a long list after the interviewer has signaled that the meeting is ending.
Adapt the checklist to your career stage
Student, intern, or early-career candidate
Connect your education and limited employment history to the work. Ask which coursework, projects, internships, campus activities, or transferable skills would be most useful in the first months. You can ask what support helps a new hire learn the role and how the team gives feedback to someone still building professional experience. Tufts’ examples explicitly include education and internships, along with strengths, motivation, and career goals.
Career changer
Focus on the transition rather than apologizing for it. Ask which capabilities matter immediately, what learning curve the manager expects, and how the team supports someone applying experience from another field. Prepare one example that translates your previous work into the language of the new role—for example, turning stakeholder coordination into project delivery or customer research into user insight.
Experienced professional
Ask how the role’s scope is defined today, which priorities are changing, and how the team evaluates someone who already has the core skills. DePaul’s experienced-candidate examples include questions about current employment, responsibilities, career growth, and suggestions made to management. You can add: “What changed in this position since it was last opened?” That question distinguishes a stable replacement from a newly expanded role.
Manager or senior leader
Probe decision authority, team goals, organizational priorities, and leadership expectations. Ask which decisions belong to the role, which require executive approval, and how success is balanced across people, delivery, quality, and financial or customer outcomes. These are role-specific prompts, so select the ones that match the level and the interviewer’s responsibilities.
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Ask what kinds of technical problems the team is solving, which tools or systems are central, how engineers or specialists collaborate with nontechnical partners, and how performance is evaluated. Match the question to the interview stage: a recruiter may explain the format, while a technical interviewer can discuss architecture, debugging, testing, or case-work expectations. Riverside distinguishes behavioral and technical or case interviews. UC Davis also identifies Cracking the Coding Interview as an optional coding-interview preparation book and says its Career Center has a copy to borrow; that is relevant to software roles with coding interviews, not a universal purchase recommendation.
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In-person or live video interview
Use the interviewer’s answers to decide what remains unknown. In a live conversation, a brief follow-up—“Could you give me an example?”—often produces more useful information than moving to the next prepared item. For a virtual meeting, keep the checklist beside the camera, but maintain eye contact and avoid reading every word.
One-way or recorded interview
You may not have a live question period. UTSA’s 2024 interview checklist notes that interviews can be virtual, one-way, or in person and recommends practicing traditional, behavioral, and technical questions. Prepare your questions anyway: they will help you research the employer, decide whether to continue, and formulate a concise response if a later live stage includes “What questions do you have for us?”
Behavioral, technical, or case stages
Behavioral interviews focus on examples of past actions; technical or case interviews test how you reason through a problem. Ask about evaluation criteria and the expected format when that information has not been provided. Avoid turning a technical interview into a demand for the “right” answer about the team’s tools; ask how choices are made and how new team members learn the system.
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- Mark essentials. Choose the questions that determine whether the work, manager, team, or development path fits your priorities.
- Write employer-specific versions. Replace generic wording with a product, client, initiative, or responsibility named in the job description or your organization research.
- Prepare a second tier. Keep two or three alternatives in case the interviewer answers your essentials spontaneously.
- Plan the order. Start with role or team questions while the conversation is substantive; reserve process timing for the close unless the interviewer raises it earlier.
- Record evidence. Afterward, write the answer, who gave it, and any promise or follow-up. Separate what was explicitly stated from your interpretation.
This approach follows the strategic preparation emphasized by UC Davis, UW–Madison, and UTSA without treating the checklist as a fixed script. The interviewer’s answers should determine which question comes next.
Compare roles or offers with the same evidence
When you are considering more than one opportunity, use the same five headings for each conversation. The career-center guidance supports these comparison axes, but it does not prescribe a universal score or weighting.
| Axis | Record | Decision prompt |
|---|---|---|
| Day-to-day responsibilities and scope | Typical week, ownership, urgent work, decision rights | Does the actual work match what I want to do? |
| Early expectations and success | First-month priorities, measures, review points, resources | Can I succeed with the available clarity and support? |
| Team, manager, and collaboration | Reporting line, partners, feedback, conflict handling | How will work feel and how will decisions get made? |
| Learning and career development | Skill-building methods, progression examples, changing scope | Does development here fit my next step? |
| Hiring process and timing | Remaining stages, participants, estimated decision date | What commitments and uncertainty remain? |
Keep compensation, benefits, location, schedule, and other employment terms in the comparison when they matter to your decision, but ask about them in a way that fits the employer, interview stage, and local norms. The available career-center guidance does not establish one stage at which every candidate should raise those subjects.
Common mistakes and how to correct them
- Asking everything on the page: Select unanswered questions instead of demonstrating that you memorized a list.
- Repeating information already given: Refer to the earlier answer and ask a deeper follow-up.
- Staying generic: Tie at least one question to a duty, product, client, or initiative you researched.
- Seeking a guarantee: Ask how progression, evaluation, or timing normally works; do not treat an example as a promise.
- Ignoring format: Prepare differently for a recruiter screen, behavioral interview, technical exercise, case discussion, one-way recording, or panel.
- Ending without a process check: If no timeline was explained, ask about next steps and the expected decision window.
- Failing to connect the answer to your experience: When an interviewer identifies a challenge, briefly explain a relevant example rather than launching into an unrelated pitch.
A one-page printing layout
For a paper copy, print the master table in landscape orientation and leave the notes column wide enough for names and dates. Circle three essentials before the interview, star two alternatives, and leave a blank line beneath the process questions for the promised follow-up. If you use a digital copy, add a checkbox beside each item and mark questions as “answered,” “partly answered,” or “ask later.”
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Bring the completed notes into your decision review, not back into the interview as a script. The value of the checklist is the evidence you collect about the work and workplace, alongside the examples you prepared to show how you would contribute.
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