What questions should I ask the hiring manager during an interview?

I don't really like any of the top responses- they're too standard and boring. It's easier to think about by pretending you're the interviewer and imagining what you'd most want to hear.

If you want to completely shock them, try to figure out a question (or two) to ask them that they wish their regular employees or even superiors should be asking, or should be trying to answer themselves but aren't because they don't care, or whatever. It works even for mundane labor jobs. Ex, "If I worked here on the night crew, how would I build my orders in such a way that it makes it easier for the drivers to sort through and deliver without slowing them down at the jobsite?" If you said this sentence in a interview at a distribution center, not only would you have the job almost automatically, they probably would already consider how you could move up.

Another variant of the same idea that can be used as another question is to ask how you personally could change the state of the company and improve it on your own over the next few years. It's basically the same as above except you are asking them to tell you things you might not actually know, while implying you are going to be there a long time.

Another good one is to ask how the company has changed from the past, to present, and what the plan for the future is. Sometimes the timeline of this can be kind of negative, so you refer to the examples above I gave as a segway in order to figure out how to fix it. If the answer is that the company is moving in a positive direction, you ask what you can do to maintain it for starters and how to improve it even more.

Third and most important piece of advice I have is that you genuinely should not consider their questions more important than yours. They really are just reading off a sheet most of the time and are extremely bored of doing it. Your answers should be short and sweet/honest, and your questions should matter way more. If they ask you something and it's difficult to answer, you definitely should not try to fast-talk and bullshit a response. Either take your time to think about what your actual response is- despite the awkward silence (it shows them you are actually thinking at least, instead of bullshitting)- or just say you don't have a good answer. Even if it feels awkward, it's fine- at the end just nail them with 3 or 4 pre-planned questions that will stun them and then you will have the job.

/r/personalfinance Thread