Questions to Ask in an Interview: 50 That Do Two Jobs

Most lists of questions to ask in an interview treat the final five minutes as a performance: memorise six clever lines and recite them when invited. The research on question-asking points somewhere more specific.

A Harvard Business School study found that people who ask more questions come across as more likeable, but the effect came mainly from follow-up questions that built on what the other person had just said. Questions that jumped to an unrelated topic did not increase liking. A prepared question read off a notepad is, by definition, a topic jump.

Your questions also do a second job most lists ignore: finding out whether you want the job. Below are 50 questions grouped by purpose and stage, plus a method for turning any of them into a follow-up.

Why do the questions you ask in an interview matter?

The impression. In the Harvard studies, which covered chat conversations and speed dating, people who asked more follow-up questions received higher liking ratings and more second-date requests. The authors also note that too many questions can annoy a partner, especially if you reveal nothing in return.

Due diligence. ZipRecruiter's Q4 2025 survey of new hires found 69.2% had not experienced "new job regret", so roughly three in ten had. BambooHR's onboarding study put first-week second thoughts at 44%.

The two regret figures only look contradictory. BambooHR measured a first-week wobble; ZipRecruiter asked people hired within six months whether they had regretted the move. Good questions are the cheapest defence against the lasting kind.

How many questions should you ask, and at which stage?

The phone screen interview questions guide covers the recruiter call, and second interview questions covers later rounds, where fit with the wider team becomes the main test. This article is the question bank both draw from.

Which questions to ask in an interview about the role?

The posting describes the job someone wanted to advertise. These reveal the job you will actually do.

The work itself

1. What does a typical week look like, and how much of it matches the posting?
2. What's the most urgent problem this person needs to solve in the first three months?
3. Why is this role open: is it new, or did someone move on?
4. Which part of this job does the posting undersell or leave out?
5. Which parts of the role are fixed, and which can the new person shape?
6. Which tools and systems will I use every day?
7. Where does most of the work come from: planned projects, other teams' requests, or firefighting?

Question 3 carries the most information per word. A new role means you will define it; a replacement means someone has already set expectations.

Success and measurement

1. What would you want this person to have achieved after a year?
2. How will you know, at six months, whether this hire has worked out?
3. What separates people who do well here from people who struggle early on?
4. Can you describe someone who excelled in this role and what they did differently?
5. What does the first 30 days look like in practice?
6. Which decisions will I own outright, and which need sign-off?
7. Who outside the team will I work with most closely?

If the manager cannot answer question 9, expect your review to rest on impressions rather than results.

Which questions reveal the team and the manager?

The manager

1. How would you describe your management style, and how do you give feedback?
2. How often do you meet one to one with your reports, and what do those meetings cover?
3. Do you prefer to hear about a problem early and rough, or later with a proposed fix?
4. When did you last change your mind because someone on the team pushed back?
5. How do you support people who want to grow beyond their role?

The team

1. What's this team's biggest strength, and where is it stretched thin?
2. How long have most people on the team been here?
3. Where have people in this role gone next?
4. How does the team settle disagreements about priorities?
5. What does a bad week look like here, and how often does one happen?
6. How do evenings, weekends and on-call work in practice rather than on paper?
7. For hybrid teams: how do decisions get made when people aren't in the same room?

Questions 21 and 22 together give you a tenure signal without asking anyone to criticise a colleague. In a panel interview, put question 24 to a peer rather than the manager; peers answer it more candidly.

What should you ask about the company and its direction?

1. What are the company's priorities for the next 12 months, and how does this team contribute?
2. What's the biggest challenge the business faces right now?
3. How has the company changed over the past two years?
4. If there was a restructuring recently, how did it affect this team?
5. Is this role funded for the full year, and how does headcount planning work?
6. What does leadership talk about most in company-wide meetings?
7. What do you personally enjoy about working here, and what would you change?
8. How does the company decide when the data and someone's instinct disagree?

Question 31 matters more than it used to. The site's ghost jobs research puts the defensible floor at roughly one listing in five with no real hire behind it, and a direct question about funding helps separate a live requisition from a hopeful one. Hesitation is informative.

Which questions to ask in an interview about growth, pay and process?

Growth

1. How do performance reviews work, and how often do they happen?
2. How do promotions and pay rises get decided, and who is involved?
3. How much budget or time is there for training?
4. How does internal mobility work if I wanted to move teams later?

Pay

1. The posting lists a range; is that still accurate for this level?
2. How is total compensation split across base, bonus and equity?
3. Which parts of the package do people here value most?

Question 39 simply confirms what the employer has already published. Timing, wording and what to do when no range exists are covered in how to ask about salary in an interview; in short, pay questions belong with the recruiter, and hiring-manager time is better spent on questions 8 to 19.

Process and close

1. What are the next steps, and when should I expect to hear back?
2. Who else will I meet during the process?
3. Is there anything in my background you'd like me to expand on?
4. Is there anything I can send you that would help your decision?

Question 44 is a softer version of "Do you have any concerns about my fit?" Both let you address a doubt before the debrief, but the softer wording avoids putting the interviewer on the spot.

How do you turn a prepared question into a follow-up?

Note two or three things the interviewer mentions in passing, such as a project, a problem or a change, then use one of these frames.

1. "You mentioned [X]. What's driving that?"
2. "When you said [the team is rebuilding reporting], what would done look like?"
3. "You said last quarter was difficult. What did the team learn from it?"
4. "How did you personally handle [the challenge they described]?"
5. "If I started on Monday, which of the things you've described would land on my desk first?"

Question 50 makes a strong closer, because it asks the interviewer to picture you in the role.

Prepared: "What are the team's priorities for next year?" The manager gives the polished overview six other candidates heard this week.
Anchored: "Earlier you mentioned the Salesforce migration slipped twice. Is fixing that the main thing this hire is for?" The manager gives a candid answer about the real job, and remembers who picked up on the migration.

What questions should you avoid asking?

Harvard Business Review makes the same point: framing matters as much as content. "How much holiday do I get?" in a first interview reads as your priority; "How do people manage workload around busy periods?" covers similar ground as a question about the work.

If you have genuinely run out, anchor one: "You covered the role in detail. What made you join?" A forgotten question can also go in your interview follow up email.

What good questions cannot do

A strong set of questions will not rescue weak answers earlier in the interview. The question-asking research comes from casual conversation rather than hiring panels, so treat it as a strong steer, not a guarantee. And questions cannot surface what an interviewer will not say: a manager planning to leave will still describe the team warmly. What they can do is lower your odds of joining the three in ten who regret the move. To rehearse answers and questions together, Rezoom's interview preparation tool runs practice interviews against a real posting.