Questions for the interviewer: bringing rigor, structure and executive presence

I wanted to share an approach to the "what questions do you have for me" part of the interview that I've recently developed.

In his best-seller Thinking, Fast and Slow, Economics Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman presents his research that scoring job candidates across structured criteria predicts employee future success more accurately than other interviewing methods. Similarly, McKinsey requires its interviewers to fill out a structured score card on job candidate performance as part of interview feedback. So shouldn't the job candidate grill her interviewer using a structured criteria as well?

Bringing this scorecard approach from Kahneman and McKinsey together with the hypothesis-driven problem solving we develop in the case interview, you could lay out a framework like the one below that you could use to conduct due diligence on the job opportunity in your conversation with the interviewer. (Note that the set of 3 category names of "Company", "Role" and "Boss" is taken from interview coach Andrew LaCivita of whom I'm a fan).

Let the interviewer know that you're learning about their company's job opportunity with rigor and a structured approach, and that you'd like to ask at least one question in each of the 3 buckets of your framework as time permits.

questions for interviewer McKinsey BCG Bain

 

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