The Two Questions You Need To Ask During an Interview
If you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance you already understand the basics of preparing for an interview. You want to rehearse your answers to the questions your interviewers are most likely to ask, and you want to prepare a polished resume.
But what can you do to stand out in the midst of a high-quality candidate pool?
As part of the ARSENAL Leader Lab, Frank Dolan set out to find the answer by speaking with Joe Mullings, CEO of the Mullings Group Companies and Chief Vision Officer for MRINetwork. Below, you’ll learn about the two questions you should be prepared to ask your interviewer. We hope this helps you during your job search.
What Will This Role Look Like In The Future?
When preparing for an interview, you want to thoroughly understand the role you’re speaking about. While you may be confident that you understand its present powers and responsibilities, you also want to ask what the role will look like 90 days out, 180 days out, one year out, and two years out.
Joe Mullings explains, “I want to make sure that as I answer the questions throughout the rest of the session we’re in right now, I have context and value added so I can give you my specific experience and my specific results of my experience, and context to what this role is going to look like.”
This isn’t a question you should leave for the end of the interview either. Mullings states that “It’s important to get to it early because it sets up the rest of the interview process.”
What Makes This Role Important For Your Department?
High-level interviewers will often feature multiple interviewers, each examining different aspects of how you could fit in with the company culture. This means that you may get different answers to the first question, “What will this role look like in the future?”
That’s why you want to follow up by asking what makes the role you’re interviewing important to the person who’s interviewing you. Along with gaining a more holistic understanding of the responsibilities, it also allows you to impress each individual interviewer.
Mullings explains the interviewer’s mindset: “From the perspective of sales, marketing, ops, finance, cause they’re all selfishly looking for what is most valuable for them. And then once you can isolate both of those, you can then give your experience back to them in a highly valued answer versus a broad answer.”
Understanding an interviewer’s perspective will help you impress them.
Wondering How You Can Set Yourself Up For Success?
Joe Mullings is well-known in the life sciences field for his expertise in personal branding. If you’re wondering what you can do during the job search process, he has valuable wisdom. He’s always looking for people to connect with on LinkedIn.
You can also see him in True Future TV, a docuseries where he has in-depth, interesting conversations with life science companies. It’s designed to do for the life sciences industry what Anthony Bourdain did for cooking, so we encourage you to check it out.