Asking Great Questions Q&A and Videos

I had a round with a recruiter from a Big Tech company today. She reached out to me on LinkedIn, but it wasn't for a specific role, it was more of a call to determine what team would be best for me.

The call lasted about 25 minutes, where she asked about my background and explained the interview process. Then she asked me if I had any questions.

I felt constrained in asking questions because I felt like the questions I would ask a Hiring manager or member of the team to find out more about the team would not be questions the recruiter could answer. Also, she is recruiting for many teams, so how much can she really know about the team?

Should I have taken the opportunity to ask questions?

My usual go-to questions are:

• What are the company’s/team’s greatest challenges right now?
• What can you tell me about the team or group I’d be working with?
• How has the company changed in the past year?
• What are your favourite and least favourite things about working here?

The first 2 are team specific and are ones I felt the recruiter might not be able to answer so well. Indeed, when I asked what the company's biggest challenges were, she said that's very broad question, and I don't think she could answer for the team. She already told me basic info about the team, so I couldn't ask my 2nd question.

I could've asked the latter 2, but they feel kinda forced, especially during an intro call.

Should I have asked anything? I'd like to make a good impression on her, but I also don't know how important that is since she's going to take my profile back to the team and they'll determine if they want to proceed with me.

I've heard that a good question could be "How did you find me?" or "What made you interested in me?" since it forces them to come up with strong points about you and thus gives you a more positive image in their mind. Practically though, if I ask "how did you find me?", they might say "simple LinkedIn keyword search" rather than "I love your background using X, Y and Z tech!"

Thanks!

Just watched this short course before work today, and found it very relevant. I'm a veteran developer. I'd like more content and wisdom on how to have the confidence to ask questions so I can onboard effectively when there is a steep power imbalance. I'm feeling pretty exposed in a new position as the information I need to get a solid foundation is not readily available, and my leaders technical writing is so brief as to be unusable for new starters (its expert writing for experts, not expert writing for the less knowledgable).

I know you said if you went into more detail it would be 20 hours, but seriously, that would be extremely valuable content for me.

The difference between a great place to work and a mediocre place to work is often the quality and willingness to of colleagues both senior and junior to communicate and share. The worst places are when colleagues on the same team don't really work together on problems and only communicate through PRs. Such feedback is too late IMHO and leads to waste and low motivation.

I have weekly meetings with leadership, and they consistently ask more about our timelines and engineering work, which I understand we need to provide.

Having said that, what are some of the questions we engineers can ask leadership/product to hold them accountable for some of the requirements?

What are some of the customer-centric questions we could ask?