Page 145 - James Caan - Get the Job you Really Want

Asking the right questions

Bear in mind that I have been recruiting and interviewing for a
long time. If you are coming for an interview with me, you will

always get a very tough interview. Because I have heard all the
textbook answers, a thousand times over, the objective for me
in each interview is to dig and dig and dig, to discover places

you have never even thought about and ask questions that will
make you completely uncomfortable. I am always aiming to get
through the veneer.
Here’s a question for you. How many questions are you

going to ask?

You need to take control. Because if you don’t, the interviewer
will. And if the interviewer has taken control, it’s because you
have allowed them to do so. How do you avoid that? You make

sure that you ask as many questions as they do.
As a candidate I would always aim to ask fifty per cent of the
questions in an interview. Normally the interviewee talks for
at least seventy per cent of the time, but if you think about it
analytically, that is absolutely wrong, because both you and the

interviewer are there for the same reason.
You need to know whether this job is right for you: is the
company right for you, can you do the job, do you want the job?

You are in exactly the same position as the employer, who needs
to know the answers to precisely those same questions. That’s
why it has to be 50/50. When you walk out of the door, if you
want to know how well you have performed, ask yourself how

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