Job interviews go both ways (2011)

It's funny. Lots of companies are going to increasingly great lengths to filter candidates based on inane tests that supposedly measure technical competence, but many if not most of them do little to filter candidates based on their apparent interest in the job opportunity as a whole.

Obviously, there are reasons candidates shy away from asking "tough" questions other than "I don't really care", but startups in particular should be wary of candidates who don't demonstrate a certain level of curiosity beyond the day-to-day technical rigmarole.

Put simply, look to hire people who understand that interviews go both ways.

In practice, I think that's the way 'both way' interviews generally have to go - you don't interview your interviewer, but you do evaluate and judge your potential employer critically.

Personally, my attempts at interviewing an interviewer have served to inform my decision, but not at all due to the face-value of the responses as they're generally going to be hard if not impossible to validate.

>'Very rarely someone probes me to see if they would like to have me as their boss.'

I'd like to try that someday...

Who's the weakest person on your team? What do you mean to do about that? When's the last time you lied to someone here? How did you rationalize it? Are you on any medications? Do you cheat on your spouse? What are you most insecure about?

The type of questions I'd really like to know the answers to - the sort that you learn the answers to within the first few months of any new job aren't the sort that I'm likely to get answers to much less completely honest ones.

I don't want to work with people who don't care.

"What would you say separates the strongest and the weakest members of your team?"

It allows you to get a sense of what they value in the team without needing to make them get defensive over staff they probably worked hard to acquire.