Questions to ask the interviewer

Nearly every interview ends with the same line: “Do you have any questions for us?” It sounds like a formality, but it is the part of the interview where you choose the topic, and the interviewer is still forming their opinion while you speak. A good question shows you understood the job. A blank “No, I think you’ve covered everything” ends the conversation on nothing.

If that moment makes you freeze, you are in large company. These are the words people use when they ask about it online:

“I know I should ask something, but I never know what to say. Please help!”

Glassdoor Community

“What's your go to answer when the interviewer asks, “Do you have any questions for me?” And you literally have no questions?”

Glassdoor Community

Below are questions that work, sorted by round and by the kind of job (remote, startup, large company, senior), then how to read the answers you get, what to avoid, how to raise pay, and how to keep notes without looking like you are reading a script.

Why do interviewers ask “Do you have any questions for us?”

They want to see whether you have thought about the job rather than just the offer. Your question also shows what you care about, which says a lot about how you will behave once hired. And they are selling too. Good candidates have options, and this is their chance to make the role sound worth taking.

Some senior people say plainly that this is where they make up their minds. SoulCycle’s then CEO Melanie Whelan told CNBC in 2017 that a candidate’s questions told her more than their answers to hers, and that the weakest reply was saying everything had already been covered. Zillow’s CEO Jeremy Wacksman, speaking to Fortune in 2026 about executive hires, called it “an obvious red flag” when candidates “haven’t done their homework”, and complained about people asking “pretty basic questions that you could answer in 10 minutes on Google”.

So the best questions do two things at once: they get you information you actually need, and they show the interviewer you are already picturing yourself doing the work.

What are good questions to ask the interviewer?

These work in almost any interview, at almost any level. Pick the ones that match what you genuinely want to know. A real question asked with curiosity always beats a clever one asked from a list.

About the job itself

• What does a normal week in this role look like?
• What would you want the person in this role to have done in the first ninety days?
• What is the hardest part of this job that the job description does not mention?
• Is this a new role, or is someone moving on? What did they do well?
• How is success in this role measured, and who measures it?

About the team and your manager

• Who would I work with most closely day to day?
• How does the team decide what to work on next?
• When the team disagrees about something, how does it usually get settled?
• How often would I meet my manager one to one, and what do those meetings usually cover?
• How long have most people on the team been here?

Questions about your future manager are worth the slight awkwardness.Gallup’s research found that managers account for at least 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units. In plain terms, the person you report to shapes your days more than almost anything else in the offer.

About growth

• What did the last person who grew quickly in this team do differently?
• How do people here learn new skills: training, mentoring, or on the job?
• What does the path from this role usually look like after two or three years?

About the interviewer

• What made you join, and what has kept you here?
• What is something you would change about working here if you could?
• What has surprised you most since you joined?

Questions about the interviewer work especially well near the end. People enjoy answering them, and the conversation finishes on a warm note instead of a checklist.

Which questions should you ask in each round?

The same question can be perfect in one round and wasted in another. Match your question to the person in front of you.

Recruiter or HR round

• What are the next steps, and how long does the process usually take?
• What is the budgeted range for this role?
• How does the team split time between the office and remote work?
• Is there anything in my background you would like me to clarify before the next round?

That last one is underrated. It gives you a chance to fix a doubt before it reaches the hiring manager, and recruiters often answer it honestly.

Hiring manager round

• What problem do you most need this hire to solve in the first six months?
• What does the team do better than other teams here, and where is it still catching up?
• How do you like to give feedback: in the moment, or in regular one-to-ones?

Technical round

• What does the path from a code change to production look like here?
• What is the part of the system the team is least happy with right now?
• How are on-call and incidents handled, and how often does a typical engineer get paged?

Technical interviewers are engineers first. They tend to light up when asked about real problems in their own code, and they can tell the difference between a question you care about and one you memorised.

Final round, director or founder

• Where do you want the company to be in two years, and what could stop it getting there?
• What would make you say, a year from now, that hiring me was the right call?
• Is there anything about my fit for the role that still worries you?

The last question takes some nerve, but it is the most useful thing you can ask in a final round. If there is a doubt, you get one chance to answer it while you are still in the room.

What should you ask about a remote job, a startup or a big company?

Remote and hybrid roles

Remote jobs live or die on how the team communicates, and that is hard to see from a job advert. Ask about the habits, not the policy:

• Which hours do people overlap, and how are time zone differences handled?
• How much is decided in writing, and how much happens on calls?
• How did the last person who joined remotely get up to speed in their first month?
• Do remote people get promoted at the same pace as people in the office?
• Is the role remote for good, or remote for now?

People often skip the promotion question, and it is the one that tells you whether remote staff are treated as part of the team or as contractors with a company email address.

Startups

At a small company, the company’s own future is part of your job security, and founders expect you to ask about it. Polite, direct versions:

• How long is your runway, and when do you plan to raise again?
• How many people joined and how many left in the past year?
• Who decides what gets built, and how often has that changed recently?
• What would this role look like if the company doubled in size?

Leave detailed questions about equity, vesting and the share price for after the offer, when you can ask for them in writing.

Large companies

In a big organisation the risk is different: the job you are sold can be shaped by processes far away from the person interviewing you.

• Has hiring for this position been fully approved, or could it still be paused?
• How much of the work is set by this team, and how much comes from central teams?
• How do performance reviews work, and how often are they?
• How easy is it to move to another team after a year or two?

What should managers and senior hires ask?

At senior level, the questions are part of the assessment. This is where Wacksman’s complaint above applies most: an executive candidate who asks something a quick search would answer starts the conversation behind. Ask about the things you would actually own.

• Who are the strongest people on the team, and who needs the most support right now?
• Which decisions could I make on my own, and which need sign-off?
• What did the last person in this seat leave unfinished?
• What is the budget and hiring plan for this team over the next year?
• When the leadership team disagrees, how does it get resolved?
• Which numbers would I be held to, and who sets them?

If you can, ask to meet one or two people who would report to you before you accept. Most companies agree at final stage, and their answers to “What would you want from a new manager?” are usually more candid than anything said in the formal rounds.

What should a fresher ask in an interview?

If this is your first job, you are not expected to ask about architecture or strategy. You are expected to show you are serious about learning and starting well. These fit campus placements, mass-hiring drives and first jobs anywhere:

• Is there a training period after joining, and what does it cover?
• How are freshers assigned to projects or teams after training?
• Which skills should I start building now, before my joining date?
• What did the freshers who did best in their first year do differently?
• Who would I go to with questions during my first few months?

In an HR round for a fresher role, a question about training or the first project shows interest without sounding demanding. Service bonds, transfer rules and notice periods matter too, but raise them with HR once an offer is close rather than in a technical round, and get the answers in writing before you accept. For the rest of a first interview, see how to crack an interview as a fresher.

How can you spot red flags in their answers?

Your questions are also how you interview them. One awkward answer means little; a pattern means a lot. Things worth noticing:

• Nobody can say what success looks like. If “How is this role measured?” gets “We’ll figure that out together” from two different people, expect your targets to shift after you join.
• Different interviewers describe different jobs. The manager says it is mostly new projects; the engineer says it is mostly support. Ask the recruiter which is right before you accept.
• The last person left and nobody will say why. People leave for ordinary reasons all the time. A long pause and a change of subject is the warning, not the departure.
• Everyone joined recently. If every interviewer has been there less than a year, ask what happened to the people before them.
• “We’re like a family here” next to talk of long hours. On its own it is just a phrase. Paired with “people really go above and beyond”, it is worth asking what a normal week’s hours look like before you assume either way.
• The pay range is dodged twice. Not knowing in a first call is common. Still refusing at the final stage is worth pushing on: ask who can give you the number, and ask why it is being held back.

What questions should you not ask?

• Anything the website answers. “What does the company do?” tells them you did not look.
• Leave and perks, first thing. Holidays and benefits are fair questions, but leading with them in an early round suggests your mind is already on time away from the job.
• “Did I get the job?” It puts the interviewer in an awkward spot. Ask about next steps and the timeline instead.
• Questions that criticise. “Why is your app so slow?” is a bad question. “What is the team focused on improving in the app right now?” asks the same thing politely.
• Yes-or-no questions. “Do you like working here?” gets “Yes.” “What has kept you here?” gets a story.

What should you say when you really have no questions?

It happens: the interviewer was thorough, or your nerves have wiped your list. Do not just say “No.” Pick one of these:

• “You answered most of what I had, especially about how the team plans its work. Could you tell me what the next steps look like?”
• “I think I have a clear picture. Is there anything about my experience you would like me to go into more?”
• “What is the part of this job you personally enjoy most?”

The first shows you listened. The second gives you a last chance to strengthen your case. The third works on almost anyone and is never a wasted minute.

How do you ask about salary and growth without hurting your chances?

Timing and wording do most of the work. Ask the recruiter or HR, not the technical panel. Ask for their range before giving yours, with the budgeted range question from the HR list above. If they push for your number first, give a range based on research for the role and city, and say you are flexible depending on the whole package.

In India, HR will usually ask for your current and expected CTC directly, and some will not move forward without an exact figure:

“HR salary negotiation logic = tell me exact CTC or I can't proceed”

Reddit, r/dataengineersindia

It is normal to answer, and fine to add that your expectation depends on the role and responsibilities once you know more.

Check the job ad before you ask anything. Several US states now require a pay range in job postings (New York for employers with four or more staff, California for fifteen or more, among others). In the EU, the 2023 Pay Transparency Directive gives applicants the right to the starting pay or its range before the interview and bars employers from asking about your pay history; member states had until 7 June 2026 to put it into national law, and not all have. Where a range is published, the better question is: “The ad says X to Y. Where do people at my level usually start?”

Questions that tell you about pay and progression indirectly

Hiring managers often cannot discuss numbers, but they can describe how things work, and that tells you most of what you need:

• How are pay rises decided, and when is the review cycle?
• When did someone on this team last get promoted, and what did that involve?
• What separates this level from the next one up?
• Is there a bonus or variable part, and what does it usually depend on?

If nobody on the team has been promoted in two years, you have learned more than any salary figure would tell you.

Can you use notes for your questions on a video call?

People worry about this a lot now that so many interviews are online:

“I have a Teams interview this week is it acceptable to have detailed notes I've prepared off camera?”

Glassdoor Community

For your own questions at the end, yes. Glancing at a short list is normal even in person, and most interviewers see it as preparation, not a problem. You can even say it: “I wrote a couple down so I wouldn’t forget.” Keep the list to a few words per question, though. Reading full sentences off a screen is easy to spot, and it makes even a good question sound rehearsed.

Taking notes during the interview

“Can I take notes on the computer or would the typing be too loud and distracting?”

Quora

I’d use paper. A laptop microphone picks up typing clearly, and on camera it looks like you are answering emails. Ask once at the start, “Do you mind if I jot a few things down?”, and nobody will mind. What to write:

• Each interviewer’s name and role, spelt the way they say it.
• The exact words they use for a problem. If the manager says “our releases keep slipping”, that phrase is worth more than your whole list.
• A tick next to each of your prepared questions they answer along the way.

Then use them. Build your end question on their phrase (“You said releases keep slipping. What has the team tried so far?”). Put one specific point from the conversation in your thank-you email. Before the next round, read your notes and ask the next interviewer about the issue the last one raised; it shows you were listening across the whole process.

Can PiriPiri AI help when you are asked “Do you have any questions for us?”

PiriPiri AI is a desktop app for macOS and Windows. Before the call you add your CV and the job description and pick your role. During the interview it listens to both sides, your microphone and the interviewer’s audio from the computer, and transcribes them live. When a question is asked, it drafts a short answer on a small floating overlay, using your CV, the job and what has been said on the call.

At the end of an interview that matters in a particular way, because a prepared list often runs dry when the interviewer has already covered most of it. If “Do you have any questions for us?” catches you empty, press Answer now (Cmd+Shift+Enter, or Ctrl+Shift+Enter on Windows) and you get a short prompt drawn from the conversation you just had, something to build your own question from rather than a line to read out. Because it has heard the whole call, the prompt reflects what was already covered instead of repeating it.

No meeting bot joins the call, and it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex and others. The overlay is excluded from screen capture by the operating system, so it does not appear when you share your screen or record. On a Mac, hearing the interviewer needs macOS 14.2 or later. Afterwards the transcript and notes are saved to your account, so the exact phrases you missed while talking are there when you write your thank-you email or prepare for the next round.

It has limits. It cannot give you experience you do not have. A question read word for word from a screen sounds rehearsed, and interviewers notice. Some employers, and some places, have rules about recording or AI help in interviews, so check them before you use it. More on that in can interviewers tell if you use AI, and the setup is on how to use PiriPiri AI.

Questions people ask

Where to go next

If the opening of the interview worries you more than the end, read how to answer “Tell me about yourself”. For the stories behind behavioural questions, see the behavioural question guide and behavioural interviews. If your interview is close, the interview tomorrow checklist helps, and if English is not your first language, this page covers what helps on the call itself.

PiriPiri AI costs about $2.50 an interview, paid with one-time packs that never expire and no subscription, and every new account starts with 3 free sessions, enough to try it on a mock interview first. Prices are on the pricing page, refund terms are on the refunds page, and support replies come from a person.