"Do you have any questions for us?" It comes at the end of almost every interview, and it catches people out because they spent all their preparation on the interviewer's questions, not their own. This guide gives you questions you can use, how many to ask, and which to leave out.
Why the Last Five Minutes Matter
The UK National Careers Service puts it simply: you'll usually have some time towards the end of the interview to ask your own questions, about the role or the company, and you should write them down before the interview.
Your questions do two jobs. They help you decide whether you actually want this job, and they show the interviewer what you care about. A question about how success is measured says something different from a question about how soon you can take holidays.
But the questions you ask at the end only help if the answers you gave before them landed. Most of your preparation still belongs to the interviewer's questions.
How Many Questions to Ask
Prepare four or five and expect to ask two or three. Some will be answered during the interview itself, so the spares stop you being caught with nothing. Two or three good questions are better than a long list read out from your notes.
Questions About the Role
These are the safest and often the most useful, because the answers tell you what the job really involves:
- "What does a typical week look like in this role?"
- "What would you want the person in this role to have achieved in the first three months?"
- "What's the biggest challenge facing the team right now?"
- "How do you measure success in this role?"
- "Is this a new role, or am I replacing someone?"
Questions About the Team and How You'd Work
These show you are already picturing yourself in the job:
- "Who would I be working with most closely?"
- "How does the team share work and keep each other up to date?"
- "What training or support is there for someone new to the role?"
- "How do people usually progress from this role?"
For some jobs, the best questions are specific to the work. For a care assistant role, for example, it's sensible to ask about staffing on a typical shift and how handover works. We list role-specific questions in our care assistant interview guide.
Questions About Next Steps
Always leave room for at least one of these. The National Careers Service suggests asking when you'll hear back:
- "What are the next steps in the process?"
- "When do you expect to make a decision?"
- "Is there anything about my experience you'd like me to go into in more detail?"
The last one is worth the nerve it takes. If there's a doubt in the interviewer's mind, it gives you a chance to answer it before you leave the room.
What to Leave Out
- Anything their website answers. "What does the company do?" tells them you didn't look.
- Pay, holidays and perks, too early. Unless they raise it, these usually belong at the offer stage. The National Careers Service suggests that's when to ask about work patterns or arrangements, and to ask for the offer in writing. If they do ask what you expect, our guide to answering salary expectations covers it.
- Questions that sound like doubts about doing the job. "How strict are you about start times?" invites the wrong conclusion.
- Yes-or-no questions. "Is there training?" gets one word. "What does training look like for someone new?" gets an answer you can use.
If They've Already Answered Everything
It happens, especially in a long interview. Don't invent a question to fill the gap. Say something like: "You've covered most of what I wanted to ask, thank you. You mentioned the team is moving to a new system. How is that going so far?" Picking up something from the conversation shows you were listening, which is the whole point.
If you don't get the job, the National Careers Service also suggests asking the interviewer for feedback on how it went and where you could have done better.
Practise Saying Them Out Loud
Questions that read well on paper can come out awkwardly under pressure. The same is true of your answers, and that's where most interviews are won or lost. If you tend to go blank when it matters, our guide on how not to freeze in an interview explains why rehearsing out loud works better than rereading notes, and our list of common interview questions in Ireland covers what you're likely to be asked.
Results vary, but walking in having said your answers out loud at least once beats walking in having only read them.