Last week at happy hour, we found ourselves giving advice as to a budding aid worker who was about to have her first round of interviews for her first “real” aid job. She wanted to know what questions she should be asking of the organizations and people with which she’s interviewing. These are the questions that one has to have ready, when inevitably interviewers say, “Now what questions do you have for us?”
She got some great suggestions from @oabello, @gurrity, @PatrickOdongosn, and now my readers can share them too, thanks to @marcmaxson who suggested this post. I hope these can be useful to those people hoping to determine the “right fit” with an organization’s values, approach, and management style. Here’s some of our ideas, in no particular order:
- How would you describe the organizational culture?
- If I were to be offered the position, what do you see me accomplishing in my first month? In the first six months?
- What other organizations would you consider to be your organization’s peers? With which other organizations do you collaborate?
- What was the last book that you read related to your work?
- What mechanisms does your organization use to obtain feedback from the people you serve?
- How are strategic decisions made in the organization? And how are they communicated?
- How do you ensure community ownership of your programs?
- What are your organization’s most promising or “provocative” programs?
- Do you consider your organization a learning organization? If so, how is this demonstrated?
- Do you think your organization offers something unique to the aid sector? What is it?
- How would you describe the relationship between programs and communications/marketing/fundraising?
- How has your organization changed over the last 2-5-10 years (as appropriate)?
- What is the most important piece of practical advice you would offer to someone starting on their first day on the job?
- How does your organization monitor what percentage of its financial resources reach the ground?
- How does this position contribute to the organization’s overall mission?
- Others? Kindly share them via the comments!
And job seekers, if you’re not yet following iOnPoverty‘s video series…well, you need to be. The latest video offers some great interview tips from Regina Starr Ridley of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She highlights the importance of asking good questions!
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Very useful, thanks for sharing!
Great post! I reposted on my blog and added my comments about what college courses these people should take, and why statistics is more of a ‘defense against the dark arts’ required course for international aid workers:
http://chewychunks.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/good-interview-questions-for-international-development-newbies/
Pingback: Good Interview questions for international development newbies « Chewy Chunks
This post is immensely helpful, so thanks for crowd-sourcing and finding out the good questions to ask.
As someone who hopes to be starting the interview process in less than a year, I will keep this post booked marked as my ‘go-to’ guide before interviews.
Thanks again!
Side story: In 2009 GlobalGiving sent a GWU capstone team to Kenya to analyze our network of NGOs here. They came up with a 40 question impact survey; Dennis Whittle added just ONE question, which was #5 on this list.
When the capstone team returned and presented, they said question #5 here was the most revealing question of their 41 question survey. Counting outputs and surveying operational capacity was less important than understanding how each organization interacts with their community.
That is why we (GlobalGiving.org) has been focusing on the storytelling project ever since.
I would want to know more about how staff and volunteers are treated – an organisation that doesn’t respect its own staff or does not take steps to promote equality is unlikely to respect the people and communities it claims to assist. Not necessarily questions for interview but certainly things to find out early in the probationary period might be:
1 What is the widest pay differential, i.e. what do the lowest and highest paid staff members earn? Has this grown or shrunk over the past 5/10 years? And what is the average wage?
2 Which trade (labour) union do most staff belong to? If they are not unionised, why is this?
3 How does the organisation handle negotiations on terms and conditions, e.g. pensions, salaries …
4 What percentage of staff are registered disabled, and what provision does the organisation make to enable those with disabilities to work there?
5 What percentage of senior jobs are held by women? What is the organisation’s policy on promoting gender equality and what difference has it made?
6 What is the average age of staff? And what is the average length of time that staff stay with the organisation, i.e. the turnover?
7 What training is provided?
8 What is the governance structure? How are beneficiary interests represented?’
@aidnography had a different take on our questions:
“These are great questions-but in the ritualised context of a job interview I would ask them with caution. They are absolutely spot-on and go straight to the essence of what a development organisation should be about, but I have doubts that many organisations would truly appreciate them (in the sense of giving you a job in the end). My experience from academia suggests that by sending in an application and accepting an interview you implicitly have bought in the discourse that surrounds the industry or organisation. Some of Jennifer’s questions may appear (from the side of organisational HR who believe that they already did you a huge favour by inviting you) as arrogant, or, even worse, that you are a critical thinker who may not be 120% convinced that this organisation is already the best learner, the closest to people on the ground and the most critical trend-setter in the industry (why else would you apply?!). Again, these are exactly the questions you should be asking, but I’m not sure how the ritual communication of job interviews really enables an environment where they are seen as ‘appropriate’-especially at an early stage of your career where many organisations assume your eternal gratefulness for offering you a job in the first place…”
And a very interesting response on LinkedIn from a gentleman in Pakistan: “well in my country if you are successful in your first interview and get shortlisted for the second one and the employer is willing to give you a job he would ask you what is the name of your father which ppl do tell exactly right as we all know this but if he has got a healthy envelop from other contestant then there will be slight change in the qts. and that will be tell me the name of my father. and this off course you ppl dont knw.”
In an ideal world,I would certainly love to ask them for three references (from ex-employees if possible…:)
A great suggestion from a member of AidSource: “Thinking of the people in the past who really excelled in this position, can you tell me what it was about their performance that was so outstanding? What was it they did that really made you appreciate their performance?”