Good Questions to Ask at Career Fair
Questions for judging an employer, not just getting on their list, in the few minutes you have at a career fair table. They cover pay ranges, what the daily work involves, how new people are trained and reviewed, how long people stay, and why the last person left.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How would you describe the company to someone who has never heard of it?
Why ask it
Easy to answer and surprisingly diagnostic. A crisp sentence about what the company sells means people internally know what they are for; a paragraph of category words usually means the person at the table does not work near the product.
What does your own team actually build or handle?
Why ask it
Moves the conversation from company marketing to real work in one step. If they describe someone else's team, you are talking to a recruiter and should switch to process questions rather than pressing for technical detail.
How did you end up here?
Why ask it
People answer this warmly and it produces the useful detail: whether they were hired from this same fair, whether they came from a competitor, whether they were pushed or pulled. It also makes the rest of the conversation less transactional.
What roles are you hiring for, and what is the pay range?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly and in one breath. Many jurisdictions now require a posted range, so this is usually answerable, and a refusal to give a band at a public hiring event is itself information about how the company negotiates.
Is there anything beyond base salary: bonus, equity, relocation?
Why ask it
The extras vary far more between employers than base pay does, and they are easier to ask about at a fair than in a formal interview. Note whether a bonus is discretionary or contractual, because that changes the real number.
What tools and systems would I be using day to day?
Why ask it
The concrete answer tells you what you would be learning and how transferable it is. Heavy reliance on internal homegrown systems is not a problem, but it is worth knowing before you spend three years becoming an expert in software nobody else uses.
How much of the work is on your own, and how much is with other people?
Why ask it
This is the split that determines whether you will enjoy the job, and it is rarely on the posting. Watch for jobs described as collaborative that turn out to mean six hours of meetings, and independent roles that turn out to mean no support.
How does a new person get up to speed here?
Why ask it
Look for whether there is a structured program with a duration or whether the answer is that you learn by doing. The second is common and workable in a small team, and a warning sign in a large one.
Is a mentor or buddy assigned, or do you find your own?
Why ask it
Assigned support is one of the strongest predictors of whether a first year goes well, and it costs the company almost nothing, so its absence tells you something about how much attention new hires get.
How is performance reviewed, and how often?
Why ask it
Annual review with no interim feedback means you can go eleven months without knowing where you stand. Ask whether ratings are forced into a distribution, because that determines how much your rating depends on your peers.
How many hours does the job really take in a busy stretch?
Why ask it
Asking about the busy stretch rather than a normal week gets past the standard answer about balance. In seasonal industries the honest answer is a specific number of weeks a year, and that is the number to plan your life around.
What kind of person does well here, and who tends to struggle?
Why ask it
The second half is the part worth listening to. Answers like people who need a lot of direction, or people who want everything documented, tell you more about the actual environment than any description of culture will.
How long have most people on your team been here?
Why ask it
A team where everyone joined in the last eighteen months is either growing fast or replacing people fast, and those look identical from outside. Ask which, and the answer usually comes without hedging.
What has changed about the company since you started?
Why ask it
Anyone with two or more years has an answer, and it is often about size, process or ownership. This surfaces recent acquisitions, restructures and shifts in strategy that would not come up otherwise.
Who else is competing for the same customers?
Why ask it
The list tells you where you would be able to move next, since your experience will be most valuable to those same competitors. If they cannot name competitors, they are either dominant or not close to the commercial side.
What is a decision the company made recently that surprised you?
Why ask it
Invites something specific without asking anyone to criticize their employer. Hesitation is normal; a real answer means the person feels secure enough to speak candidly, which is a reasonable proxy for the culture.
Do you know why the last person who left your team left?
Why ask it
Ask it neutrally and expect a partial answer. Graduate school and relocation are unremarkable; a pattern of people leaving for the same competitor or the same reason is the most useful thing you could learn at this table.
What would make you tell a friend not to apply here?
Why ask it
Blunt, and it works better than it should, because it gives explicit permission to be honest. Even a deflection is informative, and a specific answer about pace, pay or a particular manager is worth the awkwardness.
What is the next step if I want to be considered?
Why ask it
Signals that you are actually interested rather than browsing, and gets you the exact route in. Write down the requisition number or role title they say, because the portal will list several similar ones.
Should I follow up with you directly, or go through the portal?
Why ask it
Closes with clarity on who owns your application. Some will give you an email and mean it; others will point you at the system because they have no visibility. Either answer tells you where to put your effort this week.
Judging an employer in three minutes
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to read the answers
- Prefer numbers to adjectives. 'Two weeks of onboarding' and 'reviews every six months' can be compared across companies; 'we invest in our people' cannot.
- Notice whether the person is describing their own experience or the company's policy. Both are useful, but only the first tells you what actually happens.
- Watch for present tense versus future tense. A mentorship program they are building is not a mentorship program.
- If two people at the same table give you different answers about hours or flexibility, believe the one who works in the role rather than the one who recruits for it.
- Take hedging seriously but not personally. Recruiters are often genuinely constrained about pay and headcount, so mark the question as unanswered rather than as a red flag.
Asking about pay without it being awkward
- Attach it to the role, not to yourself: 'What is the range on that one?' rather than 'What could I earn?'
- Ask early. Pay is the fastest way to eliminate companies, and eliminating one at minute two saves you a whole hiring process.
- If they will not give a number, ask what a similar hire last year came in at, or what the band is called internally. Both are sometimes answerable when the range is not.
- Ask what portion is variable. A large discretionary bonus and a large guaranteed one look the same in a headline figure and are not the same job.
- Do not negotiate at a fair. You are gathering information, and there is nothing to negotiate against yet.
Common pitfalls
- Asking a question you would be embarrassed to have quoted back, such as how easy it is to work from home unnoticed.
- Interrogating a volunteer engineer about compensation policy they have no access to.
- Comparing the company unfavourably to a competitor in front of them, even mildly.
- Asking about culture in the abstract. It produces the values page recited back to you. Ask about hours, reviews, tenure and turnover instead, which are what culture is made of.
- Leaving without writing anything down. Six tables later, every company will have said they value growth and you will not remember who gave you a real number.
- Judging the whole company by one tired person at the end of a long day.
Comparing what you heard afterwards
Write down five things per company
- Pay range, or the fact that they would not say.
- What the day-to-day work actually is, in their words.
- Onboarding length and whether support is assigned.
- Review frequency and whether ratings are forced.
- One thing the person said that was not on the website.
Then rank on what you cannot change later
Pay bands, location and the nature of the work are hard to change once you accept. Manager quality, team and internal mobility are real but variable. Free food and the office building are not decision criteria, however good the table looked.