Questions to Ask a Guest Speaker About Their Job
Questions for a guest speaker who has come in to talk about their work, suitable for a class, a careers session or a student club. Aimed at what the job is actually like day to day and how someone gets into it.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What did you do yesterday, hour by hour?
Why ask it
Far more revealing than asking about a typical day, which invites a job description. The real answer usually contains a surprising amount of email and waiting.
What part of the job takes the most time, and is it the part you expected?
Why ask it
Most roles turn out to be dominated by something invisible from outside: documentation, chasing approvals, client calls. This is the single most useful thing to learn before choosing a field.
What do you do that a job title would never tell me?
Why ask it
Draws out the informal parts of the work, the negotiating, translating and smoothing over, which is where much of the actual skill sits.
What was the first job you had in this field, and how did you get it?
Why ask it
The mechanism matters: an advert, a professor's contact, a summer placement. Hearing that it was often luck or a connection is more useful to students than a tidy narrative.
What is on your CV that mattered, and what turned out to be irrelevant?
Why ask it
Speakers usually name one credential or experience that did the work and several that did not. That saves an audience considerable wasted effort.
If you were hiring someone at my level tomorrow, what would you look for?
Why ask it
Shifts them from telling a story to assessing candidates, which produces concrete criteria. The answer is often about evidence of finishing things rather than grades.
What software or tools do you use every day?
Why ask it
A specific and immediately actionable answer, and the list is frequently more mundane than students expect. It also shows how much of the work is technical.
What is the hardest part of the job that you cannot really train for?
Why ask it
Usually names something like delivering bad news or working under an unclear brief. Knowing it in advance tells you whether the role would suit you.
What do people in your field complain about when no outsiders are around?
Why ask it
Invites the honest grievance rather than the diplomatic one, and speakers usually enjoy being asked. It is where the real drawbacks of a profession surface.
What is a common misconception about your work?
Why ask it
Gives the speaker a chance to correct the picture the audience arrived with, which often stops people applying for the wrong reasons.
What are your actual hours, and how often does that slip?
Why ask it
Asked directly, most speakers answer honestly. The frequency of the slip matters far more than the nominal hours.
What does the pay progression look like in this field, roughly?
Why ask it
Awkward but legitimate, and a speaker can answer in ranges without disclosing their own salary. Vagueness here often means entry-level pay is poor.
What is the most interesting problem you have worked on?
Why ask it
Lets the speaker talk about the substance rather than the career, and it is usually where the enthusiasm becomes visible or does not.
How has the work changed since you started, and what has that done to the jobs?
Why ask it
Asking specifically about jobs, rather than the industry, gets you a candid read on whether the field is hiring or contracting.
What routes into this field exist that people do not know about?
Why ask it
Apprenticeships, adjacent roles and internal moves are often invisible from the outside. This question surfaces the door that is not queued at.
Who else does your job well, and what do they do differently from you?
Why ask it
Reveals that there is more than one way to do the work, which matters to anyone who does not resemble the speaker.
What would make you leave this job?
Why ask it
A sharper question than asking what they enjoy. The answer names the real pressure points of the profession.
What is something you are still not good at?
Why ask it
Useful for an audience assuming professionals arrive complete. The specific weakness also tells you what the job keeps demanding.
What should someone in this room do in the next year if they want your job?
Why ask it
Asks for one concrete step rather than general encouragement. Course choices, a portfolio, a particular contact: something that can be started this week.
What should I have asked you that I did not?
Why ask it
Reliable at the end of a session, because speakers usually come with one point they hoped to make and are rarely given the opening.
Making the most of a visiting speaker
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before they arrive
Look up what they actually do
Job titles hide enormous variation. Five minutes on their organisation lets you ask about their work rather than their field, which is the difference between a real answer and a general one.
Pick two questions and keep one in reserve
Sessions run short and hands go up. Having a first choice ready, and a second in case someone else asks yours, means you get to speak.
Choose questions they alone can answer
Anything answerable by a search wastes the visit. What is specific to them is their experience, their choices and their opinions.
During the session
Ask about a specific occasion
Attaching when or what did you do converts an abstract question into a story. Compare how do you handle pressure with what happened the last time a deadline slipped.
Write down the nouns
Tools, job titles, qualifications and organisations they mention in passing are the most useful part of the visit and the easiest to forget.
Follow up once
A second question on the same answer, such as what happened next, gets past the version they have told before.
Afterwards
- Send a short thank you that mentions one specific thing you took from it
- If they offered to be contacted, do it within a week while they remember the session
- Ask one narrow follow-up question rather than a general request for advice
- Act on the one concrete step they suggested before asking for anything more
Common mistakes
Asking for a job in the first conversation
It puts a guest in an awkward position in front of a room. Asking what to do next achieves the same thing without the cost.
Asking questions the talk already answered
It reads as inattention and uses up goodwill that a later, better question would have needed.
Only asking about the good parts
A session where nobody asks about pay, hours or drawbacks leaves everyone with an inaccurate picture of the job.