Questions to Ask at a Lab Interview
Twenty questions for a research lab interview or visit, covering the projects that are actually running, funding and authorship, mentoring in practice, what happens when experiments fail, and where people go after they leave.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
Which projects are running right now, and which one needs a person?
Lab websites lag reality by a year or more, and half the listed projects are finished or abandoned. The project with a gap in it is the one you will actually be offered, so it is better to hear about it now than to prepare for the wrong topic.
- 2
What would my first six months look like?
A specific answer describes training, a starter project and a checkpoint. A vague answer usually means nobody has thought about it, which in practice means several months of reading papers in a corner while waiting to be told what to do.
- 3
Where does funding for this project come from, and how long is it secured?
Grant end dates determine what your position actually is, and people rarely volunteer them. Ask when the current award ends and what is under review, because a project funded for eighteen months is a different commitment from one funded for four years.
- 4
What happens to my project if that grant is not renewed?
The honest answers are a bridge from other funds, a switch to a different project, or a search for another position. Every lab has a plan or does not, and hearing which one tells you more about the PI's management than any question about mentoring style.
- 5
How often do you meet one on one, and does it hold when you travel?
Almost every PI says their door is open. The useful figures are how many meetings happened last month and whether they are scheduled or requested, because a lab where you must chase a meeting is a lab where quiet people get lost.
- 6
Who trains me at the bench, day to day?
Practical training is almost always delegated to a postdoc or senior student, and that person will shape your first year more than the PI will. Ask for their name, then find a way to talk to them before you accept.
- 7
How is authorship decided here?
Ask for the rule and then for the last time it was applied. Labs with a clear convention will describe how first author was decided on a recent paper. Labs without one will describe a philosophy, which is what people say when the answer has been contested.
- 8
How do you decide when a project is ready to publish?
This exposes the lab's tolerance for length. Some PIs push out steady incremental papers, others hold everything for one large submission that can take three extra years. Neither is wrong, but only one of them fits a fixed-term position.
- 9
How independent are people expected to be at my stage?
Expectations vary from executing a defined plan to designing your own experiments in month two. Mismatch here is the most common reason a technically capable person is judged as underperforming, and it is entirely avoidable by asking.
- 10
What is in-house, and what do we have to book elsewhere?
Shared instruments, core facilities and animal or clinical access all come with queues and costs. Ask about the typical wait for the technique central to your project, since a two-month turnaround changes what a year of work can contain.
- 11
What happens when an experiment does not work for months?
This is the actual daily texture of research and the thing interviews avoid. Listen for whether the answer includes troubleshooting support, a decision point to stop, and a way to talk about failure without it being treated as a character issue.
- 12
How do disagreements about data get settled?
Ask for a real example. The good version involves repeating something, adding a control, or a lab meeting where the result was picked apart. The concerning version is that disagreements do not happen, which usually means they happen and are not voiced.
- 13
How do you feel about learning techniques outside the lab?
Collaborations, courses and time in another group build the skills that make you employable later, and they cost the PI productivity now. The answer tells you whether your training is treated as an investment or as an interruption.
- 14
What do the working hours look like in practice?
Ask what time the lab empties on an ordinary Wednesday and who is in at weekends. Culture on this is set by example rather than policy, and a PI who describes flexibility while every member is present at nine at night is describing an aspiration.
- 15
When did you last take a real break, and do people here?
Put to the PI it can seem pointed, so put it to the lab members instead. Vacation that exists on paper and is never taken is a specific and common pattern, and one that people will describe accurately when the PI is not in the room.
- 16
How many people have left in the last three years, and where did they go?
Both halves matter. High turnover is a signal on its own, and destinations tell you what the lab's name is worth. A PI who cannot list where recent people ended up has not kept in touch with them, which is itself the answer.
- 17
What does your support look like when someone is applying for the next thing?
Concretely: reading drafts, letters written on time, introductions made, protected time to write. Fellowship and job applications fail on deadlines, and a supervisor who returns a draft in three weeks is a structural risk to your career, not a personality quirk.
- 18
What would you change about how the lab runs?
A PI who names something specific has thought about management as a skill. An answer of nothing, or a complaint purely about funding bodies, suggests the lab's problems are understood as external, which means they will not be fixed.
- 19
What kind of person does badly here?
Easier to answer honestly than its opposite, and far more informative. The description usually maps onto the lab's real demands: needs frequent direction, dislikes ambiguity, will not ask for help. Decide whether any of it describes you before you smile and nod.
- 20
If I join, what would you want me to have done before the first day?
The answer separates a lab that has thought about onboarding from one that has not. It also gives you a short reading list of actual current work, which is more useful than anything on the website, and a low-cost way to test how quickly they reply to email.
Getting the most out of the visit
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Ask the PI and the lab different things
Ask the PI and the lab different things
To the PI, ask about direction and structure
Funding, project selection, authorship rules, publication timing, what happens after this position. These are things only they can answer, and they are the questions that show you are thinking about the work rather than the job.
To lab members, ask about lived experience
Hours, meeting frequency, how mistakes are handled, how long people wait for feedback, whether anyone has left unhappily. Ask when the PI is not present, and ask more than one person so you can compare.
Ask the same question twice, in different rooms
Meeting frequency and working hours are the two where the gap between accounts is most revealing. A large gap is not automatically disqualifying, but it tells you what you would be signing up for.
What to notice on the tour
What to notice on the tour
- Whether the space is maintained: shared equipment logs, labelled reagents, working fume hoods and freezers with an inventory.
- Whether people talk to each other, or whether everyone sits with headphones on and does not look up.
- Whether the PI is in the building, and whether members seem comfortable when they walk past.
- Whether there is somewhere to eat and whether anyone uses it. Labs where nobody stops are labs where nobody talks.
- Whether safety training and protocols are treated as real. Casual handling of hazards is a reliable signal about everything else.
- Who answers when you ask a technical question. If it is always the same person, that person is holding the lab together and may be leaving.
Decide afterwards, not in the room
Decide afterwards, not in the room
- Write down what you heard the same evening. Visits blur, and details about funding dates and authorship are the first to go.
- Compare what the PI said with what members said, and list the gaps rather than explaining them away.
- Contact one person who has left the lab. They are usually easy to find from recent papers and are more candid than anyone still in it.
- Ask for anything you were promised in writing, particularly the project, the funding period and the start date.
- Check the timing of any offer. Pressure to answer within a few days, before other interviews, is a piece of information about how the lab operates.