Questions to Ask on Career Day
Questions for students meeting career day speakers, covering what the work is really like day to day, how people get in, training and pay, the parts nobody sees, and how to keep the conversation going afterwards.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What did you actually do at work yesterday?
Asking about yesterday rather than a typical day gets you the real thing, including the meeting that ran long and the paperwork. Job titles hide the work, and speakers default to the highlight version unless you pin them to a date.
- 2
How much of your day is spent on a computer, talking to people, or on your feet?
The three way split is the one thing you can actually compare across every speaker in the room. Two jobs with completely different titles can have the same shape, and two people with the same title often do not.
- 3
Do you work with the same people every day, or with new people?
This decides whether a job suits you more than the subject matter does. Someone who likes strangers and someone who likes a steady team will be miserable in each other's roles even if the work is identical.
- 4
What did you want to be when you were my age?
Almost nobody is doing what they named at fourteen, and hearing that from an adult in a suit is more reassuring than any advice they will give. The gap between the two answers is where the useful story lives.
- 5
How did you get from that to this?
The route is the part that is never on the slide. Listen for whether the turning point was a class, a job that ended, or a person who suggested something, because that tells you what actually opens doors in their field.
- 6
What was your first job in this field, and how did you hear about it?
The entry point is the only piece of information you can act on this year. Whether they saw a posting or someone told them about it tells you if the field hires openly or through people who already work in it.
- 7
How do people even find out this job exists?
Many jobs are invisible until someone happens to meet a person doing one. If the speaker struggles to answer, that is the field admitting it recruits by accident, and knowing that is worth more than a brochure.
- 8
What is the part of your job that people outside it never see?
Every job has hidden labour: the documentation, the cleaning up, the calls nobody wants to make. Ask for this specifically, because it is usually the part that decides whether people stay in the field or leave it.
- 9
What do you enjoy about it, and what do you put up with?
Asking both halves together makes it easy to answer honestly. Asked on its own, do you like your job produces a polite yes from someone standing in front of a room of children.
- 10
What surprised you in your first year?
First year surprises are specific and memorable, and they are the closest thing to seeing the job from the inside. Follow up on whether it was the hours, the people, or how little of it resembled the training.
- 11
What is the mistake in your field that costs the most?
Every trade has one signature expensive error, and asking for it gets you a story rather than a platitude. It also tells you what the job is really organised around protecting against, which is often invisible from the outside.
- 12
What are your hours, and do you ever take the work home?
Ask for the actual start and finish time, plus weekends and on-call. Teenagers picture careers without schedules attached, and the schedule is the part that will shape their life most.
- 13
How does the pay work: salary, hourly, tips, commission, or by the job?
Asking about the structure is a fair question even where asking a number would be awkward. It also explains a lot about the job, since work paid by the hour and work paid by the project feel completely different to do.
- 14
What does someone earn starting out in this field, roughly?
Aimed at the entry level rather than at the speaker personally, which is the version most people are happy to answer. Ask for a range and ask whether it changes a lot by city, because it often does.
- 15
What training, license, or degree do you need, and how long does it take?
Get the length in years and the cost if they will say. The difference between a two-year certificate and a seven-year path is the single largest fact about any career, and it is often glossed over.
- 16
Is the qualification you have the one you actually needed?
A lot of people find their degree was necessary to get the interview and irrelevant to the work, or that a cheaper route existed and nobody mentioned it. This is the question that quietly saves people years.
- 17
What is changing in your field, and what will it look like when I am your age?
Speakers are usually candid about this and it is the question they most rarely get. Listen for which parts of the job they think will still be done by a person, and why they think so.
- 18
When you hire someone new, what makes you pick one person over another?
This turns a career talk into a practical answer, and the criteria are rarely what students expect. Answers about showing up, asking questions, and being easy to work with come up far more often than grades.
- 19
What could someone my age do this year that would actually help?
Ask for something with a date on it: a class to take, a place to volunteer, a summer job, a person to email. A speaker who cannot name one concrete step is describing a career you cannot yet reach.
- 20
Can I contact you if I have more questions, and what is the best way?
The most valuable outcome of career day is one adult who has said yes to a follow-up. Ask for the preferred method, write it down before they leave, and send the message within the week while they remember you.
Getting something out of career day
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
For students
For students
Write two questions before the speaker arrives
Nobody thinks of a good question with forty people watching. Pick one about the actual work and one about how to get in, and keep them on paper so nerves do not delete them.
Ask about yesterday, not about typical
The word typical invites a summary. A date invites a story, and stories are where you learn what the job feels like at four in the afternoon.
Follow up once
The second question is where the real answer is. If they say the hardest part is the paperwork, ask what the paperwork is for. One follow-up turns a stock answer into a conversation.
Ask the question you think is too basic
How do people find out this job exists, and what does it pay to start, are the questions everyone in the room wants answered and nobody wants to be the one to ask.
For teachers and organisers
For teachers and organisers
- Hand out questions in advance and assign specific ones to specific students so the silence never happens.
- Ask speakers to bring one object from their work: a tool, a sample, a form they fill in. It generates more questions than any slide deck.
- Ask each speaker to state their entry level salary range and their qualification path, so the answers are comparable across the day.
- Invite people two or three years into a career as well as people twenty years in. Students find the first group easier to picture themselves as.
- Give students a way to follow up afterwards through the school, which is easier for speakers to agree to than handing out personal contact details.
Questions that always get a dull answer
Questions that always get a dull answer
- Do you like your job. Nobody says no in front of a classroom.
- What is your favourite part. It produces one sentence and nowhere to go next.
- Do you have any advice for us. This hands the speaker a blank page and they will fill it with something generic.
- How much do you make, asked flatly. Ask about starting pay in the field instead and you will usually get a real number.
- Is it hard. Ask what specifically is hard and the answer becomes something you can use.