Questions for mentors, networking and career fairs

The quickest way to understand a career is to ask someone already in it. These sets are for mentoring, coffee chats, networking, job shadowing, career fairs and asking people about their work. Others cover a growth talk with your boss, hiring a coach and meeting a military recruiter.

115 sets · 4,478 questions · each with a note on why

A few to start with

How does a day in surgery differ from a day of consultations?
Many practices split the two, and they ask for different kinds of stamina: hours of concentration standing at a table, against a new owner and a new problem every time the door opens. Most vets know at once which of the two they would keep.
From: Questions to Ask a Vet in an Interview
What is your honest first reaction, before we get into detail?
First reactions are the closest thing you will get to how an audience will meet the work, and they decay within a minute of analysis. Ask for it before you start explaining anything, because your explanation will replace it.
From: Questions to Ask for Feedback on a Project
Did you have a mentor, and what did they do for you that a book could not?
Separates real mentorship from the word being used loosely. The revealing answers involve someone saying an uncomfortable thing at the right moment, or putting a name forward in a room the person was not in.
From: Questions to Ask a Panel of Professionals
What part of the job would you not have believed before you started?
Open enough to get something unrehearsed, and it often surfaces the things brochures leave out: how much of the week is administrative, how often people stop coming without saying why, how long change takes, how rarely you find out what happened to someone.
From: Questions to Ask a Psychologist About Their Career
How do staff and faculty work together here, and where does it get difficult?
Faculty generally own the curriculum and staff carry out much of what follows from it, which can produce a partnership or two separate worlds. One recent example of each tells you more than a general verdict, and both belong in an assignment on campus culture.
From: Questions to Ask Higher Education Professionals
What did you expect the job to be, and what has it actually been?
Opens with the gap between the brochure and the work, which most doctors are glad to talk about. The size of the gap they describe is more informative than any list of pros and cons.
From: Questions to Ask Doctors About Their Career

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