When you’re looking to make a career move, there’s a reason (or many) why you’re looking elsewhere. And you want to help make sure that you’re not going to run into the same predicament in your next opportunity.

One idea is to ask for further understanding around those particular areas prior to the interview.

This not only allows you to determine if the company, role, work, road-map ahead, culture, etc. are a good fit for you, but it also shows the hiring manager that you’re intellectually curious and have a genuine interest to ensure you’re doing the proper due diligence which translates to being analytical, which is what employers are looking for.

Now some companies may not want to address those questions up front in writing, but rather during the interview itself, just make sure they get addressed.

Real world scenario that happened this week:

A Salesforce Sr. Admin was looking to make a career move and one of the primary reasons was that they were looking to solve more complex business problems.

What did they do:

Ask me to ask the hiring manager if they could review some written examples of the process flows of their current business operations.

The intent was not to try and “steal” any proprietary information, but rather to understand if it’s a good fit for them to improve their skills by being faced with more complex and interesting challenges.

This is not only for your benefit, but it also shows the hiring manager that you’re intellectually curious and puts you in a good light even before the interview.

The hiring manager didn’t feel comfortable providing this up front, but rather we expedited the interview process and we all went in together for an informal discussion of the business operations, the problems being faced, and the road-map ahead.

At the end of the discussion, the candidate had a lot of the input that they were looking for to help base their decision on.

Remember, you’ll never get what you don’t ask for, and there’s typically much more of a beneficial outcome when you decide to ask for what you want and need, to help ensure your next career move is right one. As long as you can put some reasons behind why you’re asking, most will oblige which will lead to a better outcome.

The value of asking…