Follow up Questions to ask the Interviewer

Posted on February 14, 2023  •  3 minutes  • 515 words

At the end of an interview, when a recruiter asks if you have any questions, you should definitely ask several follow-up questions. These are some questions that should be asked to the hiring manager to get a little more insight on the team. IR can be a stressful job so the fewer surprises you have the better. Here is an example of questions to consider asking.

1. What does success look like in 90 days? How would I be set up for success? Describe how that would look like?
2. What tools do you use at the company to help with IR?
3. How big is your team and who is the longest tenured person on the team? How long have they been there? What are your boss’s career aspirations?
4. What are the on-call expectations? Describe to me how they are set and who is chosen to be on call?
5. Imagine that there is a major incident. Describe to me what that looks like?
6. What does the training budget look like on a year to year basis?
7. What kind of threats are you worried about and how are you tracking these threats? Describe how the different cyber teams are working together to track these threats.
8. How many endpoints do you have? What percent of the environment is Windows, Mac, cloud, and Linux?
9. What is the average number of alerts that you get in a day? What is the ratio of false positive to true positive alerts?
10. How does purple teaming look like at the company? How do tabletop exercises look at the company?
11. What does collaboration with the different cyber teams look like? Are there going to be opportunities for shadowing other teams?
12. What percentage of your job is IR work?
13. What does a typical IR analyst’s day look like? Describe the steps that analysts will take from initial intake of the incident to containment.
14. Tell me how the greater cyber org is structured. Who is going to be your boss’s boss and how long have they been there?
15. How long has the IR been a part of the company? Does it have external contractors? If it does, how are their roles different? Describe the relationship between the contractors and the FTE.
16. How is the success of the IR team measured at the company?
17. What is the reason for this job opening(s)?
18. What does company culture mean to you?
19. How have you viewed upward movement throughout your company?
20. How do you handle changes (within the org, within the company, withing the job)?
21. When was the last layoff cycle?
22. What have you done to challenge yourself?
23. What has the company done to challenge you?
24. What was the biggest shift your company made that you did not agree with?
25. As security practitioners we are relied upon to make the correct decisions. However at the same time we are human. What were some of the mistakes that you made in your career that you learned the most from?
26. What are some key moments that have defined your career so far?
27. What experience did you have to you learned the most from?