What follow up questions will I get after I answer an interview question?
Don’t get nervous if you get follow up questions. Being asked follow up questions doesn’t mean your answer was bad, it’s just a standard part of many interviews.
The interviewer may ask clarifying questions about any part of your story they didn’t understand or want more information on. They may ask for more information because you didn’t give enough detail, or they may pick one of the things you said and challenge it, like a statement, decision, or a thought process.
Consider these follow up questions another part of the interview and prepare for them.
Follow up questions - format to use for answers
Do the answers you give to the follow up questions have to follow the STAR/PAR structure? No, definitely not. Even if the original question was a behavioral question you can answer follow ups without telling a full story in the proper PAR format.
Think of the challenge questions section like a conversation. You don’t need to give the full formal answer in PAR structure.
Possible follow up interview questions
Here are some specific questions you might be asked as follow ups.
Most common follow up questions
What would you have done differently?
What did you learn from this?
Questions about the beginning of your story (Situation/Task/Problem)
Why is this important?
What was the goal?
What was the initial scope of the project?
What were the challenges?
What were the risks and potential consequences if nothing happened?
Why did you choose this story to illustrate this accomplishment?
What other stories can you think of that demonstrate this?
Could you come up with an example that is more recent?
Questions about the middle of your story (Action)
Were you the key driver or project owner?
You mentioned that “we” did…. What exactly was your contribution versus the team?
What was your biggest contribution?
What unique value did you bring?
What were the most significant obstacles you faced? How did you overcome them?
How did you set priorities?
How did you deal with X problem?
How did you get manager buy-in?
What decisions did you challenge? Why?
How did you influence the right outcome?
Exactly how did you approach…?
Tell me more about…
Questions about the end of your story (Results)
How did you measure success for this project?
What results did you achieve specifically? (cost savings, revenue generation, volume, size, scale, percentage change, year over year improvements, time to market, implementation time, time savings, impact on the customer, the team…)
What was the financial impact?
