The eight, in order
Walk me through your background. Why are you looking. Why us. What are you working on now. What did you personally do on it. What are you looking for in the next role. Salary range, notice, location, work authorisation. Any questions for me.
That is the whole screen. A recruiter is not evaluating your engineering, your teaching or your design. They are checking that the person on the CV exists, that the story holds together, and that the money is not going to waste everybody's time in three weeks. Every question above is one of those three checks.
Ninety seconds, not four minutes
The opening answer is where screens are lost, and they are lost by being thorough. Three beats: where you are now, the thing you are known for, why you are having this conversation. The last beat matters most because it hands over the next question instead of trailing off.
If you start in 2014 you will still be in 2019 when they cut in, and being cut in on in the first answer sets the tone for the other seven. Dana Whitfield interrupts at two minutes, which is roughly when a real recruiter starts writing something down instead of listening.
Why us, and the find-and-replace test
Write your answer to why this company. Now swap in a competitor's name. If it still reads fine, it is not an answer. It is a paragraph about wanting a job.
One fact is enough. A product decision, a market they are in, something they published. Then one sentence on what it has to do with you. Sixty seconds total, and it beats a minute of enthusiasm every time.
The number
This is the last question and it is where the screen is most often thrown away. Flexible is not an answer; it is heard as no answer, and it costs you the anchor for everything afterwards.
Say a range you would accept the bottom of, say it once, and stop talking. The stopping is the hard part and it is the reason to rehearse this out loud rather than decide on it in your head. Twelve minutes with Dana costs nothing the first time, and the salary question comes exactly where it comes in the real one.
