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Google Recruiter's Top Interview Question Tip for Job Seekers

A former recruiter at Google, Uber, Lyft, TikTok, and The New York Times says most candidates waste the most important moment of a job interview — and that a single shift in how you approach the question-and-answer portion can make a hiring manager want to offer you the job on the spot.

Farah Sharghi, now a career coach and contributor at CNBC, published her advice on Tuesday for the candidates who genuinely stand out in her experience. The core insight: when an interviewer asks "What questions do you have for me?", the candidates who make the biggest impression are not the ones who ask about career growth tracks, company culture, or day-to-day perks. They are the ones who ask about what problem the company is actually trying to solve by opening the role in the first place.

Sharghi describes that mindset shift as treating the interview not like an audition to be selected, but like the first day of work — walking in already trying to understand what the team needs fixed. Her years recruiting across some of the most competitive talent markets in the country inform the observation: a candidate who demonstrates that kind of problem-first thinking transforms, in a recruiter's mind, from one name in a pile to someone who looks ready to contribute immediately.

The advice lands in a job market where candidates are increasingly trying to differentiate themselves through polish — rehearsed answers, optimized resumes, curated LinkedIn profiles. But polish alone does not signal fit. Career professionals and HR researchers have long noted that the questions candidates ask in interviews reveal as much about their thinking as the answers they give. The Society for Human Resource Management recommends that candidates ask specifically about the challenges they would face in a role, and what a genuinely productive day looks like — questions that demonstrate engagement with the actual work rather than the abstract idea of joining a company.

For Sharghi, the distinction between surface-level questions and substantive ones is not subtle. Candidates who ask predictable questions about growth opportunities or team culture signal that they are still thinking about whether they want the job. Candidates who ask what needs to be fixed signal that they are already thinking about doing it.

What this means for remote workers and nomads

For remote workers and digital nomads, this advice has a specific edge. Landing a remote role is already a harder sell: hiring managers cannot rely on office proximity or physical presence as informal signals of commitment and reliability. When a candidate is pitching for a fully remote position, the quality of their questions carries even more weight — it is often the clearest window a recruiter has into how that person will operate independently.

Asking what problem the role is meant to solve does double work in a remote interview. It shows you are thinking like a contributor, not a job-seeker. It also surfaces critical information about whether the team has the structure and clarity a remote worker needs to succeed — vague or shifting answers to that question are worth noting. If a hiring manager cannot articulate what the role is meant to fix, that is a signal about the organization, not just the job opening.

We'd suggest pairing that approach with preparation on the role's context: review the company's recent announcements, job listing language, and any news about growth or restructuring before the interview. For nomads building a remote career from scratch, more grounding on what employers expect is in our digital nomad starter kit.

The broader takeaway from Sharghi's advice is that the strongest candidates are not selling themselves — they are already doing the job, starting with the conversation.