As a business analyst, when interviewing, as much as you are being asked various questions on your professional experience and behavioral questions, understand that you are also interviewing the organization to see if the role or culture is a right fit for you.

Here are some guidelines on the questions the top 6 questions to ask your interviewer:

1. Why is the role open? Understanding why the role has become vacant gives some insights for you to make an informed decision. For example, in an interview, the BA asked this question, and the response was that it was a completely new role created to solve the need for missed requirements and no ownership of a resource to drive that.

2. What are the top 2 skills the BA needs to succeed? This question may seem like it should be highlighted in the job description. However, it is valuable to ask to take note of those skills to develop. In a recent interview, the job description read like a BA, but when I asked this question, they mentioned they would want someone who would play a data analysis/ BA role so that it would be more of a hybrid role. That helped me decide this role was not a good fit for me.

3. Do they operate in an agile, waterfall, or hybrid environment? This gives context into what you should be expecting and how the team will operate to deliver products. If they say Agile, which is a strong point for you, you can follow up with more questions on the team structure and what agile ceremonies they practice.

4. What is expected in the first 30 - 60 days of this role? There is no wrong or right answer to this question; it is simply for you to understand how the organization operates and its initial needs. They could be answers like the following:

   1. We expect you to hit the ground running.

   2. We will assign a resource to help with onboarding to understand how we operate.

   3. Create a backlog of critical requirements for the project.

5. Can you tell me about the projects I will be working on and at what phase the project is in? Get a summary of what the project entails to see if you have worked on something familiar in the past. In addition, understanding the phase they are at is helpful, which can follow up with if there are challenges the project is facing which the role can help be of value to resolve can be a good add.

6. What are some of the challenges the BA may face in this role? Again, you want to understand what to expect and see if there are previously experienced challenges that your skillset can help resolve.

The recommendation is to pick 2 or 3 questions that make sense depending on the interview length; I do not recommend asking all 6.