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I have recently received an invitation for an interview by a local bank. It just happens that I am a client of this bank for some years and I am quite familiar with how they work (from a normal client's perspective), especially with their Internet Banking solution.

I know it is a good practice to have some questions during the interview so I thought about asking about their flow of implementing a specific change in their Internet Banking solution.

They have recently migrated (the old version can still be used, though) the Internet Banking front-end application to a technology I am familiar with (AngularJS) and I know what features are missing from the newer version.

I am tempted to ask about what is their internal flow about implementing a specific missing flow (e.g. payment orders batch processing). I find the following advantages:

  • it shows that I am interested in their business
  • I want to know how it feels to be a developer by finding out development cycle for a particular change (e.g. maybe there is too much bureaucracy?)
  • (personal interest) to have a basic idea the feedback about these missing features was never answered

However, I am wondering if there are any downsides for me asking for such details.

Question: Is it ok to ask questions about a specific workflow during the interview?

Note: I have also tagged the question as Europe, the specific context being East European country within EU. AFAIK, the rules are typically more "relaxed" than in Western Europe/US. However, the company's HQ is located in Western Europe.

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  • Are you interviewing for a technical role?
    – simbabque
    Apr 18, 2018 at 14:16
  • @simbabque - yes.
    – Alexei
    Apr 18, 2018 at 14:57

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Absolutely it is. You're showing personal experience of this and it relates to your role. Of course it's up to the bank whether they want to disclose details of an internal process to you, but they'll decide what's appropriate to tell you.

I think this would be a great question for them.

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As an interviewer I look for anything that demonstrates passion. Do you care about your code? Can you do requirements elicitation as opposed to just accepting what others give as requirements? Can you think critically and work problems? Can you 'own' a process after you coded it so that future support is easier?

imo the example in this question is an excellent demonstration of that, and better in that it is a part of their business.

The opposite of this is 'I'm just here for a job and don't want to think much', which interviewers can spot a mile away.

Yes definitely this is ok to ask.

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