When you were going through the interview process at a new company, how did you know during the interview that the company had good culture?

I would say its a combination of multiple things.

• How they schedule your interviews -> In a more organized way, or a very haphazard way.
• How they start the interview -> Do they straight dictate their questions or do they outline how the process would be.
• How they interact with you -> Do they hint at correcting your course a bit, if you stray or do they just let you go down the rabbit hole of your wrong path. There would be much more hints in between.

Picking back up on this to add one observation having interviewed candidates and been on interviews for roles: One thing that you don't experience often is feeling that you "click" with the interviewer. Over the past decade, I've probably been on over 300 interviews, and I can count the times that everything just flowed. In my case, I felt that it wasn't an interview but a conversation, you're talking about things that matter, they're trying to understand your story and what makes you tick, not checking off boxes.

Just wanted to put it out there that sometimes it's a numbers game. You never really know what team or leader/hiring manager is going to be a fit for you and what's important to you. Put yourself out there, entertain more interviews/calls than you might like, and something might just click. You'll know it when you experience it.

This is such a tricky one! I find that asking direct questions helps--if you know the best way to phrase them to get specific answers. A lot of the time, asking stuff like "How would you describe your company culture" gets really vague, canned answers. I like to ask for examples, like "tell me about a time when..." This article kind of dives into other ways you can get more honest answers in and out of the interview: https://medium.com/merit-publication/getting-to-honest-answers-as-an-interviewee-6c1ff3b8f8de

Hope this helps!