Lesson 1

Build sharper questions for Patric and Esther

Mission link: ask interviewer-specific questions that make you sound prepared, thoughtful, and role-aware.

Tangible win: by the end of this lesson, you should be able to ask two strong Patric questions and two strong Esther questions without sounding generic.

What changed in the second interview?

You are no longer proving that you are merely interesting on paper. Now you are showing that you can think inside their world. Your questions should therefore reveal that you understand the role as a bridge between engineering research, valorisation, partners, and campus execution, not as a normal sales job. The vacancy explicitly mentions scouting inventions, spin-off growth, partner-finding, coaching, and acting as the connector between researchers, patent attorneys, lawyers, financiers, and other stakeholders. [1]

Who is likely testing what?

Person Official role What your question should reveal
Patric Machiels Startup Development Manager You understand commercialisation routes, startup logic, bottlenecks, and leverage points. [2]
Esther Adam Human Resources Advisor You think clearly about fit, expectations, onboarding, team functioning, and package mechanics. [3]

The rule: ask for signal, not information

A weak question asks for facts you could have learned from the website. A strong question asks for judgment, thresholds, trade-offs, or lived friction. Use these stems:

Best questions for Patric

1. First-year leverage

Question: Where would you most want this role to create leverage in the first 6–12 months: scouting, business-case shaping, spin-off support, or partner-finding?

Why it works: it assumes the role is multi-modal and asks him to rank where value really comes from.

2. Real bottlenecks

Question: What most often prevents promising engineering inventions from progressing here: market pull, IP position, founder readiness, funding, or something else?

Why it works: it invites operational truth, not brochure language.

3. Route choice

Question: How do you usually decide when startup creation is the right path versus licensing or collaboration with an existing party?

Why it works: it shows you understand not every invention should become a startup.

4. Domain signal

Question: Which engineering opportunity areas are most active or promising around FSE right now?

Why it works: it lets him reveal current campus demand and helps you tune later examples.

Best questions for Esther

1. Success criteria

Question: What would make you say after the first year that this hire has been a strong success?

Why it works: it moves immediately to evaluative criteria.

2. Contract path

Question: The vacancy mentions an initial one-year appointment with prospect of permanence; how is that usually reviewed in practice?

Why it works: it is practical, serious, and completely legitimate.

3. Team fit

Question: Which collaboration qualities matter most in this team when someone is working across researchers, venture builders, and partners?

Why it works: it targets behavior, not slogans.

4. Dutch expectations

Question: How much Dutch is practically needed in the first months versus what can be strengthened on the job over time?

Why it works: it handles a real risk directly and maturely.

Practice quiz

1. Which question is strongest for Patric?
2. Which question is strongest for Esther?
3. Check all traits of a strong directed question.
Score will appear here.

Retrieval drill

Without looking back, say aloud:

  1. One question to Patric about route choice.
  2. One question to Patric about bottlenecks.
  3. One question to Esther about contract path.
  4. One question to Esther about success criteria.
Primary source to read: revisit the official Brightlands profile pages for Patric and Esther for two minutes each before the interview. The goal is not biography; it is to remember what each role likely optimizes for.