in Brief:” Management interview questions are questions that focus on evoking a reaction from a candidate for a certain purpose – to provide a general image of the manager (i.e. the candidate).
How is that? Because the answers that the candidate provides present his way of thinking and demonstrate if he can disentangle himself from a given situation with a good lesson learned – to see how skilled and experienced he is”
Why would the employer want to ask these management questions?
The employer wants to know how this particular manager will perform if hired, verifying his ability to think about a complex problem and the way he may solve it – is he a follower or a natural leader?
This article provides manager interview questions and suggests how to handle these tough manager interview questions.
After reading thisarticle you may be interested in reading the articles: Leadership interview questions and Examples of competency based questions.
Senior Management: Interview Questions for Management Positions
As opposed to any other interview questions, when answering these management questions, you should organize your answer (the way you construct your answer – through the required elements of an answer) for the interviewer to assess your managing skills.
Read further.
Manager Interview Questions & Answers – Leadership
• Examples of strategic thinking in past situations
• Have you ever challenged, shaken old work methods.
• How do you make your decisions in general?
• How do you reach a decision if you don’t have all the facts?
• How do you usually solve problems?
• Examples of situations when your initiative ideas for improvement have made a significant difference.
• How have you coordinated the work of your team to achieve target goals?
• Example of adaptation to changes and the difficulties.
• When did you last update your business management education? What are your professional development needs?
• How do you handle a heavy workload? How do you prioritize day to day tasks?
• How do you handle failures? Provide examples.
• How do you define your key team members?
How to answer these questions?
The above group of questions may be put forward to identify your leadership and management style and the methods you take to achieve your objectives as a key leader in an organization. The employer would want to see your initial reaction to these questions, how you analyze before answering and the quality of your answers – a good story with a value added lesson learned.
I won’t give examples, as you probably know your achievements better than anyone else.
Management interview questions: Communication skills
• How do you build and maintain a relationship with co-workers, key managers and customers?
• How do you start a working relationship with a new customer?
• What are your influencing tactics? Which people are hard to persuade?
• How do you satisfy customers? What is a good product for customers? How do customers choose a product?
How to answer these questions?
The above group of questions is designed to define your communication skills and see how open you are to forging new contacts – your networking abilities. These questions also aim to evaluate your sales skills and marketing experience. The employer wishes to observe how you behave when you meet new people. He also wants to know if people like working with you and how you influence people. When answering, you may want to provide past examples and recent scenarios.
Take a few seconds before answering
In summing up these management questions, the main thing is to evaluate the quality of the answers. If one has already prepared his answers and “thought it through” (or “blurts them out”) without presenting his “thought process”, he hasn’t really shown the interviewer his analytic mind – which was the whole point of these questions.
Therefore, think before answering.
• The article refers to both men and women as candidates.
For more questions and answers, you may read the articles – team leader interview, project manager interview, executive interview and CEO interview.