Office Manager Interview Questions and Answers

Job Description:
Office managers supervise office activities to establish overall efficiency. This involves a wide variety of responsibilities, including designing office policies and procedures, supervising personnel performance, controlling correspondence and long-distance phone calls, overseeing supply requisitions and equipment maintenance, and communicating with other organizations and agencies, if necessary.

This article discusses some key questions asked in an office manager’s job interview. The article can work well for front office managers as well as medical office mangers or school office managers.

Interview Questions and Answers
for a Front Office Manager

Question: How do you understand the responsibilities of the role of an office manager? 
Answer: It is the office manager’s responsibility to ensure office functionality. The job involves many administrative tasks: HR issues – hiring and firing personnel, orienting and training the organization employees, coaching staff, and enforcing company rules and discipline.

Question: Are you qualified to maintain office records?
Answer: You can speak about designing filing systems and ensuring that the records are updated regularly. You should also discuss how to achieve the security of these records.

Question: What are some of the actions you can do to maintain office efficiency? 
Answer: Describe your prioritization process: planning ahead of office procedures, scheduling, and layout and supplies maintenance. Explain how you’ve monitored employees’ performance to identify functionality or anticipate problems and conflicts.

Question: What are the most vital skills for an office manager?
Answer: Interpersonal and team skills are key factors. You can also list management administration knowledge/skills, computer literacy, ability to multi-task, making decisions independently, and communicating effectively with office staff and senior management.

Question: How do you treat any conflicts that might arise in your office?
Answer: Conflicts are often the result of stress, rather than any dispute or actual reasons.
There are a number of ways to resolve a conflict. The simplest way is to allow the employee to talk about it with you. Often, this alone makes him or her feel better. Coaching workers about stress management is another way to prevent conflict.

Question: Have you ever conducted or supervised training sessions for employees? 
Answer: If you did, briefly describe any part of the training process and the training topics. The subjects of these sessions might be anything from time and stress management to office policies and computer literacy.