So you believe you have the experience and skill to advance above your entry-level or intermediary-level position, but your current firm can’t accommodate your advancement. The next stage of your career may lie elsewhere, so you start planning to reenter the job market and begin answering manager interview questions again. Before you make such an important decision, it’s vital that you’re aware of how recruiters assess potential managers. They’re looking for qualities distinct from what fresh entrants possess, so even familiar questions you’ve encountered in past interviews may be evaluated differently.
These are five major traits recruiters seek that you should keep in mind when answering their manager job interview questions. Examples of how each aspect is measured for their interview assessments can also be found here.
An Achievement Attitude
Once you and the recruiter have gone through the opening pleasantries concerning your background, what your previous vocation was like, and why you left it, this is one of the traits they’ll try to find in you first. Beyond an associate’s need to meet deadlines and complete tasks is a manager’s drive to attain achievements. An achievement-oriented individual is someone who can identify objectives that can benefit their business further.
Manager job interview questions like “What risks did you take to achieve your goals?” or “Did you ever undertake a project you proposed that had a major impact?” gauge an applicant’s foresight to vie for short and long-term goals. Whether they can take the initiative is likewise considered. So when you’re asked about an accomplishment you’re most proud of, remember that it must involve some level of ambition as you are applying for a leadership role.
Ability to Analyze
An associate must be aware, but a leader has to be perceptive. The ability to analyze is the competency to recognize key features of an incoming task and to discern its parameters. This part of the interview assessment also aims to determine if an applicant can anticipate possible problems a project can face and infer solutions to them.
“Give me an example of a work problem you spotted and solved?”, “Were you ever asked to evaluate a situation and recommend new approaches?”, “Have you stayed attuned to new trends in the field?” are the sorts of manager job interview questions recruiters will ask you to detect this trait.
Decision Maker, Problem Solver
Tied to a manager’s ability to analyze is their capacity to make decisions and address issues. They must be proactive yet prudent when others may simply wait. With the data gathered and studied, the applicant should be able to make choices that will move their future team forward. If challenges arise, they can identify their cause and offer various courses of action to resolve them.
Interview assessments involving this trait are concerned with the importance of the decisions you made in your previous jobs and how long it took you to make them. You may be asked how you investigated problems and which ones frustrated you the most. Although, another popular manager interview question of this type is “Have you ever involved others in the decision-making process?”
Interpersonal Savvy
A manager needs to establish productive relationships with their new peers, their new immediate seniors, and of course, their new subordinates. They need to understand and address the needs and priorities of those associated with them; recognize strengths and shortcomings; account for diverse backgrounds and behaviors; know how to receive and provide pertinent feedback that will make each of these interconnected relationships more productive.
This is particularly vital for new managers who are coming from outside the business as they won’t be as familiar with the company culture and their coworkers as someone who was promoted internally. Consequently, it’s best to display such aptitude to leave a favorable impression in the recruiter’s interview assessment.
Expect to answer manager interview questions akin to “Can you provide examples of co-employee conflict and how you resolved them,” “Have you ever managed a difficult employee’s issues before?”, and “Were there any situations where empathy and sympathy was of great importance?” for this topic.
Organizational Inclination
Good organization is what makes the achievable repeatable. It gives leaders stable ground to develop plans and reach goals. Knowing what actions you and your co-employees need to do, when it needs to be done, and who should be assigned to do them produces clear information and concrete results. A promising manager candidate can weigh these benefits against the extra time and effort it will take to prepare, outline, and implement.
The manager interview questions for this are straightforward, but you should take this as an opportunity to meet them with prepared answers. You will be asked how you prioritize on daily, weekly, and even monthly responsibilities. They’ll request you to give examples of projects you were assigned and how you structured your approach to accomplishing them. It’s possible that the recruiter will want to know if you’ve ever fostered a productive work environment or negotiated conflicting priorities among your co-employees. Perhaps trickiest of all these manager interview questions, is that they may ask if there was any particular episode of planning or administration that you enjoyed in your previous jobs.
These traits are non-sequential. Interview questions may come in unexpected configurations depending on the flow of the conversation. This is because they are complimentary. A viable manager candidate values them in tandem and is eager to put them into practice. Recognizing these subjects and how they relate to your own character and experience will help make you ready for this next big step of your career.
Start your search for managerial and executive job openings here on John Clements’ own careers page.
