Interview Questions Often Asked of Managers (With Example Answers)
Example questions and answers
When applying for a management job, it’s important to show that you can work well with others, care about the company’s culture, and delegate work in the right way. Use the STAR method if you are asked to talk about something personal:
- Tell me about a problem you were having, but do it in a positive and helpful way.
- Task: Tell me what you did.
- Action: Tell what you did to solve or deal with the problem.
- Talk about what you learned and how what you did helped your workplace.
The STAR method lets you show that you know how to be a good manager by giving examples from your own life.
Interview questions for managers
Even though management interviews can be scary, going over these questions and coming up with thoughtful answers based on your experience as a leader can help you do better in the interview. Make sure to talk about how well you can work with others and why you think your skills make you the best person for this job.
This article gives examples of how you can use this method to come up with honest, interesting answers.
1. Describe a time when you had to deal with someone who worked hard.
One of the most important things a manager has to do is keep an eye on the workers. If you give a good answer to this question, it shows that you know how to communicate and solve problems for and with your team. When answering this question, choose an example that shows you want to actively listen to your team members, solve problems, and boost productivity.
Example: “One of my team members at my last job always missed deadlines, which could have kept us from meeting our monthly goals. I set up a meeting with him so I could find out what he thought about how well he was doing at work. I heard that he was having trouble with the new software, so I set up a training session for him. So, he was able to finish his work faster and felt better about asking for help.
2. How can you tell if you’ve been successful?
As a manager, it’s important to set goals and evaluate how well they were met. The interviewer can see how you find, set, and reach your goals by asking you this question. Instead of talking about your own goals, it’s better to talk about how you feel about the success of the group.
“I try to set goals that I can reach, and I want to do the same for my team. I want to set up and celebrate small milestones so that we can see how far we’ve come toward our big goal. At my last job, I was in charge of a marketing campaign in which everyone on the team had to do several tasks every week. Once a week, I met with my team to find out what was stopping them from reaching their goals. We finished the campaign even better than the client had hoped.”
3. What would you say about how you run things?
This question gives you a chance to talk about how and why you run your business the way you do. Make sure your answer is backed up by specific examples of how your style has worked in the past.
“I check in with my team often to make sure we’re making progress toward our goal and meeting deadlines. But I don’t micromanage them, and I let them make their own daily schedules and decide what their responsibilities are. When I was in charge of a 15-person search engine optimization team, I found that everyone did their best work when I was there to answer questions and offer support but let them work on their own.
4. How do you delegate responsibilities?
When you’re in charge, you need to know who on your team can do a job best. In your answer, show the interviewer how you decide what tasks to give your team based on their strengths.
“The first thing I want to do is find out what each person on my team does well. Once I see the group as a network of people, I can give jobs to the right people and build a good team. At my last job, I met with each person in my department once a month to talk about their progress, any problems they might be having, and any opportunities they wanted to take advantage of. One worker felt like her skills weren’t being used to their fullest potential. I gave her some harder jobs to do, and as a result, everyone in our department worked better.
5. How do you get people to work hard on your team?
People can be more productive at work if they are motivated. As a manager, you should do everything you can to keep your team members motivated, especially when morale is low. Think about times when you were able to get your team to work harder when answering this question.
“I know that different things drive different people, so I try to get my employees going in the way that works best for them. In my last job as Creative Director, one team member told me he liked getting regular positive feedback, while another said she wanted to know what was wrong with her projects. When our team was under a lot of pressure to get a lot of work done, I gave them the motivation they needed, and both of them always did good work.
6. What do you do when people on your team have different ideas?
At work, there will always be some arguments. But a good manager knows how to deal with tough situations in ways that bring the team together and make the workplace better. You can talk about a time when you helped your team get along better by answering this question.
When I was in charge of a team that made content, two of my employees didn’t talk to each other about what tasks they needed to do. Because of this, we didn’t finish a big part of our project by the due date. The workers got into a fight because each said they had done their job well. I looked at the emails that the two coworkers sent each other and found that they both had the wrong idea about what their jobs were on this project. I gave the remaining tasks to each employee based on when they were free, and we finished the campaign as quickly as possible for the client. We came up with a new way to divide up the work so that this wouldn’t happen again.
Management interview tips
Once you’ve thought about how to answer these common questions, you can take more steps to prepare for your interview. These tips will help you feel more confident and learn more about the job so that you can make a good first impression:
- Check out the business. Try to find out what the organization’s mission and goals are so you can answer in a way that fits with them.
- Figure out how to respond to different kinds of questions. Interviewers will ask a wide range of questions, and going over them ahead of time can help you feel less rushed when answering.
- Show how good a leader you are. Before the interview, make a list of three or four experiences that show you can make good decisions, give other team members work, motivate people, and build a team. Remember that examples of your team’s success are just as helpful as examples of your own.
- Find out how behavioral interviews are conducted. Your interviewer might ask you to think about how you would handle something that doesn’t exist. Always back up your answers with real-life examples that show what you’ve done as a manager in the past.
