Top 19 Interview Questions to Ask When Hiring a Manager

Want to know how to hire the right candidate? Or perhaps you’re hoping to build a high-performing team with the best of managers. Well, it’s great you’re reading this post, as that is what the subject is all about.

This article is set to walk you through the step-by-step process of hiring the best set of people into your team and also explore various categories of interview questions that need to be asked when hiring a manager.

Hiring the right candidate into the management level of any organization is one crucial decision every organization has had to make at one time or the other, and it’s vital to the success of any organization.

Hiring is an expensive process, so organizations desire to want to get it right the first time. Unfortunately, too many people rely on resume roulette and interview intuition to do their hiring. So first, let explore some basic step that will help you hire the right person into your team.

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Step 1

The first step in hiring the right manager is to ensure that you know what you want them to do. Then, what most professional employers do is create the accountabilities for the management role you’re hiring into. In other words, the hiring team imagines they have got a star performer that has been on the role for 12 to 18 months; what is it exactly that they’ve to do.

What are their accountabilities? How will they get the job done? What are the skills and capacities, what are the relationships that the person needs to have to be effective in the role? That way, they create a clear job benchmark that includes those key accountabilities, the desired communication styles, motivations, and competencies necessary for success as a manager.

Step 2

This is also an important step to getting the best candidate on your management team. This step involves identifying the phone screen questions. These are questions that are used in your first conversation with the candidate, typically by phone. This will be a ten to fifteen minutes conversation. The questions asked during the phone screen section are thought of as the price of admission. It helps the hiring teams answer the question of, what does somebody have to have for you to be willing to invest an hour or more of your and your team’s time in meeting with this candidate?

For if you’re hiring someone into the role of a sales manager, you’re probably going to want to ask some phone screen questions like “tell me about your experience in selling, what kind of products have you been selling? Who do you know already in our space?”

You want to check to see if the person is used to selling commodities or services, and what is the difference between how they approach selling and their selling philosophy?

If you’re thinking about hiring a project manager, you might want to start by asking some questions during the phone screen section about what kind of software they have used in their project management roles?

Step 3

This may follow after or before in any order that suits the hiring team. This involves deciding the stakeholders that need to be a part of the interview process. These people are typically a part of the hiring teams and must work with the hiring manager to get the best results.

This step is all in-house start-up requirements for hiring teams and usually must be done professionally to get the best candidate during any hiring process.

Many times candidates for being interviewed for a management role are screened based on the competence on varieties of criteria. Here are some categories of interview questions that should be expected to be answered for management roles.

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Behavioral interview questions for Managers

This hiring team will ask questions about common managerial behaviors as an anticipating manager. The purpose of behavioral or competency-based interviews is to assess a candidate’s ability to perform the necessary job functions by assessing key competencies that underlie common management activities. During the interview, candidates will be asked to provide specific examples of how they have proven their ability to demonstrate behavioral competency.

Candidates will be required to give specific examples of actions taken and their results in a situation to demonstrate their behavioral competency. Here are some behavioral interview questions for managers.

Judgment and Decision-Making

Could you share a time you’ve had to make a difficult decision at work? How did you come to that decision?

This question tests the ability to decide and inform the hiring team how well a candidate fits most appropriately into the role with respect to their judgment and decision-making power. They could also ask questions like “How did you make a good decision and a bad decision recently? What did you do differently?” to ascertain the candidate’s competence in the area of decision making.

Delegation of Tasks and Responsibility

Recount a time that you motivated a reluctant staff member to undertake an assignment.

This is another vital question that the hiring team likely asks candidates in a managerial job interview to agree with the candidate’s delegating ability and manage various situations after that.

Staff Motivation

Tell me about an incentive program that you used to motivate your staff. Or incentives or rewards. For example, recall a time when you had to motivate a reluctant employee.

The extent of motivation is a vital criterion for hiring a candidate into a management role, and poor motivation can be a great deal breaker for any hiring team. This question determines the level of motivation a candidate has for a role based on past experiences.

Problem Analysis and Assessment

A hiring team or hiring managers can ask candidates to describe a complicated problem they had to deal with on the job. For example:

How did you see the problem differently?

Tell me about a time when you recognized and solved a small problem that could potentially turn into a big issue

This is a question to investigate the candidate’s ability to analyze and solve potential problems and a team head.

Staff Development

To a hiring manager, staff development has a leading role in driving a great work output. Thus candidates are questioned to evaluate their interest in staff development training, learning, and unlearning.

Another possible question may include a question like:

Describe a time you had to provide training or coaching to different staff members on the same tasks. How did you provide feedback to a staff member performing poorly? What outcome have you experienced as a result?”

Although these lists of behavioral competence lists are not exhaustive, examining candidate behavioral competence does come in interviews for a management role.

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Unique Interview question for Project Managers

Hiring a project manager can be tricky as managing projects for industries or in cooperate space can be catastrophic and result in a huge capital loss if not gotten right at once. So what are the common questions to ask a project manager putting in for a project management role?

Here are some unique questions to prepare for as candidate slides the door open into a board of hiring manager for an interview on a project manager role

What’s your background, personally and professionally?

In any hiring process, getting to know candidates is crucial since their life stories can give insight into how they might handle different situations at work and whether they would be a good fit for corporate culture.

Have you worked in this industry before?

Recruiting teams are always cautious about hiring candidates without experience in the relevant field. Though if they don’t, it isn’t a game-closer because project management is uniform across industries. Nevertheless, it’s always a plus if they have experience in this field. The hiring team is likely to ask how previous relevant projects panned out.

What was a challenging project, and how did you manage it?

This takes the conversation from the theoretical to the practical. This allows the hiring team to see how the candidate response to real-life problems, which helps them determine how they would manage projects at the organization.

This question also provides a sense of the candidate, such as leading teams and dealing with conflicts. In addition, the hiring teams can see how candidates act when pushed to their limits and beyond by asking about a challenging project.

The table also compiles possible questions asked by the hiring team from an intending project manager.

Other interview questions for an intending Project Manager	What does this question tend to evaluate
What’s your leadership style?	Candidate choice of leadership, ranging from a top-down approach to servant leadership
What’s your communication style?	Communication strategies and how to foster successful project management
When do you know the project is off-track?	Candidate’s ability to monitor and track project progress and tell when it’s not meeting the benchmarks
How do you manage team members that are not working to their full potential?	Candidate’s ability to keep the project up to schedule amid an underperforming team member
Do you seek help outside of the project team?	This ascertain the candidate’s preparedness for project management and

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Interview questions for Sales Manager

As a sales manager, the candidate will be asked many questions to determine whether they have the necessary skills to handle a sales team and handle pressure.

In addition to questions about your leadership style, there will also be questions about team management and sales. The following collection of questions range from simple ones to indebtedness-related questions for sales managers.

How would you manage a team and manage your schedule?

Employers often ask this question when they are trying to evaluate candidate management skills. Organizing skills should be considered when answering this question.

While there could be an endless good way of answering this question, it’s important to understand what the hiring team is looking for as a typical way of answering this question.

Tell me about a time you failed to meet your sales goals. How did you handle it?

Candidates are asked to describe a specific situation in which they interact with others in a behavioral interview. Then, after thinking of a few examples and picking the one that shows their growth as a leader, candidates are expected to this question. Hiring professionals often advise candidates to craft their response using the STAR technique, which stands for situation, task, action, and result.

Why do you want the sales manager position?

All employers will ask this simple question. The hiring team seeks an honest answer that explains why they’re the best candidates and what they can bring to the table. This is a great opportunity for candidates to show they’ve done their homework.

Other possible questions that are asked by hiring teams during an interview section with a sale manager may also include