Interview tips for a management position

cornbb

Hello,

Due to an organisational change, the internationally-distributed engineering team that I am a member of (~15 members) is to be split up, and the group of us based in Ireland (just 3 people at the moment) is to get its own manager. My current manager indicated that they're leaning towards getting someone external with prior management experience (as well as the necessary technical skills), but that he'd like to see me apply for it anyway - my last annual review was very good and he thinks that I have the "people skills" for the job.

My question is this: what can I do to shore up my application to show that I would be a capable manager? I have no prior experience in this regard. I would be interviewed my senior managers who would be familiar with my good work, but I would need to show them that I would have the leadership skills to go with this. What sort of questions can I expect, and does anyone have tips on preparing for such an interview?

Thanks!

Tom Dunne

cornbb wrote: »

My question is this: what can I do to shore up my application to show that I would be a capable manager? I have no prior experience in this regard. I would be interviewed my senior managers who would be familiar with my good work, but I would need to show them that I would have the leadership skills to go with this. What sort of questions can I expect, and does anyone have tips on preparing for such an interview?

I was in pretty much an identical position a few months back and I got the job.

So, here's a few pointers:

• do you have any particular examples of situations where you displayed leadership?
• do you have specific examples of training or teaching people (thereby showing yourself to be a leader in a subject area)?
• How would you manage breaking difficult news to somebody (such as, you are getting a zero percent pay rise and being put on a performance improvement plan)? My answer to this was "no surprises - the person should not be surprised by this, so efficient and effective communication are important".
• How would you run the department on a day to day basis - my answer was "firm, fair and consistent"
• What values should a manager have "Openness and honesty and a willingness to consider alternative viewpoints. An acceptance that you do not have all the answers and may on occasion be wrong"

I am sure there was lots of other fluff, but that was the just of it.

cornbb

Thanks TD, that's exactly the sort of advice I'm after. I was envisioning such questions but I'd love to hear some more examples if anyone has any.

dan_d

I've no PM qualification but I've often been asked "what kind of project management/management tools have you built up through your experience? What do you think is important in managing a project?"

Have a few answers to that.

belongtojazz

I have years of managment experience but have only recently had to start interviewing for work.
Some of the questions I have been asked are:

a) How would you deal with a team member who was not performing?
b) How would you deal with a multicultural team?
c) What is yor management style?
d) describe a difficult situation with one of your team and how you overcame it.
e) give examples of effective and non effective coaching and training
f) how would you deal with a team member whose work reached targets but they dragged down morale through their negative attitude?

Then there are the usual, what are your strengths and weakness? (best to be really honest here and for yor weakness have a response for how you are working to improve it) Where do you see yourself in x number of years.

Best of luck with it