Management Interview Questions

You will be asked to play it cool with confident and panache. Just be yourself and everything else will follow, is the advice you will get. But, sadly getting past a management job interview is not that easy.

A strict dress code with a perfect tie knot will be smothering you already and seeing the who's who of the industry will already have killed the oodles of confidence within. What happens now? As a freshman to the question-answer round to real jobs, petrified is all that you can be. But you need to intelligently tackle the interview questions thrown at you.

This is your only chance as you stand alone in a Colosseum crowded with corporate honchos. Worried? Sure you are. But, for now take a deep breath and get on with your preparation for the big day with the set of questions next.

• Describe one experience that molded you as a team lead.
• What is the difference between leader and manager?
• In your present job how would you get your people together to come up with a common solution to a problem?

• What type of a leader do you believe you are?
• If you do not have much time and your team holds seriously differing views, what would be your approach?

• How do you keep each member of the team involved and motivated while keeping morale high? What steps do you need to take to achieve this?
• Do you like to praise team members in public? How do you express your appreciation for them?

• Have you ever tried to do a job for which you were unqualified? How did you react at that time? Were you able to accomplish your task?

• Why should the design team be involved in all phases of a project?
• What are the methods you have used to evaluate the employee's job performance?

• Give us some instances in which you brought about some productive change in the company that you worked for. What were the steps that you carried out, and what were the steps that you set for others to follow?
• What is the most challenging factor for you as a manager?
• Describe how you have handled or would handle a dispute with a client over project's scope?

• How do you determine realistic schedule for the project?
• Explain your methods for resource allocation.
• How do you inform all the stakeholders of the progress of the project on a regular basis?

• How do you monitor risks to the project and mitigate them?
• What changes in management processes have you brought about to ensure that change is introduced properly?
• What specific training have you had that would be relevant to this job?

• How do you monitor risks to the project and mitigate them?
• What changes in management processes have you brought about to ensure that change is introduced properly?
• What specific training have you had that would be relevant to this job?

• Describe a major change that occurred in a job that you held. How did you adapt to this change?
• Tell us about a time that you had to adapt to a difficult situation.
• Developing and using a detailed procedure is often very important in a job.

Tell us about a time when you needed to develop and use a detailed procedure to successfully complete a project.

• It is very important to build good relationships at work. But sometimes it doesn't always work. If you can, tell us about a time when you were not able to build a successful relationship with a difficult person.

• Have you ever worked in a situation where the rules and guidelines were not clear? Tell us about it. How did you feel about it? How did you react?

• How do you go about explaining a complex technical problem to a person who does not understand technical jargon? What approach do you take in communicating with such a person?
• Discuss an important decision you have made regarding a task or project at work. What factors influenced your decision?

These questions are meant to assess the prospective employee's skills. Hope this series of questions has given you a fair picture of what an interview is like. Good luck!