I often respond to HR-related questions on www.Quora.com, so I thought I’d share my answer to the question, “How do you interview for a manager position?”
When preparing to interview for a management position, you should concentrate on three areas: 1) Emotional Intelligence, 2) Technical knowledge, and 3) Story-telling. I intentionally listed emotional intelligence first because I consider it the most important characteristic of an effective manager. I have heard many hiring managers admit, and I agree whole-heartedly, that if they had to, they would rather hire someone with a high degree of emotional intelligence and train them on the technical skills of the job, than vice versa.
Emotional intelligence gives you that sixth sense that is needed when interacting with those around you. It helps you to not rush to decision-making. For example, as the Employee Relations Manager earlier in my career, an executive wanted to fire and employee who brought a gun to work, before getting the back story. Unfortunately, senses were high because we had had a homicide-suicide incident at the workplace within the past year. Needless to say, when I informed my Vice President of Human Resources of the issue, she, too, agreed that the employee should be discharged. As I investigated the matter, I became aware of some key information. The employee in question had not had any type of difficulty getting along with coworkers or management; she had no major performance issues; she had not tried to hide the weapon from anyone; and, she had actually brought the weapon into the building, inside its case, out of an abundance of caution. You see, her boyfriend had removed the gun from her home without her knowledge. That scared her, so she decided to sell it, so she listed it for sale. So, when she got a buyer, she took it to the gun shop to have it serviced so that it would be in good working condition for its new owner.
While running errands before work one day, she got the call that the weapon was ready for pickup, so she decided to pick up it up instead of going back home before work. After doing so, she remembered that some employees’ cars had been broken into, mostly during the overnight shift, in the parking deck at work. So, she took the gun inside and secured it in her work locker because she did not want to risk it being stolen from her car and used in a crime. Based on that reasoning, I was able to gain my Vice President’s support to ask the executive to consider a lower level of corrective action than discharge. We were successful and she kept her job with just a forty-hour unpaid suspension for exercising poor judgment because she should have taken the weapon to on-site security and asked them to secure it for her until the end of her shift. So, emotional intelligence can help you fully assess situations and make more informed decisions.
During the interview process, employers will assess candidates’ emotional intelligence by asking behavioral interview questions. Behavioral interview questions predict future behavior based on past behavior, so you might be asked to describe how you acted when faced with a certain type of situation. They could also ask you to participate in a role-play enactment so that they can see how you react or you could be asked to assess a business case that presents a certain workplace challenge and require you to offer the best resolution and explain why you chose to approach the manner in the way that you did. Finally, the interviewer may also have you take a personality assessment test, which will help to predict how you will handle stress, difficult situations, conflict, etc.
Technical knowledge and skills allow you to perform work-related tasks effectively. For example, you should know the common keywords for your career field and industry. You should know how to solve problems related directly to your field of interest. You should know how to write, interpret, and administer career field related policies and procedures. You should know how to determine compliance, the lack of it, and/or how to mitigate instances of non-compliance. You should be a member of, active with, and/or familiar with professional organizations within your career field or industry. You should know which administrative agencies have oversight of organizations within your career field or industry and what are the possible consequences of non-compliance. You should also have a familiarity with other professionals within your career field to whom you can reach out for insight related to the work that you perform. This comes with training and experience. Depending upon your career field and the interview setting, the interviewer could ask you to complete some work-related tasks while they assess your technical skills based on what they observe.
Lastly, story-telling is essential during the interview process. I tell people whom I coach on interview preparedness, that no one should be able to tell your career story better than you. Why? Because it’s your story, but I am often unpleasantly surprised to find that many people are ineffective at doing this even though they may have been performing their jobs, and be great at it, for several years. In order to edge out the competition, you must be able to effectively relate your job-related experience to the vacancy that you are interviewing for. If you can do a bang-up job of that, your capabilities will shine through because you will help the hiring manager envision you as a member of their time and it won’t be long before you land your next awesome career opportunity.
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I hope that this information is helpful.
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