When interviewing for management positions, candidates often face a variety of interview questions designed to assess their leadership skills, problem-solving capabilities, and ability to handle pressure. These are all day-to-day challenges that managers face. Typically, employers ask these questions to gauge how well a candidate can balance the pressure of hitting goals and objectives, delegating tasks, and leading in a way that contributes to the long-term growth of the company and its culture.

As contributors to every aspect of the balance sheet, managers need to understand that the intent behind these questions is to uncover possible alignments and misalignments in skills, experience, strategy, and leadership styles in their responses.

Types of Interview Questions for Management Positions

In a management interview, the two most important factors will be a candidate's leadership experience and ability to achieve ideal outcomes. But how those outcomes are achieved matters more than ever. As transparency has become a core principle to many businesses, how a manager handles team conflict, works collaboratively with other internal teams, and solves problems under pressure will play a huge role in the interview.

Interview questions for management roles should include a balance of behavioral and situational interview questions to assess how a candidate has performed in the past and assess how they think through the process of solving challenges that they may face in the role. In this article, we'll cover various interview questions you may want to use as you assess a possible fit for one of your open roles. We'll talk about the different types of interview questions that you could use to assess a candidate's management style, and critical thinking skills, and discuss job-related interview questions you may want to consider for your next interview.

Let's kick off this list of interview questions for management positions with options that will help you assess a candidate's emotional intelligence, adaptability, and initiative when leading a team. Once you've opened the interview with rapport building, and "set that stage" (ie. given the candidate a brief summary of the company, what stage of the interview process they're in, and what your goal for this interview is) now you can dive into the interview questions in a natural way.

Behavioral Interview Questions

1. "Can you describe your current role and how the skills and responsibilities you have now will help you succeed in the management position you're applying for?"
2. "Can you share an example of a time when you had to mediate a conflict between team members? What was the situation, and how did you resolve it?"
3. "Describe a scenario where you had to step in to resolve a disagreement between a team member, a customer, or a stakeholder. What strategies did you use to ensure a satisfactory outcome for all parties involved?"

Once you have a baseline on how they handle conflict in this area, you can ask situational interview questions to assess how they may face challenges in the role you're hiring them to perform.

Situational Interview Questions

1. "Imagine you're leading a team that's behind on reaching its quarterly objectives due to unforeseen challenges. What steps would you take to realign your team's focus and energize them to meet the deadlines?"
2. "As a manager, you may encounter resistance to change from your team when implementing new processes or strategies. How would you approach this situation and get buy-in from your team?"
3. "In a fast-paced environment, priorities can shift quickly. Can you share an example of how you have successfully managed multiple priorities and deadlines at once?"

These types of questions will give you insight into how a candidate thinks and acts under pressure, as well as their ability to find creative solutions when company goals are on the line.

Pillar provides over 1000 interview questions tailored to the needs of your company and your key hires. Our interview intelligence library cuts interview prep time, letting you add questions with a few clicks so you can focus on building candidate relationships, not writing questions.

Interview Questions For Management Style

The best interview questions for management positions will need to be filtered through the lens of your company's stage, goals, and objectives. If you're a pre-revenue company, product-market fit and culture will matter more than bottom-line revenue. Asking interview questions for management style can help you understand a candidate's fit for your current stage.

Questions like:

1. "If your previous team was here and they knew you'd never hear their response, how would they describe your management style?"
2. "What do you believe are the most important qualities of a successful manager? And how would you say that you showcase those qualities?
3. "Can you give an example of a time when your management style had a positive impact on your team's performance?" (You may also want to ask for a negative impact to see the full picture.)

These questions will show you how a candidate views leadership as well as give you insight into their approach and values as a manager. Questions like these can be asked from different angles (ie. positive and negative) to get a better picture of the candidate's leadership style holistically.

Interview questions for management levels should also be tailored to the needs of your open role. For example, a Marketing Director will serve a very different function than a Sales Manager and therefore may require different sets of skills and experiences. Here are a few job-related interview questions for management positions to consider:

1. "What experience do you have leading teams in a fast-paced environment where data-driven decision-making is crucial?" (for a Marketing Director role)
2. "Can you share an example of how you have successfully managed and exceeded sales targets in your previous role?" (for a Sales Manager role)
3. "How have you approached performance management and feedback with past direct reports, and what impact did it have on their growth and development?" (for any management position)

By tailoring job-related questions to the specific needs of your open role, you can better assess a candidate's fit for the position and ensure you're making an offer to the right one. This is where interview intelligence software can be a huge help. Using the power of AI, we can now assess everything from a candidate's confidence to their micro-expressions and tonal changes. This gives the interviewer insights that human eyes can miss.

Job Interview Questions For Management Positions

If you have a few minutes and would like to be thoroughly overwhelmed, Google “interview questions for management roles.” I did, and in less than half a second, Google delivered 646,000,000 results for the most common interview questions for management positions. Now I don’t know about you, but I don't have 50,000 years to interview a candidate. I have 5- 6 interviews to get it right. For this reason, being ultra-specific with the questions being asked removes complexity.

Specific Job Interview Questions for Managerial Roles:

Let's use a GTM Manager at a Series-A Biotech startup for example. This type of role requires a unique blend of skills like strategy, leadership, and operational expertise. Here are a few job-related interview questions for this managerial position:

1. "Can you walk me through your experience developing go-to-market strategies in the biotech industry?"
2. "How have you managed cross-functional teams to successfully execute complex projects and initiatives?"
3. "In the fast-paced world of biotech startups, how have you adapted and pivoted your strategies in response to changing market trends or competitive pressures?"

These types of questions allow the candidate to showcase their past successes and problem-solving abilities, which can give insight into their potential as a leader. But don't forget to dig into their perceived failures as well. Failures often teach us more than victories, so seeing how they handle a challenge "when the chips are down" is often more revealing than the wins.

Interview Questions For Management Candidates

As we close this article, let's revisit behavioral interview questions for management positions but shift our focus to the different stages of the interview. Most often, a company will have 5- 8 interviews with a candidate over a 4- 6 week timeline. Longer hiring processes are more common in large or highly competitive companies, while smaller startups may have a shorter timeline due to the need for quick decision-making.

During the hiring process, there are typically two types of interviews that candidates will encounter: peer and HR. Peer interviews are conducted by potential team members and colleagues within the company, while HR interviews are conducted by human resources professionals who are trained in evaluating candidates based on the company's culture and values.

Peers will typically ask more job-related interview questions, while HR may focus more on behavioral and cultural fit. Here are a few examples of interview questions for management candidates that can be asked during these different stages:

1. Peer Interviews: "How do you approach conflict resolution within a team?"
2. HR Interviews: "Can you give an example of when you had to make a difficult decision that went against company policy, and how did you handle it?"
3. Final Round Interviews: "What specific steps have you taken in the past to promote diversity and inclusion within your team or workplace?"

It's important to remember that these questions are just starting points; they can be expanded upon or tailored to fit your open roles. The key is to have a clear understanding of the skills, experience, and qualities you're looking for in a managerial candidate and ask questions that will provide insight into those areas. Ultimately, the best way to evaluate a management candidate is by combining different types of interview questions throughout the hiring process. This allows for a well-rounded view of their capabilities and potential fit within your company.

Want to make better hiring decisions? Book a demo of Pillar today to see how our interview intelligence software and supporting suite of tools can help you revolutionize your hiring process.