First In-Person Management
Company Introduction
Explain the organization: the branches and principals in each location. Give a brief presentation on your company’s history, gro
Your Evaluation Metrics
1. What metrics would you establish that you feel would accurately determine, and be used to evaluate your performance, and justify one year from now the salary we pay you?
2. How would you ensure these metrics accurately measure your personal performance and simply those efforts of other employees?
Sales
1. What do you describe as the anatomy of a sale? (If this is not understood): In other words, what makes sales happen?
2. Define what you believe are the major obstacles that diminish sales opportunities that you’ve witnessed in organizations you’ve worked with in the past and what you’ve done to overcome these obstacles.
3. What plan of action would you devise with your sales managers to help them achieve the sales goal we expect to achieve within the next year?
4. A salesperson at the store is consistently not achieving their goals. How do you remedy the situation?
Communication
1. Poor communication and ineffective communication are obstacles that plague most organizations, leading to lost productivity, high turnover, and lost money. What steps have to taken in your previous management positions to remedy problems with communication? And what steps do you think any company should take to work toward an effective communication policy?
2. What past history do you have communicating with people of different walks of life?
Turnover
1. What strategies have you witnessed as effective in lowering turnover and increasing employee satisfaction?
Organizational Skills
1. What tools/methods do you use to keep yourself as organized and productive as possible?
Mechanical Inclination
1. Are you mechanically inclined?
2. Do you change your own oil in your car?
Management Training Experience
1. Our goal is to eventually have three (3) round-the-clock shifts in the Saw Shop. Currently the foreman, who has been with the company 16 years, and has a lot of experience – understands every piece of equipment and how to repair equipment – but is not doing an effective job of optimizing worker performance. Additionally, his English is poor and we don’t trust his ability to hire. What do you see as an effective plan to get the Saw Shop and Yard Crew to a point whereby we can achieve our goal?
2. If you were to hire a new foreman for the Saw Shop, what qualities would you look for? What would you tell your new foreman his principal job function is? How would you manage to keep our current, very capable foreman happy and seeing his role as important if he’s supplanted by another supervisor?
3. Imagine you have decided to promote a worker from within to a new supervisory position. He’s been an excellent worker, but doesn’t have experience as a supervisor. What main points do you tell him that his new job entails, and how it’s different from simply being a worker? What typical pitfalls do you tell him he should avoid? What main metrics will you use to evaluate whether he’s doing his job as supervisor effectively?
Growth Strategies
1. Sales of stone are outpacing production consistently. What needs to happen?
2. What major growing pains do you see that make it difficult for small companies to grow into large corporations?
Management Style / Delegation
1. What’s your management style?
2. A light bulb needs changing. Do you: A. Find someone to change the lightbulb? B. Subcontract another company to change that lightbulb? C. Change the lightbulb yourself because there is no one to delegate the task to? And why?
3. Consider this statement and react: “It takes twice as long to train someone to do this job than it takes for me to do it myself. I might as well do it myself.”
4. What’s the definition of “effective delegation”? And under what circumstances is delegation the wrong choice for action to achieve your goals?
5. What’s the difference between a manager who “just does his job” and one who “grows the organization”?
Strengths and Weaknesses
1. What do you see as your main strengths?
2. What do you see as your main weaknesses?
3. How do you compensate for your weaknesses?
4. What personal growth do you hope to achieve by working with our company?
5. What 5 key qualities do you think a good manager for our company needs to have?
6. Do you fall short on any of these qualities?
7. Imagine the ideal candidate for the job of General Manager based on what you know about our company and we’ve told you today. Tell us why, either despite your shortcomings or because of your strengths, you’re right choice for this position over the ideal candidate we have before us.