What’s The Best Way For A Manager To Interview For A New Job?

Managers need to know how to get their next job
Managers need to know how to get their next job
Image Credit: Amtec Photos

Just like everyone else, managers dread having to go on a job interview. I mean, we interview people for a living, shouldn’t we get some sort of special treatment because of our manager skills and not have to go through this step? However, we don’t control how things work and so we have to interview for new jobs just like everyone else. The question that you need to be able to answer is do you know how to interview in order to get the job that you want?

How To Make A Job Interview Work For You

Managers need to realize that job interviews as we have learned in our manager training are a two-way street and, when done right, should be a conversation between the candidate and the interviewer. Managers are both interviewing and auditioning for the job, too. This kind of exchange is only possible if you have taken the time to research the employer and prepared thoughtful questions to understand how you can immediately provide value. By doing this not only will you leave the interview better informed, but you also will have impressed the interviewer with your deep interest in the role and demonstrated your suitability for it.

One thing that a manager should do during a job interview is to ask questions early on in the interview. You will want to be proactive with your questions about the job and what the employer is looking for in a candidate and ask these throughout the interview, weaving them into the conversation. You will want to ask questions that help you understand the role and how to succeed in it. Your goal should be to aim to feel confident and comfortable enough that you could start the job tomorrow. A good question to ask is “How do you measure success for someone in this role?” By understanding what an employer’s ideal candidate would achieve gives you a chance to present your past accomplishments in a relevant way. Listen closely because the answer also shows how you will be evaluated if you are offered and accept the job.

An important question that you will want to ask will be why is the position open? Another key question that you might want to ask is why there is an opening. Find out if the last person in the role get promoted? If so, use this opportunity to find out what led to their promotion and to set yourself up for similar success. If the person who had the role was underperforming, perhaps you can learn how to avoid the same mistakes. If the role is new and part of a company expansion, you can ask about what led to the decision to expand that department to get a better understanding of the employer’s goals.

Its All About The Questions That You Ask

When you are interviewing for a position, you’ll want to find out what are some of the day-to-day responsibilities of this job? Try to get a concrete sense of what the job actually is and whether you would want to do it. Find out what needs to be immediately addressed by the person who gets hired? The answer to this question can highlight what the pace will be when you first start and will give you an opportunity to follow up by explaining how you would meet those needs. Feel free to ask about any team building activities that this position will be involved in.

You are going to want to ask what are your expectations for this role during the first month, three months, six months, a year? Find out what does success look like? Take the time to identify what the employer expects from you, so that when you begin, you can keep track of, meet or even exceed the benchmarks for the role. Once you know what they are looking for, you can share examples of similar achievements from your previous job experience.

Given that there are a lot of questions that a manager should ask during a job interview, this all leads to the question: are there any questions that you shouldn’t ask? It turns out that the answer is yes. Don’t ask what is the salary? As well as the interview may be going, the experts say you should not be the first to bring up pay. Keep in mind that your main goal right now is to make the employer want you as the candidate most of all. You also don’t want to ask what are the employee benefits? This kind of question is usually appropriate to wait until you have been offered a role. That’s when you would want to negotiate or ask about benefits, unless the employer brings it up first. You should not ask about what are the next steps in the process? This kind of low-energy question is not the best way to end your interview. Instead, save it for your thank-you email. Finally, never ask what does the company do? Asking this shows you haven’t done your research.

What All Of This Means For You

There will be times that even as a manager you find yourself interviewing for your next job. It may be within the company that you are currently working for or it may be at a new company. Although you may have spent a lot of time interviewing candidates, you may have forgotten how to go about securing a job for yourself. Perhaps we should review how you can go about getting your next job.

In order to be successful in a job interview, you need to go in prepared. You have to have done your homework and have a set of questions that you want to ask. During the interview you are going to want to ask your questions early on in the process. Key questions that a manager will want to ask are why the position is open and what happened to the last person who had the job. Every manager will want to find out what the job requires. The hiring manager, just like all managers, will have expectations for the person who fills the job. Managers also need to be aware that there are a set of questions that they need to be sure to not ask during an interview.

Managers need to understand that when they go looking for their next job, the shoe will be on the other foot. Just like everyone else, they are going to have to do a good job of presenting themselves. The key to getting the next position that you really want is to come prepared with questions to ask. Showing that you’ve done your homework and that you are interested in the job is the key to landing the job that you want.


– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™


Question For You: How should you handle the situation where you are asked a question that you don’t know the answer to?


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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you have attended any manager training recently then you have probably been told that you need to boost your manager skills by becoming more empathetic. I think that when we all hear this, we probably nod and think to ourselves that that would probably be a good thing to do – if only we knew how to go about doing it. However, it turns out that the real answer here is a bit more complex. Not everyone believes that empathy and leadership go hand-in-hand. What does a manager really need to do here?