How To Train Managers To Interview

Tips For Passing Your Training And Development Manager Interview

INTERVIEW TIP NUMBER 1 During your preparation for the Training and Development Manager interview, we strongly recommend you prepare for every single question listed on this page. Over the last 12 months, these are the interview questions that feature the most during Training Manager interviews. If you prepare for all of the interview questions listed, and provide comprehensive answers, you increase your chances of being the standout candidate.

INTERVIEW TIP NUMBER 2 Be prepared for an interview question that assesses what you believe the current training needs are of the organization you are applying to join as the Training Manager. In order to answer this question accurately, consider the industry the employer is currently operating in, and then provide typical, generic training needs analysis based on the industry. This will prove to the interviewer or hiring manager that you are highly-knowledgeable, can think on your feet and that you also have a rough plan in place for the type of training you would facilitate as their Training and Development Manager.

How To Train Hiring Managers To Interview

• Jack Graham

Throughout the recruitment process, interviews are one of the best opportunities youll get to assess a candidates suitability. Its also an opportunity for the interviewee to do the same, and decide whether or not they want to at your organisation. With talent acquisition teams having done a stellar job of nurturing the talent channel, its crucial that your hiring managers continue this into the interview.

It is growing more and more important for talent acquisition teams to provide training to hiring managers to ensure they deliver a fair, consistent, and high-quality process that benefits both the organisation and the candidates.

This article explains why this is so vital and provides some tips for how you train your hiring managers effectively.

Great Interview Training Is Key To Preventing The Hiring Mistakes That Cost Companies Millions Every Year

Why would companies neglect to provide training on such a critical business skill?

Some companies assume that smart managers will be able to figure it out. However, even the brightest executives can benefit from learning best practices and additional interviewing techniques.

Other companies do offer training, but busy managers feel they cant take the time away from pressing day-to-day responsibilities.

They may not realize how improving their interview skills can save them hours of time in the long run. They will be able to conduct more focused, productive interviews and see fewer candidates for every position.

Multiple studies show when managers have the proper training and preparation, they make better hiring decisions.

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Top 12 Manager Interview Questions And Best Answers

When interviewing managers, most interviewers will focus on two distinct aspects of the managerial experiencewhether you get results and how well you deal with people. Both are equally important.

If you cant deal with managing different personalities in team environments and under stress, nothing else you do will matter. On the other hand, if you get too involved in dealing with peoples personal problems, youre unlikely to be able to help the organization achieve its goals.

As a manager, youll set the tone for your team. If you dont share the organizations values, goals, and culture, you wont be able to lead effectively.

Prepare for your upcoming interview with these concepts in mind. It may help to review these common manager interview questions.

Tips For Passing The Manager Interview

TIP #1 Managing in any organization, large or small, requires a unique set of skills and talent. As a manager, you need to lead, make effective use of resources, manage, inspire and motivate. You also have to take full responsibility for the performance of your team. During the management interview, when asked what makes you a good manager, utilize all of these skills and be prepared to give specific examples of when you have successfully demonstrated each one of them in a previous role.

TIP #2 Manager interview panels often make good use of behavioural and competency-based interview questions. Questions such as, When have you managed an underperforming member of staff?, and Describe a time when you used effective negotiating skills in a management role? are commonplace in this type of interview. When answering questions of this nature, we recommend you use the S.T.A.R. technique for structuring your responses.

TIP #3 At every opportunity during the manager interview, we strongly recommend you use evidence-based answers to the questions posed. Do not fall into the trap of giving generic answers , but instead give answers that show the panel what you have already done in a previous situation. Evidence-based responses are far more powerful and will win you the interview!

QUESTION Who is your greatest competitor and how could I help you in this role to better them?

QUESTION What are the strategic plans for the company over the next few years?

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Legal And Compliance Issues In Interviewing

Interviewing consistency is not just important for the candidate experience, it also directly impacts legal and compliance issues. At the very basic level, training for hiring managersespecially those new to the industryshould cover what cannot be discussed or asked during an interview.

In the U.S. there are specific candidate questions that managers should avoid asking because they violate specific employment laws. If your candidate is located in California or New York, it is against the law to ask questions related to salary information.

Questions asked on application forms and during interviews can create significant legal problems for employers if the questions run afoul of federal, state, and municipal laws that prohibit unlawful pre employment inquiries.

The Americans with Disabilities Act expressly prohibits disability-related pre employment inquiries made prior to extending a job offer to an applicant. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has no express prohibition, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cautions that questions concerning an applicants age, gender, race, color, religion, or national origin may be used as evidence of discrimination. Other federal laws include provisions that protect the confidentiality of an applicants medical information, prohibit hiring decisions that discourage union membership, and restrict employment decisions based on an employees financial history.

Tips For Training Managers To Interview Job Candidates

Everyone has to start somewhere. New hires need to receive training for their job to do that job well. The trouble comes from cases where the role is critical enough that mistakes are costly. In IT or Development, there are version controls, test environments, and security processes. In manufacturing, theres redundancy and time spent training on machines. In customer service, theres escalation and intervention.

When it comes to hiring, theres very little room for error. A new hiring manager makes a decision, but if they make the wrong decision, it can be devastating. A great candidate may slip through your fingers, and a poor-quality candidate might be hired in their stead. Worse, your novice hiring manager might make mistakes that can lead to lawsuits if they made judgments based on protected characteristics. Even asking the wrong questions, no matter how reasonable they seem, can land you and your company in hot water.

Were not kidding about the cost being high. According to a CareerBuilder survey:

Financially speaking, 41% of companies believe bad hires cost them over $25,000, while 25% put the price tag at $50,000+.ZipRecruiter

Thats not a price you can afford to waste, no matter how large your business.

How do you avoid this? As with any job, training and supervision are paramount. Your new hiring manager needs a detailed overview from an experienced hiring manager, and you need to train them properly.

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Rehearse For The Interview

Rehearsing for an interview will improve your interviewing capabilities as it helps you get comfortable with the process. This is extremely important, especially if this is your first interview. So, get a mirror and practice how you would ask questions. You can also determine the interview structure through this.

Before Interviewing Train Hiring Managers On These 5 Things

Managers have a tough job and a full plate. Theyre responsible for their department planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Theyre also responsible for hiring. But managers themselves are often hired and promoted for their technical expertise, not their ability to hire others.

This means that organizations need to give hiring managers all the tools they need to hire effectively. And its more than just interview skills training. Personally, I believe interviewing is hard and complicated. Its more than simply asking questions. Companies can do their managers a real disservice when they dismiss interview skills training as unnecessary.

In addition to interview skills training, heres a list of things that managers should know when they are responsible for hiring. These topics could be shared during one-on-one sessions or added to the companys interviewing skills training program.

1. The cost and impact of hiring decisions. Hiring an employee isnt cheap. And a bad hire has an impact on everyone in the company. Managers should understand what it costs. I once worked for a company that, before we even started talking about interviews, etc., we had managers calculate cost per hire . Then had a discussion about what CPH could buy It set the stage for the rest of our training time.

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Don’t Be A Boring Interviewer

Are you guilty of relying on these over-used, boring questions in job interviews?

• What is your biggest weakness?
• Where do you see yourself in five years?

Boring questions illicit boring answers. They suggest that youve put little thought into this and the candidates answers really dont matter to you.

The interview is your chance to really talk with your next prospective team member, so use this window wisely. Ask questions that really get at what makes them tick as a technologist. Draw out their passions. A 30-minute conversation is an imperfect vehicle for choosing a pivotal team member, but when you structure it well you can learn enough to help you make an informed decision.

MORE ON INTERVIEWER TIPS

How To Answer Management Interview Questions

Emilie Dunphy / The Balance

If youre preparing for an interview for a manager position, you have obviously interviewed successfully in the past. However, even with your experience, it can be helpful to review interview questions and answers for manager candidates.

Beyond that, you might want to go over interview success techniques to improve your chances of landing the job. The more prepared you are for your interview, the more polished youll appear, and the more likely youll be to move forward in the hiring process.

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Why Recruiters Need To Break The Traditional Model Stop Acting Like Order

Recruiters often treat hiring managers like customers. That was Johns mental model when he was a young recruiter in the early 90s. By that line of thinking, it feels awkward or wrong to give hiring managers workwhen you do, theyll might say, isnt that your job?

But your real internal customer isnt the hiring manager, says Johnits the business as a whole. The company is your customer.

Recruiters arent subservient to hiring managerstheyre co-equals who should be working together to make the best hire for the business. When you engage managers, youre not passing your work off onto them, youre just doing your job as a leader, partner, and talent advisor.

Interview Training Can Reveal Ways To Improve The Job Description

Interview training ensures you pay detailed attention to the job description and what you’re asking of candidates before they apply. This provides more insight into what details you could add to the description to draw in more candidates. You may find details you want to add to descriptions for other vacancies within your company. A detailed job description is vital in attracting the right people for the role.

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Hold Hiring Managers Accountablerate Them Confront Bad Behavior And Reward Ownership

Too often, hiring managers arent at all accountable for how well they partner with recruiting. Hiring stats arent usually a part of hiring managers performance reviewsbut thats Johns fantasy. You might not be able to make that change overnight, but you can hold hiring managers more accountable.

Managers often fill out surveys on recruiters, but recruiters can also start filling out surveys on hiring managers. You can then share those results with the hiring managers to give constructive feedback.

For the stellar hiring managers, John recommends emailing their boss to say thank you. When John did exactly that, his email made it into the managers performance reviewhiring goals were even integrated into his performance review for the year . The manager wasnt necessarily thrilled about the new responsibility, but John sure was.

He also recommends writing LinkedIn recommendations for helpful recruiting managers. Recruiters dont recognize and reward hiring managers enough, John says, and this five-minute gesture can really show your appreciation.

Give Hiring Managers An Interview Preparation Checklist

Create different interviewing checklists for hiring managers:

• The New York Times also , giving you a detailed explanation after youve played.

Train hiring managers to understand structured interviews

Structured interviews are more objective and legally defensible than unstructured interviews. Interviewers who use this interview format should learn how to prepare behavioral questions, understand rating scales and score candidates consistently.

Here are some ideas to help interviewers understand structured interviews:

• Self-study. This structured interview guide has all the information hiring managers need to structure their interview process.

• Experiments. Advise interviewers to familiarize themselves with the interview scorecard format your company uses. If you use an Applicant Tracking System , encourage interviewers to login and create their own scorecards.

• Practice. Mock interviews can help inexperienced hiring managers familiarize themselves with an interview setting. For example, hiring managers can practice brief note-taking to avoid being distracted by their notes during actual interviews.

Teach hiring managers about body language

Get professional interviewing help

Several companies offer training courses and seminars that can help your interviewers:

• InterviewEdge specializes in behavioral interviewing training

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Start Building Hiring Skills Into The Hiring Criteria For Your Company

Recruiters love to complain about bad hiring managers, which always strikes John as weird. Geez, if only we had some influence over, I dont know, hiring better hiring managers, he says jokingly.

Recruiters have the power to make hiring experience and recruiting capability part of the criteria thats used to evaluate candidates. Not only will you end up hiring better hiring managersitll also impact existing managers, reinforcing the idea that recruiting is a core part of your culture.

Three: Share Hiring Expertise

Make sure the interviewer knows how to conduct an interview that stays focused on the job and only asks questions related to job performance. Have your managers do mock interviews where they can practice their interviewing skills. Look for these signs that theyve learned how to conduct an interview well:

• Patience while waiting for candidates to think of responses to questions
• Probing for more detail by asking follow-up questions
• Using evaluation materials

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Types Of Management Interview Questions

An interview for a manager position will consist of questions about your experience, management style, what you’ve accomplished in the past, and what your expectations are for the future.

The hiring manager will ask questions to determine how well you will fit into the organization, and how effective youll be in the position.

To craft your answers, it will help if you share anecdotes and specific examples from your previous work experiences. This will show the interviewer how you capably handled situations and worked with a team. Tailor specific responses, so your job qualifications will come through loud and clear.

If you’re interviewing for a management trainee position, where you’re not expected to have a lot of related work experience, you will most likely be asked about your ability to lead groups, delegate tasks, and perform related duties. It’s fine to share examples from academic and extracurricular activities to show the interviewer how you’re qualified.

How to Answer 4 Common Manager Interview Questions

Don’t Hold The Conversation Hostage

If youre not careful, its easy to lose sight of the goal of the interview: You have a fleeting chance to see if the candidate is bright and resourceful and if their personality meshes with the team and your culture. If you are monopolizing the conversation, you arent doing any of these things.

As the interviewer, your key role is to ask a question and get out of the way. Focus on really hearing their response so you can ask thoughtful follow-up questions. There should be a natural give and take in the conversation, but the focus should always fall on the candidate. When you lose focus, you waste this valuable opportunity.

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Who This Course Is For:

• This course is for hiring managers or team members who want to better prepare themselves for interviewing and selecting the right candidates for their teams.
• This course is for inexperienced interviewers who need practical tips and strategies to conduct an effective interview.
• This course is not for recruiters or those who have extensive experience with the hiring or interview process.

• 10,560 Students
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Elizabeth Shober is Head of Talent at Udemy. She has over 20 years experience in recruiting for both agencies and in a corporate environment. In her previous role as Director of Talent at Planet, she helped to scale a unicorn tech company from 50 to 400. Currently at Udemy, her team is continuing to build the broader organization while focusing on candidate experience, efficiency, and diversity.

• 206,138 Students
• 11 Courses

The Udemy Learning Team works to create best-in-class learning experiences, both internally for Udemy employees, and externally, for Udemy students.

Our courses are focused on embracing the power of feedback, inclusive leadership, growth mindset, and change agility to foster a culture of learning on teams.