It Manager Job Interview Questions

What Experience Do You Have Managing Remote Or Distributed Teams

This question reflects the growing importance of working with remote or distributed teams in the age of COVID-19. See if the candidate is aware of the issues that arise when a team never meets in person. Do they mention details such as the effect a geographically distributed team has on scheduling meeting times?

Interviewer tips

Get candidates to describe the challenges of working with remote or distributed teams and how it differs from working with an on-site team. Their answer to this question will show if they have had to manage such a team and if they are sensitive to what’s required.

An example of a good candidate answer

I worked with remote and distributed teams on several projects prior to the pandemic. Since COVID-19’s inception, all my projects have been remote. There are pluses and minuses with a remote team. When you have the entire team on site, getting input is quicker and resolving issues is faster and easier. It’s also easier to instill a sense of teamwork and move everyone toward a common goal. On the other hand, remote and hybrid work lets people set their schedules and operate in an environment that’s more conducive to their workstyles. Remote teams are often more productive because there are fewer interruptions.

Briefly Describe Your Experience In Programming

The interviewer wants to assess whether you are familiar with coding

Tip #1: Describe your coding experience

Tip #2: Provide the impression that you can lead coding projects

Sample Answer

In the past, I have designed five systems using different programming languages. One of those systems is currently utilized by a former company to manage its inventory.

Q1: How Would You Explain The Most Complicated Aspect Of It To A Non

The one skill that separates IT directors from the rest of their team is simplifying IT terms for non-technical people. For example, an interviewer might ask you to describe a VPN or VoIP to a new employee.

How to answer:

• Be patient. An interviewer wants to see that you deeply understand the concept and dont get frustrated answering simple questions.
• Relate to business needs. Rather than dumb down your answer, explain it from a different teams perspective. For example, show how a sales CRM can help sales teams close the highest-value prospects.

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Technical Skills And Experience

As an IT manager, your role is versatile. You need to have an understanding of each functional area of IT how systems, applications, and infrastructure are managed and maintained. Depending on the company and role, there may be a separate technical interview or assignment where you are able to dig into a specific problem and demonstrate how you would solve it.

• Describe a time when you have implemented significant improvements to infrastructure.

• Describe your evaluation process for acquiring new hardware or software.

• What is the most challenging technical problem you have faced in a past role? How did you solve it?

• Did you create IT policies for your previous organization to comply with new standards? How?

• How do you keep your technology skills current?

• What steps do you take to deploy new infrastructure and applications?

• What are the best ways to improve network security?

• How do you ensure that confidential data is stored securely?

• How do you address cybersecurity threats?

Tell Us About A Time You Failed As A Manager And What You Learned From That Experience

This question is designed to see how candidates handle failure and how they learn from their mistakes. This is a crucial operations manager interview question to ask if you want to know if the candidate has learned from their failures.

What to look for in an answer:

The most important thing to look for here is a candidate who can admit mistakes and learn from them. This shows that the candidate is not debilitated by failure, an essential quality in every leader.

Sample Answer: I once failed to communicate the expectations of a project to my team correctly, and as a result, the project was not completed on time. I learned from that experience that its essential to be clear and concise when communicating expectations to my team. I also learned that its essential to allow for some flexibility in the timeline in case there are unforeseen circumstances.

Red flags:

• If they try to avoid or refuse to answer the question, it shows that they might not be able to handle failure well.
• If they do not mention any lessons they learned from their experience, they might not have grown due to their failure.

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What Does A Typical Day For An It Manager Look Like

Here, the interviewer wants to assess whether you are familiar with the daily responsibilities of an IT Manager.

Tip #1: State several duties performed by an IT manager daily

Tip #2: Demonstrate that you understand your daily routine

Sample Answer

An IT manager directs department operations, monitors and analyses workflow, and sets priorities. The manager supervises programmers, technicians, and other workers in the IT department. Besides, the IT manager meets with supervisors, managers, and other department heads to solicit cooperation and resolve problems.

How Do You Prioritize Tasks

A project manager’s ability to prioritize tasks is essential to a project’s success. This question helps you understand how a candidate sets priorities. It can also provide insight into the candidate’s ability to manage change and deal with challenges that require a more subtle approach, such as handling interpersonal conflicts or disagreements among stakeholders. A candidate’s answer can shed light on their organizational and communication skills.

Most project managers have more work to do in a day than they can accomplish. Encourage candidates to discuss projects where they’ve had to make difficult decisions about how to prioritize tasks.

Interviewer tips

Most project managers have more work to do in a day than they can accomplish. Encourage candidates to discuss specific projects and circumstances in which they’ve had to make difficult decisions about how to prioritize tasks and the steps they took to do that.

An example of a good candidate answer

Prioritizing tasks is the norm rather than the exception in my experience. I often use Microsoft Project for overall organization, but I like to be able to quickly access the tasks I need to complete that day or week or in some other timeframe.

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What Is The Best Way To Handle An Employee That Is Not Performing At Their Best Despite Being Told That They Are Not Quite Up To Standard

Different people respond differently to concerns raised by management about work performance. Many, many books have been written on the topic of employee management, and yet it is still a very difficult thing to do.

Perhaps you have a special way of speaking with such individuals, or maybe you prefer to have them sit down for an informal meeting so that you can catch up with them and find out what would make things easier for them to reach their goals.

You could be on the other end of the spectrum, preferring to discipline your employees and remind them that their jobs rely entirely on their performance. Either way, you can outline your own methods and strategies that you have used in the past to stop poor performance by staff members and turn things around for them. If you are managing your team properly then everyone will want to reach the targets that are set for them, which means that your projects will be completed on time and that your bosses will be happy with the way that their IT systems are running and performing.

How Have You Successfully Delegated Tasks

Managers have to be cognizant of how work is distributed throughout their team. They need to know the details of who does what and who has authority over final decisions in shared tasksplus they must make sure that these things are clearly communicated. For example, who needs to see the contents of an email communication before it gets sent out? And does the email manager or communications director have final say if they disagree on something in the message? Hiring managers, in addition to seeing that you understand the importance of role claritythat workers know what their job iswant to be sure that as manager you dont attempt to take on the entire workload as a way of making sure it gets done, but rather that youll effectively distribute it to your reports.

Your story for answering this question could include what you did at a time when the workload was very heavy and you helped the team distribute the work and collaborate, what you did when there was a gray area as to who did what and how you helped straighten it out, or what you did at a time when a deadline was approaching and the team needed additional resources. Companies also want to see that you work to understand the dynamics of your teamwho excels at what tasks, who can handle more work, who needs more time off, and who needs tasks that will challenge them to grow, for example.

Here are some things not to do when answering this question:

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Describe Your Current Role For Us

This is a common question across job domains and for good reason. Interviewers are looking to find out what your current position expects of you and if any of those skills are transferable to your prospective role as IT manager. Try to gauge what skills the interviewers have been alluding to from the previous questions, or from the job spec that you used as a basis for your job application. Highlight the positive areas where you think that you would add value to the company and mention how the management tasks that you are currently performing have prepared you for a role like this one.

The interviewers are trying to find out if your current skill set is a good match for this role. You might even have skills that you have developed from performing seemingly unrelated tasks in your current positions that are now in demand for the IT manager role that you are applying for here. Take your time and outline the functions that you are currently performing, and make sure that you can elaborate sufficiently if the interviewers have any follow-up questions for you.

How Would Your Employees Describe The Culture In Your Department/division/business Unit Why

Why It Works: Similarly, if the manager is stumped or slow to respond, it might be they haven’t given this topic much thought. However, if they are quick to reveal, with enthusiasm, that the individuals on their team would espouse a positive, empowerment culture where they are safe to express opinions and take calculated risks, for example, then you probably are interviewing a manager who gets the importance of shaping a meaningful and employee-centered culture.

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What Major Challenges Did You Face During Your Last Role How Did You Handle It

You can be sure that the organization is looking for a problem solver and not an added liability. It would be best to show the interviewer that you can handle difficult situations thrown your way.

Tip 1: Ensure that the challenge you mention does not put your skills to question.

Tip 2: Focus more on how you handled the situation to prove your competence.

Sample Answer

My first time working in the IT world was in a start-up organization. Most of our ideas ended up in our competitors hands. After investigating the issue, we found the weak link to be in our IT department. I helped develop a firm IT policy that protected our organizations interests since then.

What Are The Most Important Skills For A Project Manager To Have

An effective project manager requires a range of skills, including leadership, organization, communication, collaboration and technical know-how. They also should have experience with project management software and processes.

Interviewer tips

Candidates should provide more than a list of skills. You might want to ask them to justify why they focused on specific skills and to provide examples of how they’ve used those skills in the projects they’ve managed.

An example of a good candidate answer

Communication skills are first on my list. Although I believe that skills such as leadership and organization are important, communication is the key to running a flawless project and to addressing issues as they arise. Communication is essential to keeping team members motivated and on track and ensuring that stakeholders are always aware of the project’s status. Effective communication can improve even the most challenging projects.

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If Hired What Would You Do In The First 30

This is a good question to ask to get a sense of how well the candidate understands the responsibilities of a manager.

The successful candidate will explain what they need to get started and what parts of the company they would need to get familiar with. They might even give a specific example of where they would start .

In the end, you, the interviewer, might do things differently and the candidate, if hired, might as well but being prepared to answer this question reveals that the prospective manager knows your business, knows their job, is able to get to work on day one, and is excited to start.

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What Are Your Favorite Sourcing Techniques

Try to talk mostly about techniques that work well in talent recruitment. I suggest you to emphasize techniques which bring you closer to your target audience. Job fairs, presentations at schools and colleges, one on one communication on social media, etc.

Another alternative is saying that you consider each recruitment project individually. You do not have a favorite sourcing technique, but always choose the most fitting one for the given recruitment project. Your choice depends on the ideal candidate profile, where one can find such candidates, and what the most fitting way of approaching them is.

Do You Have Any Project Management Experience

There will be times when you need to take the reins on projects so that your staff can carry out the technical tasks and perform the actual work while you manage things from the side and give direction and purpose to the teams. If you havent had too much experience with project management, then try thinking of projects that you have been a part of and what role you played during the process.

This is a nice to have skill for most IT departments, but you should really brush up on your project management capabilities if you want to differentiate yourself from the other candidates during the interview process. IT managers normally have to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to running the department, and project management skills can make a huge difference.

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How Deep Is The Deepest Quicksand At The Equator

This is not meant as a trick question, but rather a question that will give you a sense of the candidate’s ability to handle the unexpected and come up with creative solutions. Most projects are rife with the unexpected, and the candidate should treat this as such. You’re not looking for accurate answers, of course, but the question should give you a good idea of how the candidate uses critical thinking, logic and creativity to arrive at an answer.

Interviewer tips

You might need to encourage candidates to take the question seriously, although there’s nothing wrong with them having a little fun with their answers. You can easily substitute this question with a similar one.

An example of a good candidate answer

Before I answering, I need some additional information. By “at the equator,” do you mean each quicksand pit must be at exactly zero degrees latitude? Can it deviate off that exact latitude, perhaps, one degree in either direction? Also, if a quicksand pit is near a tidal zone, should it be measured at low tide, high tide or somewhere in between? The same goes for quicksand pits that might be impacted by changing water tables. Should I base my research on the average depth of each pit throughout the year or on another metric?

Next Steps

Tell Us About A Time Something Went Wrong In A Project You Were Managing

Setbacks are normal in managing projects. Hiring managers will want to know how youâve dealt with them in the past to understand what you do when things donât go according to plan.

How to answer: Since dealing with unforeseen challenges is a core part of project management, youâll want to have a few examples to point to for your interview. You can also mention how you would implement change processes in your project.

Consider using the STAR method when asked for specific examples from your past. Hereâs how to put the method into action:

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