Senior Management Interview Questions
Senior management or executive management in a company is responsible for all the important business deals and decisions. An executive manager must possess a comprehensive and analytical thought process to be able to make crucial decisions and implement them for the benefit of the company.
Thus, the interviewers will be keen on employing candidates who are promising and, have a dynamic approach towards their job. Interviewing questions widely range from past experiences to future expectations.
Here is a list of questions that are commonly asked to a candidate applying for the position of senior manager.
- Quickly walk us through your resume.
Make sure you have read your resume thoroughly. Give a brief overview of your resume in a chronological manner. Do not miss any information that you have mentioned in your resume.
- How would you describe yourself in two words?
Carefully choose the two words that you would describe yourself in. After all, these two words should summarize your qualities and capabilities. Also, provide examples to justify your answer.
- Have you evaluated your strengths and weaknesses? What are they?
Identifying your strengths and weaknesses will portray you as an insightful person. Thus, use incidents from your past work experiences, while answering to this question.
- Do you think the company is fit for your qualifications, or Don't you think you are over qualified for this position?
Carefully evaluate what the interviewer intends to ask you. Ideally, if you were over qualified, you wouldn't have applied for this position. However, to answer this question, you may state your reasons for applying to this company and how according to you; the company compliments your qualifications and abilities.
- How would you define an effective leader?
As an executive manager, you are essentially a leader who leads the company on success path. Thus, you should know and should be able to highlight the qualities of a leader. Make sure that whatever qualities you mention are relevant to the current position.
- What was the biggest failure that you had to handle? What did you get to learn from it?
Frankly tell them about your professional failures in life. Give the details like what caused you to fail, what steps were taken in order to exercise damage control, what you got to learn from it etc.
- How would you describe your management style?
Each one has a unique management style. Tell the interviewers what are your management beliefs and principles.
- Tell us about how you implemented a tough decision that had a lot of resistance from the employees.
Executive managers have to handle tough decisions from time to time that are usually disliked by the employees. Choose one such experience, where you were able to convince the employees of the decision made.
- Does decision making come easily to you? How do you weigh the pros and cons of your decisions?
Decision making is one of the toughest jobs of executive manager. Their decisions can change the entire structure of the organization. Thus, it is important for senior manager to think clear and wide.
Accordingly provide an answer to this question; but make sure it does not go against your chances of being selected for the position.