People Management
Your goal is to gather specific evidence on the above signals around People Management. The questions are a guide for the conversation, not a script. You do not need to ask all the questions on this list.
Time: 1 hour
Interviewer: Any leader with people management experience
Signals: Communication, Coaching, Performance Management
Introductions (3-5 min)
- Break the ice
- Introduce yourself and let the candidate briefly introduce themselves
Interview Questions (45 min)
- Tell me about the most impactful individual on your team?
- What are their career goals?
- Where do they need to improve?
- What are you doing to help grow them in their career?
- Tell me about a time they disagreed with you?
- Tell me about a low performer on your team?
- What are their career goals?
- Where do they need to improve?
- What are you doing to help grow them in their career?
- Can you describe a time when a member of your team went off course. How did you approach the situation?
- How else could you have redirected them?
- What was the most difficult feedback you’ve delivered? Ask for specifics.
- What was your key takeaway from this conversation?
- What would you do differently?
- What was the outcome?
- What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made as a manager?
- What would you do differently?
- How did they use this lesson going forward?
- What critical feedback have you received from your team?
- Was the feedback founded?
- What did you do about this?
- Ask about positive feedback from team
Candidate Questions (5-10 min)
Rubric
Signal | Strong No | No | Yes | Strong Yes |
Communication | Dodging the question or being ingenuine about their experience | Roundabout explanations, unstructured thoughts | Articulates clear thoughts that directly address the questions asked | Clear and detailed thought processes’Â
They have spent time building mental models around these concepts |
Coaching | Coaching and growing a team is not a priority | Has limited experience coaching. | Clear track record of developing talent.Â
Understands the career ambitions and areas of growth of their team.Â
Gives feedback regularly. | Specific and nuanced examples of how they grew individual contributors to leaders on their team(s)
Guides members of the team by asking insightful questions encouraging discovery of solutions. |
Performance Management | Lack of empathy | Has experience with underperformers, but doesn’t act decisively
Unable to learn from mistakes | Has a track record of performance management.
They have made mistakes, but are introspective about the lessons learned | Specific examples for dealing with difficult situations.
Specific and clear lessons learned from each instance. |