5 Questions To Ask When You Hire A Business Manager

Managing a business can take up a lot of your time and attention. It can also be challenging if you don’t possess the necessary skills and experience. This is where a business manager comes into the picture: they ensure that your business’s operations run smoothly as you focus on the bigger picture.  But how do you know you are hiring the right person for the position?

It is important to do your due diligence before you hire a business manager to ensure that you get the best candidate for the position. This means asking the right questions and digging deeper to understand the person. Here is an overview of five insightful questions to ask when hiring a business manager. 

Question 1: How would you describe the company’s culture and your role in it? 

Company culture refers to the company’s shared characteristics, values, and attributes – it is a core part of its internal and external identities. Essentially, it refers to how things work in the company, especially how the employees interact. 

Strong company culture helps improve your business’s overall performance in multiple aspects, including improving employees’ productivity. Unfortunately, company culture is often misunderstood, despite its importance to the business’s success. 

Ideally, all of your employees should understand and practice the company’s culture. The manager’s understanding of company culture is especially important because they set the example for everyone else to follow. 

The candidate’s answers to this question will reflect their understanding of company culture. Ideally, the candidate should demonstrate a clear understanding of this concept and their role in supporting and improving it. They should also show that they prioritize company culture, considering its immense importance to your business’s overall operations. 

Question 2: Identify an important and challenging goal you had to accomplish. How did you achieve this goal, and what was the result? 

Experience is a crucial requirement for becoming a competent and reliable business manager. It helps sharpen and improve the business manager’s skills while also imparting new, invaluable lessons they couldn’t learn in class. 

This question is designed to help you measure the candidate’s skills and experience in business management. The candidate’s chosen goal will demonstrate how far their skills and experience go. The goal’s strategy and outcome also indicate their problem-solving skills and ability to deliver under immense pressure. 

Ideally, the candidate should demonstrate grit and flexibility in their answer. It is advisable to follow up on each candidate’s answers to verify their account of events and outcomes. It is also worth noting that this question is also useful if you want to hire a project manager. 

Question 3: How does your employee coaching and mentorship model work? 

The right business manager for the position should be a good leader and pace-setter. This is especially important because most of their work involves managing the other employees. 

Coaching and mentoring employees essentially entails helping them improve their skills and overcome their professional (and some personal) shortcomings. It is an important role because it helps improve individual employees’ productivity, which boosts the business’s overall performance. However, it is a complex process that requires a calculated approach and efficient coaching and mentorship model. 

Ideally, every candidate should have a ready and comprehensive employee coaching and mentorship model they used in their previous positions as a manager. More importantly, this model should be efficient when applied to your company’s employees – or, at the very least, they should be willing to customize it or develop a new one if necessary. 

The candidate’s answer to this question will show their preparedness for the position. Ideally, the candidate should demonstrate a deep understanding of employees’ needs, preferences, and goals. 

Question 4: Identify one of your greatest failures during your most recent position. How did you respond to the situation, and what did you learn from it? 

The likelihood of coming finding a business manager with a perfect record is slim (even impossible). Business management is a complex and oftentimes complicated task. Business managers often experience unexpected challenges, sometimes resulting in failure. 

Failure is always undesirable, but it offers a valuable learning opportunity. Ideally, companies should react to failure by using it to identify and overcome the shortcomings and challenges that led to it. More importantly, the manager should use these lessons to avoid similar failures in future projects. 

The candidate’s answer to this question will offer you two valuable insights about their suitability for the position and overall business management skills and experience. First, it will help you gauge their record in terms of failures and successes – ideally, the candidate should have more successes than failures. Second, it will demonstrate their capacity to admit to failure, take responsibility, and learn from it. 

Question 5: What were the most valuable lessons about business management that you learned during your past three roles? 

Experience is a learning opportunity, and a good manager should use their experience to improve and expand their management skills and knowledge. So, what has your preferred candidate learned during their previous three roles working as a business manager? 

The candidate’s answer to this question will help you further evaluate their skills and experience. It will also help you identify their prioritized skills and experiences (strengths) – ideally, their priorities should suit your business’s needs and preferences. Again, it is advisable to verify each candidate’s answer. 

Conclusion 

The importance of hiring a competent, skilled, and experienced business manager suitable for the position cannot be overemphasized. The questions discussed in this guide will help make your vetting strategy more efficient, bringing you five steps closer to hiring the best business manager. 

It is advisable and prudent to hire a professional recruiter if the process proves overwhelming. Epic Placements is here for you, and we already have a list of vetted, qualified business managers eager to fill the position. Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help make the process easier without cutting corners.