 Preparing for a management interview is not quite the same as pairing for other interviews. In this video we take you through five key areas you must include your preparation if you want to get that job offer. My name is Jess Coles and I've sat in over a thousand interviews as a hiring manager, hiring at all levels, from juniors all the way through to CEOs. And I've also personally been through many tough interviews and assessment days to get management level jobs in world-class companies. If you're new to this channel enhanced training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance. And if you like this video please give it a thumbs up, subscribe and share it with friends. When preparing for a management interview you need to think about what you have achieved through others or if you're going for your first manager role how you will achieve through others and what do you mean by achieving through others? As a basic level a manager is a person that has responsibility for and directs a group of staff. The manager is responsible for the output of the team. Therefore as a manager you cannot just do all the work yourself. You must get others to do the work needed to the right standard within agreed timeframes, hence being able to achieve results through others. As a manager your job is to manage. It sounds simple right? Managing is dealing with people and thus managing relationships. I mean just take a look at the bookshelves at the huge number of books dedicated to managing relationships in one form or other because managing relationships is not easy. If you're going for your first manager role then a small proportion of your job is about management. You are likely still to be doing a lot of the actual work. At the other end of scale if you are in or heading into senior management or direct level roles then you will probably find that 90% plus of your job is to lead and manage others. You don't actually produce that much work personally or or nearly all of your output is through others. So when preparing for management interviews you should think about how you firstly lead and manage people, how you communicate with others, how you organise others, how you persuade, cajole, encourage, coach in all those different ways you get others to do a task or a project. How you motivate the team and how you set direction for the team and how you work with team members. To be a good manager you need to have reasonable to good self awareness. After all if you can't manage yourself how can you manage others? Expect to be asked a number of questions about your management or leadership style. A very good starting point to answering all these questions is to work out how you specifically tackle all these areas. Being a good manager is also about being true to yourself, being authentic and genuine. Take what you do and paint it in the best possible light and make sure you prepare good answers to all the obvious interview questions. Some examples of questions you might face include what is your management or what is your leadership style? How do you handle disagreements between team members? How have you gained commitment from your team? How do goals help you become a better leader? How can we motivate you as a leader? How do you manage a poor performer? How do you manage a star performer? Have you ever helped to implement a significant company change in one of your last roles? Have you had to take someone through a disciplinary before? And what would you say is a difference between management and leadership? And if you want structure answers written specifically for management levels, then take a look at our interview question bank by going to enhance.training. Understanding the problems the company has is a critical step in your preparation process. If you don't know what the problems are, then how are you going to go about showing you can solve them effectively? Your interview performance is always relative to the expectations of the interviewer and of course the other candidates. So let's cover expectations on each general management level. If you're going for your first management position as a junior manager, then the challenges outlined in the job advert or by the recruitment consultant for the team or the position are probably all that you really have to answer well. General research and accompanying will help you talk about additional challenges, which will help you stand out from other candidates. If you're going for a middle management role, then understanding the problems that your role will encounter is an absolute must. You'll probably be expected to have a good understanding of the company level issues that will impact your function. So try to understand as many of these as possible from your research and from the experience you've gained working in this function. Demonstrating this wider awareness will help you stand out from other candidates. Bring into your answers how you will contribute towards solving these functional level issues to. If you're applying for a senior manager or direct level role, then understanding the problems faced by the company as a whole, rather than just your function is a must. Part of your role will be helping to solve the wider company problems and challenges. So during the interview, you must demonstrate an understanding of the company level problems and provide examples of where you have tackled similar problems and the outcomes you've achieved in your past roles. As an interviewer, I'd also expect you to be asking questions to gain a better understanding of potential issues during the interview. Doing so demonstrates your confidence, your questioning and problem solving skills. And it would give me confidence of your interest in the role and your ability. Now let's cover energy levels. This is an area that is much harder to gain. Being a good manager or leader is hard work. There are lots of demands on your time and your emotions, the stresses and strains of dealing with problems, challenges and staff members do take their toll. So how are you going to show you have enough energy to manage these challenges and to progress into more senior roles in the future, which may be even more demanding. During the interview, show your energy levels in how you talk in your enthusiasm and your excitement for the role, but also provide examples that demonstrate you have good or high energy levels, certainly enough to happily do this role and hopefully more. Examples might be talking about all additional activities you do outside of work after a long day in the office, or it might be talking through how many objectives you and your team delivered during the last year. Put your thinking cap on and work out how you're going to demonstrate your energy levels during an interview. And working longer hours is probably expected. There are individuals that stay in the office for long hours, but might not produce that much. How are you going to show that you are more productive than they are, or you have a higher level of output, or you work smarter than they do? Working long hours can also be seen as a negative by interviewers. For example, maybe you are not able to delegate effectively and you end up doing a lot of the work your team should be doing. So be warned and make sure you cover off any of these negative areas in your answers. If you come across with low energy levels and the role is demanding, then you're probably going to be out of the running for the role. Using a lot of good and relevant examples of where you have solved problems or successfully managed specific activities is an absolute must. Construct the examples to demonstrate where and how you solve the problems that your target role will likely be facing. As I'm sure you know, examples are important to develop the interviewer's confidence and trust in you, and specifically that you can do what you say you can do. Each key point or statement that you make should have an example to back it up. The examples must show you are operating at a level of your current role and ideally of the role that you're applying for. This means a lot of your examples will come from your current and maybe your previous role. Make sure the examples are relevant to the question being asked and the problems the employer may be facing. To do this well, you need to have a good range of examples, each carefully constructed and practiced before the interview. Make sure the examples you use reinforce the level at which you are currently operating at and ideally most of the examples should show you are or soon will be operating at the level of your target role. During the interview and certainly at the end of the interview, you'll have opportunities to ask questions. For manager level interviews, sensible and relevant questions are expected. The more senior the role you're applying for, then you should ask better and more probing questions. This shows firstly the level of research that you've done. Secondly, how keen you are on the role and the company and of course your confidence levels. Interviews are a two way street. The company and the interviewer have to impress you too with the opportunity the role has for you and how it will progress your career. But asking good and probing questions that help you find out more about the role, the people and the challenges the business is facing, the more interested the interviewer will be in you. The majority of your questions should be specific to the company and demonstrate your research and interest. But it's absolutely okay to ask a couple of more generic questions in the mix. The competition for management level roles is usually higher than for more junior levels. There are less roles and there are plenty of people wanting them. Therefore you need to prepare well if you want to be in the running for a job offer. The most vital preparation you can do is matching your relevant skills and experiences to the problems the role that you're applying to is likely to have. And being a good manager is hard work. From the interviewer's perspective, if you work to prepare well for the interview, then you're much more likely to work hard in the actual job itself. If you liked this video, please hit the thumbs up button below and subscribe and hit the bell to get notified of our weekly video releases. This really helps us to produce more videos to help you. And if you'd like to learn more about the resources, courses and coaching we offer, visit us at enhance.training. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.