First Time Supervisor Interview Questions and Answers

Interviews

Nov 17

first time supervisor interview questions and answers

Landing your first supervisor interview is a serious career milestone. It also can be quite nerve-wracking. You’ve never been a manager before and you’ve been told to use the STAR methodology by every coach out there. But how are you going to do that when you don’t have supervisory experiences to talk about?

That’s what this article is all about. I’ve been recruiting and hiring for over 20 years and during that time I’ve debriefed with employers and candidates after thousands of interviews. Today I’m going to share with you 25 of the most popular first time supervisor interview questions I’ve seen asked. I’ll also explain how to answer the question when you don’t have prior managerial experience and give you part of a sample answer for each.

Key Takeaways:

Prior to a supervisor interview, think through your processes and leadership style. Make sure you have logical ideas and can communicate them.
You don’t need prior experience to answer these questions. You can talk about how you will model your leadership after a previous supervisor who exhibited certain qualities. Talk about what happened, what you observed, and why you think it will work for you.
Don’t memorize and repeat answers from the internet. Instead, treat your interview prep as a chance to intimately get to know who you are and who you want to be as a manager.

What Is the Role of a Supervisor

It’s important to distinguish the difference between a supervisor, a manager, and a director. Supervisors are typically front-line managers who oversee a team of individual contributors.

Supervisors are responsible for ensuring their teams are productive and efficient. They develop team members and foster working environments where people can do their best work.

Supervisor Job Duties

Some job duties that supervisors are responsible for include:

Providing guidance and support for team members
Monitoring project and team member progress
Training and developing team members
Resolving conflicts
Identifying productivity roadblocks and removing them
Conducting performance reviews and providing feedback to management teams and employees
Collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment of work tasks
Creating reports for upper management

Supervisor Qualifications

In order to do all of these things successfully, supervisors need to possess the following skills and experiences:

Experience leading others toward a common goal
Communication skills and experience obtaining buy-in from others, pitching new ideas, and resolving conflicts
Problem-solving (the ability to make good decisions with the information available)
Time management and organizational abilities
Experience with resource allocation (both materials and labor)
Emotional intelligence
Ability to build trust within teams and departments
Experience communicating clear expectations, providing feedback, and developing communication channels
Analytical ability to assess data and understand the stories it tells
Process improvement experience
Experience improving outputs and managing KPIs (knowledge of the difference between lead and lag indicators)
Bias toward action
Resilience to stress
Accountability

It’s important to note that if you’re applying for your first supervisor role, you can obtain these experiences outside of being a supervisor. You may have led an audit team and exercised some of these skills. You may have pitched a new process and obtained executive sponsorship in an individual contributor capacity. Experiences can come from a variety of places. Don’t discount your experiences simply because you didn’t have the title of supervisor.

How to Prepare for a Supervisor Interview

When most people think about preparing for their supervisor interview, they think about researching the company and the job. I will talk about those things, but it’s equally important to research yourself as it relates to the role.

Let’s start with the easy stuff.

Research the Company

People love to be loved. Hiring teams are no different. When you come to an interview with knowledge about a company and the ability to communicate why you are even considering working there (besides the money of course), it impresses the other person.

Here’s how you can research a company.

Type their company name into Google. Go to their website and read everything on the About Us page, on the News page, or the Press Release page.
Go to LinkedIn and search for the company. Who works there? Can you contact any of them and ask questions before your interview?
Check local business journals.
If they are publicly traded, you can look them up on EDGAR and find out all about their financials and leadership.

Research the Job

Nothing in the job description should confuse you. If you don’t know something, you should turn to Google and search for the knowledge you need.

I worked with an individual who was making a career change from materials sustainability to greenhouse gas sustainability and they didn’t understand the difference between Scopes 1 through 3 as it relates to emissions. We went to Google and quickly found our answers. When they went to the interview, they were prepared to talk about it.

Beyond reading job descriptions, you can also turn to LinkedIn and see who was in the role before you. What was their background? What did they say about the job in their profile? There are clues all around you if you’re willing to look.

It’s not always possible to understand everything about the job ahead of time. A job description could be worded poorly or use inside language that you won’t understand. The importance is to prepare the best you can.

You don’t need to know everything, but you do need to know the important things. Remember the interview is also a place to ask questions and fill in your gaps in understanding.

Research the Interviewer

While being friendly and having common ground won’t land you the job, it certainly doesn’t hurt. If you’re fortunate to know who is interviewing you, look them up online. Do you have anything in common? What is their background? What do they value?

The internet gives you a huge advantage that people in the past didn’t have. Use it. You can Google their name and company or search for them on LinkedIn.

Know Your Narrative

First-time supervisors often get their messaging confused because they’re used to talking about their individual results. While having an in-depth understanding of the team and each individual team member’s job can be an asset, individual results don’t always translate to team results.

It’s easier to teach and develop yourself into a high performer than it is to teach and develop ten others into high performers. The skills to do a particular job well are also very different than the skills to develop a team of people to do their jobs well.

This means at this point in your career, the narrative in your resume and your interviews should be more about results through others than your own results. And you’ll need stories and examples to back up your claim that you are qualified for a supervisor role.

Make a List of Stories

You may not use everything you write down, but write down stories and examples to back up your qualifications. Use the job description and your research as a roadmap.

The easiest way to do this is to take every item in the job description and turn it into a question. Ask yourself, “How could I show that I not only have done this but that I was good at it?”

Draw upon any relevant experiences. Projects that you led, challenging situations that you had to resolve, times when you had to motivate someone else to achieve a goal, and process improvement design are all good things to think about. Where did you do them? How did you do them? Did you take the initiative? Did you have to get other people on board with an idea?

Don’t shortcut this exercise. This is one of the most important things you should do when preparing for first-time supervisor interviews.

If you have a good resume, you should find most of these stories are already in that resume. Your job in the interview is simply to expand upon them. If you go through this exercise and find that they’re not in your resume, you may want to revisit that too. A good place to start is my free comprehensive resume guide.

The next section will give you examples of what these stories could look like in the context of interview questions and answers.

25 First Time Supervisor Interview Questions

I’ve worked in recruitment for nearly a decade now and I’ve worked with hundreds of hiring managers. All of them have their own style, but I’ve noticed some questions that are asked more often than others. I’m going to walk you through 25 of the most common first time supervisor interview questions I’ve heard from the hiring managers that I’ve worked with.

I’ll discuss each question, what managers are most likely looking for in your answer, and give you a piece of a sample answer as well.

The purpose of sharing this is not for you to memorize these questions and answers as you would prepare for some college exam. Rather it is to help you think through your potential answers to each question.

Keep in mind that there are no “right and wrong” answers. What one manager thinks is the right answer, another may find wrong. That’s because there are many different philosophies about leadership and just as many different leadership styles.

These questions will help you share examples that show your leadership style and philosophy so you can find companies that align with your values.

Tell me about your previous supervisory experience.

How to Answer the Question

I don’t particularly think this is a good question for first time supervisors, but it is one that gets asked quite often. Obviously, you’ve never been a supervisor before, but rather than say that, it’s best to talk about projects you’ve led and any leadership experiences you have.

Don’t lie about your experience or pretend to have held a manager position in the past, but also don’t focus on your lack of management roles.

It’s much harder to answer this question if you’ve never had direct reports before. But that could be an advantage for you. It’s much easier to lead a team of people from a position of authority. If you can motivate people toward a common goal to meet deadlines in a non-manager capacity, that can speak volumes about your abilities.

What Employers Are Looking For

This is a very open-ended question. I’ve found that interviewers usually like to ask these types of questions to see how you’ll answer an unstructured, non-specific, open-ended situation (just like many you’ll experience on the job).

Interviewers use past performance as an indicator of future performance, but they’re not looking for information about your job titles. They can read that on your resume. What they are really trying to determine is if you are capable of handling the scope of responsibilities for this job.

Sample Answer

I’ve held many roles where I’ve been responsible for leading cross-functional teams in finance, sales, and operations. The most significant was at XYZ company when I was given the lead role on a new system implementation. While I had no direct reports per se, I had to lead a team of individuals from four departments to complete the project within a 3-month timeframe.

I think it’s more challenging to keep everyone on task, bought into the objective, and motivated to see its success when you’re not their direct manager. It took quite a bit of communication skills, time management, and getting to know each person’s personal goals to make everything work. We ended up launching the new software 2 weeks early, so I’m quite proud of myself for being able to get everyone on the same page.

Have you ever hired anyone who hasn’t had direct reports in the past?

How do you manage employee performance and development?

How to Answer the Question

Even if you’ve never been responsible for performance management in the past, you should have a solid grasp of how it should be done and best practices.

You can rely on experiences where you’ve helped mentor colleagues. If you’ve ever helped someone who was underperforming improve their performance, you want to talk about these experiences.

Focus on how you determine and communicate clear goals, obtain buy-in from team members, and how you operate feedback loops. Performance management shouldn’t be a once-per-year formal review, but a constant ever-evolving thing.

If you’ve ever been a part of evaluating tools and resources that a team needs to perform, that would be worth discussing as well when answering this question.

What Employers Are Looking For

Ultimately, hiring managers want to know that you won’t sink their team and its productivity. They want to know how you’re going to handle underperformers. They want to know that you have a process and a method for this.

Sample Answer

I believe performance management and employee development is an ongoing process that never ends. I also believe most people want to do a good job, but they don’t always know how to or what is expected. And sometimes it’s a result of not having the right tools and systems to support success.

At XYZ company, I had a customer support colleague who was struggling to hit targets. I wanted to help so I dug into her pipeline and discovered that somehow the system was assigning more files to her than anyone else on the team and this was leading to burnout.

In this case, she knew how to do her job and do it well, but there was a broken process that was leading to low performance (when you look at surface-level dashboard metrics). We sat down over lunch one day and leveled with one another. She felt her performance was slipping, but after some build-up, she understood that in this particular case, she was doing the right things. There was a system error that was contributing to her low numbers.

I finally obtained her buy-in to approach our manager and present our findings along with a workaround until IT could get involved and help us troubleshoot. Together with my manager, we implemented a temporary fix in which I was responsible for delegating new files according to each individual’s workload. The result was we closed 42% more files that month than we had ever done in the past.

How does (your company) currently approach employee performance?

How do you motivate a team?

How to Answer the Question

Saying that you are going to create a motivating environment where individuals feel inspired is probably not going to get you very far. Statements like this are suggested all across the internet and while they sound good, they mean nothing. You’ve just said a bunch of words that sound good without saying anything practical at all.

Instead, talk about how you get to understand each person on a personal level and what their individual goals are. Talk about how you then connect your vision to their individual motivation.

What Employers Are Looking For

The interviewer is asking you this question to find out about your leadership style. Are you going to light a fire underneath your employees or within? They also want to know how you’re going to do that. Do you have an actual plan to do it?

Sample Answer

If you want to motivate your team, you have to understand what makes them tick. For some, financial incentives are bets, for others it’s time off work, and for some, it’s feeling connected to a sense of community in the workplace. Everyone is different and that diversity is healthy for the team. But this means you can’t take a uniform approach to motivating your team.

If you really want to motivate and build a high-performing team you have to take the time to understand each person’s goals and strengths. Then and only then can you put people in places to use their strengths and align their success with the organization’s success.

How is the current team performing? Are they meeting expectations?

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How do you resolve conflict between team members?

How to Answer the Question

Conflict is inevitable if you’re working with a group of people. It should be expected. When answering this question, it’s important to discuss how you facilitate communication, how you promote communication, and how you mediate opportunities in a way that each team member feels brings resolution to their internal and external problems.

What Employers Are Looking For

There’s a variety of things most employers are hoping to hear from you. They want to hear about your communication philosophies. They also want to hear about your mediation or negotiation abilities - the ability to get everyone on the same page and agree to something.

They typically don’t want to hear stories about how you forced everyone into a decision but rather gained buy-in from everyone.

Sample Answer

Conflict usually occurs when communication breaks down so I think part of managing this overall is prevention. Promoting a culture of open communication can mitigate many conflicts. But when it does occur, it’s important to bring all parties involved together so there’s less he said, she said occurring. I believe in facilitating resolution, not deciding it myself whenever possible.

My role as a supervisor is to facilitate that communication in a neutral safe environment and help each team member see the other’s perspective and agree on common ground. I have to become the voice of reason, stay level-headed, and help each person move toward the middle.

Tell me about a difficult decision you made recently. How did you work through it and what did you decide?

How to Answer the Question

The key to answering this question is to show that you’re not afraid to make decisions and own the outcome. At the same time communicating how your thought process works will go a long way to helping them see how you typically make decisions.

Tell them what the decision was, how it came about, how you worked through the problem, your logic in arriving at your decision and the outcome.

What Employers Are Looking For

Most employers want a supervisor who isn’t afraid to make hard choices. They also want someone who can balance the need for information with making well-informed decisions. Sometimes there isn’t a lot of information available and decisiveness is key. Other times it may make more sense to delay to obtain the necessary information. Employers are looking for how you balance these items.

Sample Answer

I think one of the most challenging parts of my last job was determining which accounts to prioritize. My pipeline had over 200 new customers coming in per day, but that didn’t mean they were all qualified. It wasn’t possible to talk to each and every one which makes things difficult, because of course you want to talk to them all and close them all.

I quickly created an Excel spreadsheet where I could filter based on how customers answered lead generation questions. This allowed me to identify duplicate entries where some customers may have already interacted with another representative. It also allowed me to see who had a prequalification already which indicated that they were further along in their buying journey and had a higher percentage of closing.

While difficult to not call every lead, I decided to call the leads based on these and a few other criteria I had noticed were characteristic of our existing customers and those who were more likely to buy something in the next 30 days. I had great success with it, so much so that the entire department adopted the process and overall we saw a 12% increase in conversions.

How do you approach problem-solving as a supervisor?

How to Answer the Question

When answering this question, you want to have a method to your madness. You want to explain a systematic approach, show how you analyze situations, and identify root causes.

You may also discuss involving other internal business partners to gather perspective and how you evaluate potential solutions. How do you communicate your decision, monitor the results, and pivot as needed are all worth mentioning when answering this question.

What Employers Are Looking For

There are many different ways to approach problems, but one thing I’ve noticed when debriefing with hiring teams is they all tend to value a bias toward action. They don’t want someone who gets stuck and can’t make a decision or resolve an issue.

Sample Answer

I think the first step is to define the problem by its root cause. Is it a productivity problem, a performance problem, a profit problem, a process problem, or a product problem? If you don’t understand the real problem, you could end up with a solution that doesn’t solve anything.

Once I understand the problem, I need to analyze any data and balance that with what insights my team may have from their interactions. From there, I may bounce a couple of solutions off other leaders and consider alternative perspectives that I haven’t thought of yet. I also like to engage my team with this exercise to gain their perspectives. Beyond merely solving the problem, I find it to be a great way to develop them.

From there it’s important to consider who the decision will impact and make sure I have sponsorship or buy-in from those affected. I think it’s important to have a plan to monitor the results of the decision. Sometimes the only way to know something will work is to try it. And if it doesn’t work, then we pivot. but a problem isn’t solved until it’s solved.

How do you handle situations with conflicting priorities?

How to Answer the Question

This happens all the time in business. When answering this question, reference your ability to elevate urgent tasks. Talk about how you gain clarification when needed, communicate conflicts, and evaluate resources needed to complete everything.

Employers usually want someone who can communicate expectations and be transparent when something isn’t possible.

What Employers Are Looking For

I like to think most of the good employers I’ve partnered with approach this from the perspective of, “Will this person raise the flag when they need to?” They want to know that when conflicting priorities arise, you’ll elevate the conflict and partner with others to restructure workloads.

Sample Answer

When I have a situation with conflicting priorities, I usually go back to the owner of the priority to gain clarification about the project’s impact on them and others. There have been times when I’ve found out that although the project owner had it listed as a top priority, it really wasn’t that important and we could delay it so we could complete another project first.

Other times there may be multiple projects that are urgent and have far-reaching impacts. In those cases, I find it is best to be transparent with project owners about any concerns with time and resources to complete things on time.

I’ve worked with some managers who try to force their way through conflicting priorities without the right resources and either end up burning bridges with other departments or burning out their teams.

Rather than do those things, we as a leadership team need to evaluate if we have additional resources we can allocate, and if not, decide as a group which priority should give way to the other.

How do you create a culture of teamwork?

How to Answer the Question

Fostering any type of work culture takes time, determination, and consistency on the part of the leadership team. When answering this question talk about how you clearly define the team’s core values and mission. Talk about how you foster and encourage people to give and receive feedback. Talk about rewarding those who exhibit the values you are trying to instill.

What Employers Are Looking For

Most employers are looking for you to discuss communication, interaction with other teams, and breaking down silos. Ultimately, they want to know that you can bring a group of people together who share a common goal, mission, and vision.

Sample Answer

Building a culture of teamwork takes time and consistency on the part of me, the supervisor. When I was at XYZ company, our manager clearly defined core values for the team and rewarded team members when they exhibited those qualities.

I think what really made this work and what I would replicate if I was given this supervisor position is that the rewards were tailored to each individual. For example, Rob had a young family at home and valued being able to leave the office 2 hours early on a Friday. I on the other hand would rather receive a $50 Amazon gift card because I love to shop for things that I don’t need.

Beyond rewards though, as a supervisor, you have to make people feel comfortable to approach you with their problems and their ideas. For some individuals, it can take months to warm up to that if they’re not used to it. Meeting people where they are and leading by example go far when building a culture of teamwork.

On the flip side, you also have to be prepared to step in and correct actions that don’t align with the values of the team.

How do you handle underperforming team members?

How to Answer the Question

When answering this question, talk about identifying the root cause of the performance issue. Discuss how you reinforce expectations, obtain buy-in from the employee that there is a problem, and develop an action plan for correction with them. You can even talk about how you check in and follow-up on performance after an action plan is created.

What Employers Are Looking For

Employers want to know that you have a process that makes sense and you’re not going to “wing it.” They want to know that you know how to develop an action plan, manage expectations, and have a method to identify underperformers that is fair and equitable.

Sample Answer

When a team member is underperforming, it’s important to get to the root cause of the issue. This is where trust really helps.

Most people want to do a good job and feel good about the work they do. It’s important to address underperformance as soon as possible so everyone knows that the expectations are real and that you will hold people accountable.

Rather than tell people they are underperforming, I like to lead people to their own conclusions. Most people who underperform know it and know there are reasons causing it. It’s important for a supervisor to have them open up and share those reasons with you so you know how to best help them.

From there, you can determine how to support the employee and together create an action plan to get them back on track. Sometimes the employee requires more resources, sometimes their workload is too great, and sometimes it’s factors outside of work impacting them.

There’s no one-size-fits-all for underperformance. After we’ve created an action plan, it’s the supervisor’s job to follow up and continue to monitor that performance. As it increases, I think it’s important to let the employee know that you’re aware of their improvement, and if it doesn’t improve, then it’s important to let them know what will happen if the situation doesn’t improve by a specific date.

How is the current team performing now? What would you like to see in terms of performance?

Describe your leadership style.

How to Answer the Question

When answering this question, share your approach to communication with team members and your flexibility in handling situations.

What Employers Are Looking For

Many employers are looking for your ability to adapt to others when answering this question. They’re also looking for insights into how you will interact with your team including communication, mentorship, and discipline.

Sample Answer

I believe in delegation and empowerment. Tell people what needs to be done, give them the tools, and give them autonomy to execute. At XYZ I led a team of 4 to complete 3 different projects. By setting clear expectations and understanding my team’s unique skills, I was able to empower them to make decisions within a parameter of guidance. Because of this, we were able to complete every project on time, doing 4 times the project volume of larger teams.

This freed up a lot of time for myself and other leaders, promoted new ideas, and allowed the managers to get out of the weeds and focus on how we could complete more projects on smaller budgets. While it may take team members time to adjust to this leadership style, I’m confident that bringing this style of leadership to the team in the long run will produce more high performers.

What styles of leadership does the team respond well to currently?

I highly recommend reading my article Describe Your Leadership Style for more insight on this question.

How do you implement change management within a team?

How to Answer the Question

This can be a tricky one for first-time managers. Chances are you haven’t ever had to implement change management; however, you’ve probably been a part of the process. Think about the last time your company implemented a big change in process or procedure. How was it communicated? How did they get everyone bought into the change? What would you have done differently?

What Employers Are Looking For

Change is tough on everyone and it’s an essential part of success in business. Employers want to know that you’ll be able to lead a team through changes and maintain high levels of productivity.

Sample Answer

When implementing change, you have to have everyone buy into it. You can’t simply tell people what to do. You can, but I find that adoption is low when you do so. For example, when my last company implemented a new pay-for-performance initiative I think they missed a huge opportunity.

I would have started by asking my team how they would feel if their paycheck actually reflected the hard work they put in every day. I would have framed the initiative in a way that mattered to them. Who doesn’t want to be paid based on their hard work? These types of conversations ensure that your team commits to the change.

The way you frame change makes a big difference in the adoption of that change. Once you have that adoption then you can set clear expectations and start executing the implementation roadmap.

How do you guys approach change management currently?

How do you stay current with industry trends?

How to Answer the Question

This question is really straightforward. Either you stay current or you don’t. You can talk about industry publications, conferences, or your professional network. It won’t hurt to drop some recent events occurring in your industry to prove it.

What Employers Are Looking For

This question is all about professional growth. Employers want to know that you’re invested in your growth and development. Almost every employer I’ve worked with prefers candidates who are dialed into their industry. This is your chance to show that.

Sample Answer

The majority of my industry news comes from IMA conferences and publications. I currently sit on the chapter board which gives me inside access to a host of resources.

One of the latest conferences discussed how ASC 802 will impact manufacturers. I found it fascinating that we’ll no longer be able to do…

How do you approach feedback?

How to Answer the Question

When answering this question you can discuss both giving and receiving feedback. Talk about the medium you give feedback within and when and where.

What Employers Are Looking For

Employers want to know a couple of things when asking this question. They want to know that you are reflective and will accept feedback. They also want to know that you’re not too timid to give feedback and that you’ll give it in a way that is most likely to be received.

Sample Answer

When approaching feedback I think you have to allow people time to process it and reflect on it. As a supervisor, you have to set an example by also listening to your team’s feedback and considering its value.

You may not always agree with them, but it’s important for them to know they were heard. One time I approached my manager with feedback about our software system. Even though he decided not to implement my suggestion, I knew he heard me and gave it consideration.

The next day he called me into his office and explained to me why the change I proposed wasn’t cost-effective, but he wanted to discuss with me other ideas I might have to improve our problem without IT having to make significant changes. I would model my approach after this.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

How to Answer the Question

There is no universal right or wrong answer to this question. If a company is rapidly growing, they are likely to be attracted to someone who wants increased responsibility.

If the organization is smaller, they may be happy with someone who wants to build the best department and see it running smoothly.

One safe path to answering this question is to approach it from a personal development standpoint rather than achieving a job title or level of responsibility.

What Employers Are Looking For

Employers ask this question to measure your motivation. They want to make sure your future aspirations align with what they can provide. While very few really know where they’ll be in five years, many hiring teams also ask this question in an attempt to see what kind of person you envision becoming.

The question can give them insights into what you value and your level of ambition.

Sample Answer

It’s hard to predict exactly where I’ll be in 5 years, but what I do know is that I see myself in a supervisory role with an established well-oiled team. Some of my goals are to put into practice some of the ideas we’ve discussed today, learn from them, and continue to develop my leadership abilities.

Eventually, I’d like to see myself contributing more to process improvements and operational strategy in addition to the everyday execution of the QA function. And I see myself doing this through cross-collaboration with multiple departments and really understanding how we all function together to achieve the company’s objectives.

May I ask where you see the company evolving over the next 5 years and what type of people you’ll need to get there?

What are the most important qualities of a successful supervisor?

How to Answer the Question

To answer this question you want to talk about the qualities you not only think are important but that you also possess and have exercised in the past. Things like diversity awareness, problem-solving, empathy, the ability to coach others, and flexibility could all be examples of the qualities a successful supervisor would need.

Try to focus on your top 3 and avoid giving a laundry list of qualities.

What Employers Are Looking For

This question gives employers insights into your leadership style and behavior. It’s similar to tell us about your leadership style. They’re trying to assess what type of manager you will be.

Sample Answer

I think the three most important qualities of successful supervisors are the ability to make others better than themselves, to adapt to others’ needs and changing situations, and the ability to foster an environment where ideas are welcomed and feedback is received well by everyone.

These are the things I believe my previous supervisor and mentor at ABC company did well and our team always ranked in the top 3 for sales because of it.

Have you ever been involved in hiring? What factors do you think are important when hiring a new team member?

How to Answer the Question

More than likely if this is your first supervisor job, you haven’t been responsible for hiring yet. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t been involved.

If you’ve participated in interviews or given feedback about a candidate, you’ve been involved. Even if you didn’t meet a candidate, it’s possible your manager may have asked you for your thoughts and shared information about their interview with potential new hires. All of these are fair game and worth mentioning when answering this question.

What Employers Are Looking For

If this is your first supervisor role, employers aren’t expecting you to have a lot of experience with hiring. Instead they’re probably asking this question to gauge how you will approach hiring or to see if you have an edge over many of your peers. First time supervisors who have some experience with the hiring process definitely have an advantage.

Sample Answer

When at ABC company, my manager often trusted me and other senior members of the team to meet with candidates for about 10 minutes. While not extensive interviews, I learned how to ask the right questions and get the person to open up with their questions.

I found that you could learn a lot about people by the questions they asked me. It told me about their priorities and what they cared about. I could see how thoughtful they were and gained glimpses into their thought process.

My manager and I would then discuss each candidate’s technical aptitude and how they would fit into the team environment before she would make a decision on who to hire.

I found these conversations very insightful as she would explain her thought process behind evaluating each candidate.

During my time there, I think the important thing when hiring is to create a safe place where the candidate feels free to ask questions and be themselves and then to use some sort of rubric to ensure that biases are minimized as much as possible.

Do you currently involve any team members in the decision making process similar to this?

Have you ever mentored someone else before? Where are they now?

How to Answer the Question

When answering this question, talk about who you mentored, how you became their mentor, and what you did to help them improve their performance. Also mention the results and take credit for helping them get there.

What Employers Are Looking For

Employers know that this would be your first managerial role, so they are more likely to ask questions like this to gauge your initiative and ability to develop others. They’re looking for someone who doesn’t wait but takes the initiative to make others better. They’re also looking for insights into how you do that in a way that produces results.

Sample Answer

In my last role, I worked with a marketing specialist who was a fantastic content writer, but terrible at getting anything to rank. So he had all this great content, but no one was reading it. We were in blended roles for content creation and SEO which was one of my strongest areas of expertise.

One day I approached him and asked what he thought was contributing to his low rankings and because we had built up trust over months of working together he just broke down and laid it on me that he didn’t understand the SEO tools and was afraid to ask for help. He was concerned that he was going to lose his job because of it.

So together we came up with a plan to spend an hour each week developing his knowledge of our SEO tools and how to apply them to real-life situations he was encountering. Within a month, his rankings started to improve and after 7 months he is consistently ranked at the top of our team, even above me.

It’s easy to be great at your job but to help someone else be better than you are. That’s the skill of a true leader and this is probably one of my proudest achievements so far in my career.

Describe your process for delegating tasks.

How to Answer the Question

The keyword in this question is “process.” You have to have some type of logic that the interviewer can follow. Talk about how you evaluate employee workloads. Is every employee expected to carry the same load? Are some given more or less? How do you determine this? And then how do you actually delegate the task?

What Employers Are Looking For

Delegation is an essential skill for any leader. Employers want to know how you’ll decide who does what on the team. They want to know how you will communicate tasks and keep everything moving in the right direction.

Sample Answer

I don’t believe one size fits all when delegating tasks. It’s not always about who can do the best job tackling a project either. You have to balance capacity with capability.

Rather than assess who is the best to handle a special project, I prefer to examine who can do the job at least 80% as well as my most qualified person. This gives me options and it gives people the chance to develop professionally and increase their skill sets. Once I have that list, then I can look at those team members’ workload and examine who can handle more work.

I find that many times we punish our highest performers with more work simply because they’re good at their jobs and can do more. This oftentimes leads to burnout and their development being stunted. I’m not saying that high performers don’t get more work and I don’t think they should ever be idle, but there may be other tasks to put them on that will stretch them and be a better use of their time. You have to take a holistic view of delegation this way in my opinion.

Once you know who should work on the task, it’s important to set clear expectations. If it’s something they’ve done before, then it’s only a matter of telling them what precisely needs to be completed and when. I trust them to figure out how to complete it. This often leads to new ideas and innovation.

If it’s someone new to the task or who I don’t think has a lot of experience handling similar tasks, then I’ll work with them to come up with a process for how we will complete the task. I may give them some must-haves but leave room for them to have some autonomy as well. This is how people grow.

What would you do if an employee made a significant mistake on a project?

How to Answer the Question

It’s important not to focus on blame when answering this question, but rather on behaviors and decisions. Talk about how you acknowledge them and fix them as soon as possible and how you work with the employee to prevent similar mistakes from happening in the future.

What Employers Are Looking For

Employers are asking this question to assess how you give feedback, and also how you manage your team’s quality of work. Obviously, significant mistakes can cost a company quite a bit of money, so avoiding them should be a priority. Many employers want to see how you balance quality control with prevention and corrective actions.

Sample Answer

There are a few different scenarios that come to mind. In one case, there are times when an employee discovers their own mistake and brings it to my attention. In that situation, I think it’s important to thank them for being accountable and sharing what happened. This is exactly what you want to occur when a mistake is made. It’s important to foster that type of behavior.

In this case, I would acknowledge my own mistakes as well and make sure they know it’s ok to make mistakes and because of their accountability, we can fix it right away. I would then focus on solving the problem and making sure we have processes in place so it doesn’t happen again. It’s great that they caught it, but depending on when they identified the mistake, we may want that to be sooner.

On the other hand, it’s my job as the supervisor to implement some form of quality control on my team’s work so a mistake doesn’t have a large impact on the overall organization. While I believe in holding team members accountable, at the end of the day if a significant mistake goes out the door, that’s on me as the supervisor. The buck stops here when it comes to my team and I think that’s the mentality you have to adopt as a manager (even if the statement isn’t always true).

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How will you persuade people to follow your vision as a first-time supervisor?

How to Answer the Question

When answering this question talk about how you define your vision to your team. You may talk about one-on-one conversations in addition to team meetings where you reinforce the vision.

It’s also important to communicate how you involve your team in defining that vision and bringing them into it rather than pushing it on them. Talk about how you model it yourself and how you adapt it over time.

What Employers Are Looking For

This question is used to try and predict your communication, team building, and conflict resolution abilities. It gives employers insight into how you think strategically about persuasion and leadership.

Sample Answer

I think persuasion begins with collaboration. Everyone loves to buy things, no one likes to be sold something. It’s my job to come to the team with a defined, well-thought-out vision for how we are going to operate. It’s also my job to have a solid justification for that vision that my team can understand and latch onto.

I would involve my team as early as possible in formulating that vision. Even if it’s something that’s come down from the top, bringing the team in as early as possible for input and feedback leads to buy-in later.

Once communicated, I have to model that vision every day and show the team that I believe this is the right path forward. And lastly, I would monitor our execution. Do we need to adapt? Are there situations that I should run up the ladder and propose changes to?

How would you take over and lead a team that’s been together for 15 years?

How to Answer the Question

This question could be asked for a variety of situations, but in all of them, it’s important to communicate how you would lead a team that probably has very defined ways of operating. How will you balance potential changes that need to occur with retaining the team and getting their buy-in to those changes?

When answering this question talk about how you observe the team and learn their existing way of doing things. How do you build relationships and get them to trust you? After all, you are the outsider in this situation. Do you simply tell them what to do or do you try to become an insider with them?

You may wish to talk about the importance of active listening, assessments, and how you will respect the existing culture.

What Employers Are Looking For

This question is about assessing how well you can interpret and adapt to different team dynamics, especially ones that have been in existence for a long time. The employer may want to change things and is looking for someone who can handle change management and conflict resolution. Other times it’s simply about finding the right candidate who won’t rock the boat and lose a team that is already performing at high levels.

Sample Answer

If I was stepping into a team that most likely has an established way of getting work done, I think it’s important to actively listen to their experiences and perspectives and understand the way they are currently operating.

I imagine that through this process, some team members may not be happy with the way things are done or they may have a challenge that they don’t even know exists, such as spending 3 hours doing something manually when a system could automate it and save them 2 hours each day.

Regardless, if you’re going to be a successful supervisor in this situation, you have to build trust and seek to understand each team member’s process and challenges. Only then can you start to collaborate with them on changes. Only then will you know how to communicate changes in a way that they will most likely adopt.

Why are you interested in taking on a supervisory role?

How to Answer the Question

Honesty may not be the best policy when answering this question. Answering because of an increased salary or that you’re tired of doing the work and you want to watch others do the work is probably not going to get you very far.

Instead, highlight any leadership strengths or ideas that you have. Talk about the challenges that this will provide for you or how it’s the next step in your career path to achieve your professional goals.

What Employers Are Looking For

Most interviewers want to know that you’re going to be invested in this role. They want to see some form of intrinsic motivation because it’s usually more sustainable than extrinsic items like money. Everyone knows you are expecting a pay increase, but relying on that as the sole reason to seek a supervisor role doesn’t put the interviewer at ease.

Sample Answer

I’m good at sales, but I’m not the best salesperson in my company. What I’m better at is mentoring and helping others become the best salespeople. During my time at ABC company, I’ve mentored 3 people into the top 5 company-wide for conversions and total sales. I’m good at it and I enjoy it. There’s nothing like the feeling of seeing someone else succeed and knowing that you took part in that success.

In a supervisory role, I can expand on this passion and skill I’ve already started to develop. I feel that it is the next logical step for me in my career path and it will challenge me to improve on a handful of skills that I’ve already shown aptitude in. My current manager always says you have to put your aces in their places and this is the place where I can make the biggest impact.

Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a decision. How did you handle it?

How to Answer the Question

The important thing to remember when answering this question is not to criticize the other party. When giving an example, talk about how you stated the reasons for your disagreement with the other party and how you employed your negotiation or persuasion skills to move them to your side.

What Employers Are Looking For

Most employers are looking for signs of maturity and to evaluate your communication abilities with this question.

Sample Answer

In my previous job as a project manager, there was a situation where our team had to choose between two methodologies for an upcoming project. The majority favored the one that was tried and tested in previous projects, but I had done quite a bit of research on another method that seemed to better align with our unique requirements.

I decided to voice my opinion during our team meeting, expressing my concerns and presenting the advantages of my methodology. The discussion became a bit intense as some people were entrenched in the way we had always done it. I remained calm and focused on the merits of my methodology, careful not to criticize anyone’s ideas or opinions directly.

In the end, the team decided to go with the method they’ve always used despite my recommendation, so I embraced it as well. It’s not really about being right or wrong. The truth is both could probably work. Because of how I handled it, I earned some trust and eventually the team did adopt my method on a project during the following quarter and saw that it did work slightly better for those types of projects.

What are the three most important factors for a team to be successful?

How to Answer the Question

When answering this question, it’s important to focus on two or three factors you believe to be the most important. Don’t give a laundry list answer of too many things. If everything is important then nothing is important.

Reflect on the teams you’ve been a part of and think about what made them successful. And make sure you have a well-thought-out reason for choosing the items you do. Explain that when giving your answer.

What Employers Are Looking For

There are so many answers that could be accepted. Rather than focus on the right answer, employers want to see the rationale behind the answers you give. They want to see inside your mind and how you view teams and leadership.

Sample Answer

There’s a lot that goes into building a successful team, but if I were to narrow it down to the three most important things I’ve seen in my career so far it would be communication, collaboration, and trust or respect.

Without those things, none of the other factors really matter. You can’t have effective communication or collaboration without an element of trust. And you can’t build trust without effective communication. Same thing with collaboration.

These three factors then lead you to successfully be agile and have the tough conversations that are needed to build a winning team.

What does your planning process look like?

How to Answer the Question

When answering this question you can discuss how you break down projects into smaller steps, how you create timelines and roadmaps, evaluate deadlines, prioritize work, and identify business partners needed to achieve success.

If you give an example, talk about how you proactively anticipated a delay and mitigated it based on your planning.

What Employers Are Looking For

The vast majority of employers want to know how you approach and organize your work as well as your ability to achieve your goals. They also want to know that you don’t get stuck in planning and can execute as well.

This question assesses your time management skills, goal-setting abilities, problem-solving skills, and decision-making ability.

Sample Answer

I think proper planning can help you anticipate bottlenecks and ensure more work gets done on time. Last year I was put in charge of a project that evaluated XYZ. It was substantial and I knew I would need help from multiple departments. Instead of jumping right in, I took the time to plan it out for a day or two.

During that time I broke the project up into milestones, I determined what resources and people I would need to rely on, and I factored in things that I thought could delay the project’s success so I was prepared to mitigate them if they arose.

Because of this, I was able to structure tasks in a way that allowed time for 3rd parties to provide us with the data we needed on time. Although we didn’t need the data until much later in the project, I requested it early because I knew we had little control over their priorities.

Fortunately, due to proper planning, we were able to complete everything on time and slightly under budget.

First Time Supervisor Interview Questions and Answers Recommended Reading

How to Answer 90% of All Interview Questions

How to Kill an Interview (Tips to Prepare With Confidence)

Answering the Question: Describe Your Leadership Style

11 Accountability Interview Questions (And Answers)

Cole Sperry has been a recruiter and resume writer since 2015, working with tens of thousands of job seekers, and hundreds of employers. Today Cole runs a boutique advisory firm consulting with dozens of recruiting firms, oversees Optim’s Resume Revision Service and On-Demand Coaching Program, and is the Managing Editor at OptimCareers.com.