Great leaders help you grow and could impact your career in more ways than you can imagine!
How do you find out if the manager is a good fit for you as early as during the interview stage?
Shaik Amir, Chief Operating Officer at TRIIIO has shared 5 questions that you can ask your future manager. This may help you evaluate if that person is the right manager for you.
* However, do note that doing this does not guarantee you to identify a good manager - it serves to give you additional data points, acting as an indicator to help you when choosing the right offer.
1. What is your leadership philosophy / style?
This question is an excellent way of breaking the ice when you enter the Q&A segment with the interviewer. It will help you get a better idea of what kind of leader this manager is. The best kind of answers are the ones that clearly and thoughtfully describe their leadership style. Use follow up questions to hone in on the answer more. The answers that are not as good are answers like “I'm not a micromanager”.
2. What are the values you believe in as a leader?
Similar to the question above, this will give you an idea of what are the most important values for them. We find that the best team is a team that believes and operates under a similar value system. When your values are aligned with how the team and company operates, it results in less stressful situations.
3. What's the best way to work with you?
Understanding explicitly what’s the best way to work with your manager could avoid the risk of misunderstandings. Asking this question also gives you the opportunity to share what your expectations are so you can negotiate and hopefully come to an agreement on certain contentious issues.
4. What are the most important traits you want to see in your team members?
This question helps to really understand how your soon-to-be manager expects their reports to work, both together and individually. They may have asked you what traits you can bring to the team, so this question will double-up to help you see if the traits you stated are in line with the ones they’re looking for.
5. How do you help individuals in your team to grow professionally?
Future growth opportunities are important to have during job search. If your manager plays an active role in the development of their team, it demonstrates the level of confidence and care they have for their subordinates. You can ask this question to understand your manager’s track record in helping team members grow.
There you have it! Those are some of the questions that you can ask your future manager.
However, keep in mind that leadership is a two way street. As much as it's about working with a good leader, it’s also about being a good team member. It’s a relationship that needs both parties to continuously invest in.
If you're going for an interview, check out this article that we wrote about 8 common interview questions and how to answer them!
Share with us your experience and the questions that you’ve asked your potential manager during an interview!
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TRIIIO is a Malaysian recruitment firm focused on partnering with companies to find and recruit top talent and build their Software Engineering teams. For more information on how we can help you recruit Software Engineers in this candidate tight market, visit our service page.
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