Aspiring to climb up the career ladder and become a store manager? This position is not as comfortable it may seem. A store manager is in charge of an entire store, which means that they have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. They need to manage all employees who work under them and ensure that they follow proper conduct when dealing with customers. Store managers must also ensure that their store is functioning correctly, help improve store traffic, meet sales goals, and, in some cases, they are also in charge of training new employees. Hence, it is evident that to find the right candidate for a store manager’s role, the recruiter should assess their skills well and that the interview is comprehensive.
Wondering how you can prepare for your interview? When preparing for the interview, it is essential to know what questions you may be asked and how you can answer them.
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How Do You Plan to Delegate?
When answering this question, ensure that you address how you plan to:
- Assign a specific task to specific members based on their skills and experience
- Indicate how you want the task to be completed and what the outcome of the job should be
- Ensure that your team member has appropriate resources to complete the task
- A follow-up to know how the task is progressing
Ensure that your answer is detailed; delegating tasks is not as easy as it sounds. Hence, you should ensure that you detail how you plan to use every employee’s strengths to ensure a hassle-free process.
How Will You Ensure Task Completion?
When answering this question, it is essential to note that you should be skilled at delegating tasks according to people’s strengths. Instead, you should also ensure that the job is completed on time. Hence, this question is used to assess your ability to ensure that you will monitor all tasks appropriately and meet deadlines. Your answer should touch upon the following points:
- How you will establish a timeline to ensure that you or your team member follows up with you in different tasks
- How you plan to review ongoing tasks and track progress
- Recording feedback from team members is crucial to ensure that you can utilize their skills effectively while also enhancing their capabilities.
Your answer should not only show that you have an effective method of following up every task to ensure a seamless flow but that you are also willing to work with team members to address their issues and step in to ensure that the work is completed on time.
How Will You Motivate Team Members?
As the store manager, it is your responsibility to boost morale and ensure no friction between team members. It will be your responsibility to encourage your team members to help them feel motivated and energetic to complete their work from time to time. Ensure that you address why it is essential to motivate team members, reducing the number of leaves one takes and ensuring that task completion is up to the mark. When addressing how you will motivate employee, keep the following points in mind:
- Mention how you plan to make every employee feel responsible and included by making them a part of the decisions making process
- Ensure that you mention how will work with individuals’ employees to address their concerns and issues; this also includes working with them to help them develop their skills and improve their work
- Mention how you plan to adapt your strategy to suit the requirements of different employees
- Provide details on how you plan to boost team morale and encourage working with each other
- Detail how you plan to motivate employees by rewarding them for their hard work, either through monetary or non-monetary benefits
Keep in mind that you will have a large team under you, and hence, you need to address how you will meet every member’s needs. When motivating employees, you also have to encourage them to improve their work by providing regular feedback.
How Will You Improve Communication with Team Members?
Breakdown of communication is one of the biggest reasons why a store manager cannot effectively control the team. As the manager, you have to relay important information to your team members and adapt to store policies and procedures. Since you will have a large team you will need to handle, your communication skills must be up to the mark. Hence, when answering this question, ensure that you touch upon the following points:
- How you plan to adapt your communication style to suit the needs of every member
- How you plan to address the concerns of every member and ensure that they feel that their needs are being met
- How you plan to boost teamwork and communication to ensure that every member is on the same page.
Keeping these points in mind helps you show the recruiter that you can handle communications amongst many teams.
Have you made Mistakes in Your Previous Position? How Did You Handle It?
When answering this question, it is essential, to be honest; to err is human. Hence, a good recruiter should understand that there is room for you to make mistakes. This question aims not to point out your flaws but to know how you deal with failures and mistakes. Every person has made mistakes before but dealing with mistakes dramatically impacts the business as a store manager. Hence, when answering this question, you should address the following points:
- How you hold yourself accountable for your actions and do not let others take the fault
- What you have learned from your previous mistakes
- What steps you take to fix the mistakes and show others that you are striving to improve.
Making mistakes is human nature, but not everyone may be willing to admit to their faults. As a store manager, however, you need to accept your mistakes and take steps to ensure that it does not impact your employees.
