General Manager - Interview Questions

Your answer to this question can help the hiring manager gauge your experience in leadership positions, as well as hear how you talk about yourself as a leader. Share past experiences and focus on your strengths, and highlight what you do that works for you. Be sure you make yourself sound likable, effective, and strong at communicating. 

Tell a story about how you used your leadership ability to make a project or team successful. Reference real, measurable results if possible. Even if you don’t have “formal” leadership experience, think about a time you may have expressed leadership skills, such as for a project, sports team, or in previous jobs.

As a GM, you’ll be leading a team of employees that will likely at some point need coaching or mentoring to ensure their success. In addition to using your leadership skills, highlight a situation when you successfully led and influenced someone to make a positive change in their role or life. Briefly explain the before and after situation.

For example, your response maybe something like “In my past role, I had a team member who was struggling to meet his sales goals. After an observation period, I found that he wasn't feeling confident when working with customers. We spent some additional time training on the products, and I helped coach him on appropriate upsell tactics. I also encouraged him to be confident and strong in his recommendations. After a few days of practice, his sales numbers started improving.”

Conducting performance reviews and reporting the results back to your management team may be one of your responsibilities as a general manager. While there isn’t a right or wrong answer, ideally you’ll have experience in using metrics or other means of evaluation to track and report on performance. 

Explain what kind of strategies you use or what metrics you track, including what the employee does throughout the shift to meet goals, quotas, or productivity standards. 

For example, you may say, “At my last job we had sales quotas we tracked throughout the week. This helped me to understand who was exceeding at their role, and who was struggling and needed additional coaching.” 

You should also talk about how you’d work with an underperforming employee. Since you’ll be required to provide that feedback, describe a situation when you gave constructive criticism to an employee regarding their performance and how that helped the employee improve. 

A general manager role comes with a variety of responsibilities, some with strict deadlines or multiple tasks that need to be completed at once. Depending on the industry you’re working in, you may also face a variety of challenges or problems during your day. Talk about how you handle stress or pressure, and techniques you use to operate under fire. Share how even in stressful situations, you strive to remain level-headed and positive.

A GM oversees employees, company practices, and procedures. No company you work for will be perfect, so you should talk through how you’d investigate, analyze, develop, implement and evaluate solutions that would improve the work environment or outcomes. If you can, provide an example of when you did this in the past.

“At a past job, I found that the procedure for _____ wasn’t as efficient as it could be. After investigation and analysis, I realized if we made _____ change we could improve performance output by _____. I implemented the new strategy and our performance improved by _____ over the next three months.”

A great general manager has several qualities and skills to be successful. They excel at strategic planning, financial planning, and budgeting. They have strong interpersonal, leadership, and problem-solving skills. Additionally, it helps to be positive, know how to manage your time well and multitask, and have customer service skills. 

Choose a couple of skills that are exceptionally strong for you, and provide examples of how those skills have improved your team or a company in the past. For example, you may say “I believe _____ and _____ are the most important qualities or skills a general manager can have because _____. Having these skills allows a general manager to _____. In a previous role, having _____ skill allowed me to _____.”

Problem-solving skills are critical for a general manager, as well as leadership skills and the ability to stay calm and defuse a stressful situation. Not only may you be required to resolve the conflict between employees, but you may also resolve problems that happen throughout the day, such as a staff or product shortage or customer complaint. 

The hiring manager wants to know you’re able to resolve disagreements or problems quickly and effectively to ensure the work continues and other employees and customers are not affected. You should be able to think on the fly and implement effective resolutions. 

You may want to tell a story about an experience you had resolving employee disputes: “In my last role, two teammates disagreed about _____. I was able to quickly solve the problem by _____.”

Or, talk about another problem you face and what you did to resolve it. “At a previous company, we faced a problem of _____. By thinking quickly on my feet and using the tools we had, I was able to _____ and resolve the problem.”

Part of being a general manager and leading a team includes making decisions, such as creating schedules, designating tasks, supervising employees, setting budgets or strategies, and resolving disputes. Not every decision you make will be embraced by your team, but the hiring manager wants to know you’re able to make and stick to these decisions regardless if it’s an unpopular one.

Share an example of when you had to make a decision that wasn’t popular with all team members, and the outcome of that decision. Be sure to focus on how it highlights your leadership and communication skills, as well as decision-making skills.

Sometimes, general managers are asked to set budgets, track finances and revenue, and develop strategies for improvement. Discuss specific software or strategies you use to manage or set budgets or finances. Also, provide an example of how you report these findings to management. 

“In my previous role, I used _____ to keep an eye on the expenses and revenue of our location. If I found our expenses were too high, or our revenue wasn’t where it needed to be, I _____. I was able to develop a report for management that showed where we were before making a change, and where we are now.”

When sharing when you were most satisfied, highlight specific actions, responsibilities, or outcomes that led to that feeling. A hiring manager wants to know that you’ll be happy in this role with this company, so having an example of when you thrived can help them determine whether this is a good fit for you or not.

On the other hand, a hiring manager doesn’t want to hear you talk bad about a previous employer, boss, or team member. Instead, they want to know that you were able to learn from challenging or negative experiences and use those learnings moving forward.