Managerial Job Interview Guide

OPENING:

1. Provide job description – What is the specific position? What is the job about?

“The position available in our company is operations manager. The operations manager is in charge of overseeing, designing and redesigning business operations to provide Internet service to clients/customers. He is expected to handle ten subordinates (operations officers) in his department.”

2. Ask for application or resume (if not yet submitted)

3. Overview of unit and campus – Give short introduction about the office
“Should you be hired for this job, you will report to this office in Manila. As you can see, there are several departments – accounting, sales, etc. You will work together with these departments...”

Transition from Opening to Interview Proper:

“Shall we start the interview?”

“Let's move on with the interview.”

INTERVIEW PROPER: Specific Questions
1. General  

• Tell me about your previous work experience. 
• How is your experience relevant or helpful to this job?
• Why are you interested in this position as operations manager?
• How would the people around you describe you?
• What’s a common misconception some people have about you?
• Tell me about a difficult decision you had to make recently. Walk me through the problem and what your thought process was, and how you ultimately handled it.
• What is one thing that you have had difficulty overcoming in your career, and how did you do that?
• What is some of the most useful criticism you’ve ever received? Why?
• Have you ever been given criticism that you disagreed with? What was it? How did you handle that?

2. Getting things done

• What has been your biggest achievement at your previous company?
• What were your department’s major goals last year? How did you settle on those goals? Was your department able to meet them? How did you measure whether or not you met those goals?
• What’s an example of a goal you didn’t meet? How come? How did you respond to that?
• What will success look like for you this year? Why is that important? How hard will it be to get there?
• Tell me about one of the (previous) organization’s (or department's) largest or most important projects and how you managed it, from start to finish. I’m interested in something where others were doing the work, but you were overseeing it.
  - What was the goal or vision for it?
  - What happened?
  - How did you ensure that happened?
  - How do you know it happened?
  - What lessons did you get from that project?
• What are some of the biggest obstacles your organization/department experienced in the last few years? What did you do to address them?
• Tell me about something you got done at  your previous company that someone else in your role probably wouldn’t have.

3. Managing People

• How would you describe yourself as a manager? How do you think others would describe you?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses as a manager?
• What is your philosophy about management?
• What do you think the fundamental purpose of a manger is? 
• How has your management philosophy evolved as you’ve gained more management experience?
• What do you do to work on being a better manager?
• What do you think are some of the most common ways people fail at management?
• Tell me about an employee who became more successful as a result of your management.
• Who are your best people? What are you doing to retain them?
• What do you look for when you hire people?
• When was the last time you fired someone or coached someone out? How many people have you fired in the last two years? Why? (You’re looking for a manager who fires people who don’t perform at a high standard.)
• Tell me about the most difficult employee situation you ever had to handle. What did you do and what was the result?
• Tell me about a time you were managing a poor performer. How did you handle it and what was the outcome?
• What was the most difficult management decision you’ve ever had to make?
• Tell me about a management mistake that you made in the past. What would you do differently?
• Even the best bosses generate complaints from their employees now and then. What complaints do you think the people you’ve managed would have about you?

CLOSING:
1. Questions or additional comments from the candidate

"Do you have any questions about the job?"
2. Timeline to conclude interviews and make a hiring decision

"The company will contact you within a week to inform the results of your application."
3. Explain who they may be meeting with next 

"Should you get the job, please come back to the office and report to the HR (Human Resource) Department for further instruction and orientation."
4. Thank the applicant
"Thank you for your interest in this job and for taking time for this interview. We will keep in touch. Have a good day!"  (shake hands)

Desperate, Sick Indonesians Use Railroad Therapy

Villagers lie on a railway track for an electricity therapy in Rawa Buaya, Jakarta, Indonesia. 

Ignoring the red-and-white danger sign, Sri Mulyati walks slowly to the train tracks, lies down and stretches her body across the rails. Like the nearly dozen others lined up along the track, the 50-year-old diabetes patient has given up on doctors and can't afford the expensive medicines they prescribe. In her mind, she has only one option left: electric therapy. "I'll keep doing this until I'm completely cured," said Mulyati, while an oncoming passenger train sends a current racing through her body. She leaps from the tracks as the train approaches and then, after it has passed, climbs back into position. 

Pseudo-medical treatments are wildly popular in many parts of Asia. There are stories about people who are cured after touching a magic stone or eating dung from sacred cows. These miracles attract thousands, especially in Indonesia, where the health care system is not available to the poor.

Medical experts say there is no evidence that lying on the rails does any good. But Mulyati insists it provides more relief for her symptoms - high-blood pressure, sleeplessness and high cholesterol - than any doctor has since she was first diagnosed with diabetes 13 years ago. She turned to train track therapy last year after hearing a rumor about an ethnic Chinese man, who was partially paralyzed by a stroke, going to the tracks to kill himself, but instead finding himself cured. It's a story that's been told and retold in Indonesia.

Japan's bored audiences turn off TVs

The Japanese, once one of the most TV-addicted people on the planet, are watching less television these days. Daily TV viewing time, which averaged more than five hours in the 1970s, decreased to 3 hours and 28 minutes by 2010, according to the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute. Males aged 10 to 20 are watching less than two hours a day. Meanwhile, program ratings have been going down for most networks, including NHK, TV Asahi, NTV, TBS, Fuji TV and TV Tokyo, despite spikes for major sport events and other special programming.

There are various causes for this decrease in TV viewing. Like other countries, Japanese families no longer sit around the TV watching the same show, as viewers did in the 1960 to 1990s. The Japanese now use other devices for entertainment, including PCs, smartphones and game consoles. But the biggest cause, says Hiro Otaka, a media analyst for the Bunka Tsushin entertainment news services, is that the programs have become boring. "They don't put as much money or creativity into the shows as they used to, so program content has declined," he says. "You have so many of these cheaply made variety shows with comedians, it's hard to tell them apart. Viewers have just become tired of the same thing again and again."

Yakuza Awareness Classes

This August, Police in Fukuoka have started conducting organized crime education and awareness classes at middle and high schools in the prefecture. Prefectural police report that the current cultural tolerance of the yakuza often results in admiration of them by misinformed youth; indeed, many yakuza first participated in gang activities in their formative early teens. The police have therefore created this program to educate middle and high school students about the realities of yakuza life.

The curriculum includes ways of dealing with yakuza confrontations (for example, what to do when approached in the workplace by a yakuza demanding to be payed off), a run-down of how the yakuza make money (through drug smuggling, loan sharking and other illegal activities) and general advice on how not to get entangled in a gang.

Of the 69,000 students who had taken the class before June of this year, 24,000 were asked to participate in a survey. According to the results, 40% had some yakuza presence in their lives. 2% had reported they were even invited to join a gang. 97% of students reported that the classes were easy to understand, and that “they now understood the truth about the yakuza.”

In the space allocated for comments, some reported that there were shootings near their house, and that they were afraid of being hit by a stray bullet.

Seven teachers have a special license to teach the class. They plan to visit 545 public and private schools at least once by March of next year.

Cat cafes purrfect for lonely and childless people

TOKYO —On the third floor of a rather plain looking building in Ikebukuro, there is a small but busy cafe called Nekorobi. Customers do not come here for the food but for the staff, a sophisticated crew of 12 that are as varied as they are beautiful. 

After disinfecting their hands and putting on a specially provided pair of slippers, customers can talk to and play with Sugar, Aisha, Anko and the others for as long as they like, if they are willing to pay.

Nekorobi is one of Tokyo’s ever-growing numbers of cat cafes. Faced with a high cost of living, long working hours and the realities of life in cramped apartments, many Japanese people are unable to keep pets of their own.Cat cafes have increased in number for the Japanese population that is increasingly single and childless, and where loneliness is also a rising problem.

The world’s first cat cafe opened in Taiwan in 1998, but after it became popular with Japanese tourists, Japan’s first cat cafe, Neko no Jikan (or “Cat Time”), opened in Osaka in 2004. There are now at least 39 cat cafes in Tokyo alone, and some are so popular that reservations are required. Because of this popularity, the cats have also become mini-celebrities, starring in magazines and coffee table books.

Anti-Korean Wave in Japan turns political

Despite Bae Yong-joon’s continued demigod status in Japan and K-Pop’s domination on the Oricon charts these days, it seems that some Japanese have had enough of weepy Korean soap operas and Korean idols. 
 

Although the exact numbers vary according to media outlets, Chosun Ilbo reported that 500 demonstrators gathered outside Fuji TV headquarters on Aug 7, ostensibly to protest the broadcaster’s perpetuation of the Korean Wave. 

GIRLS GENERATION appear at MTV Video Music Aid Japan

Popular Japanese actor Sousuke Takaoka, 29, of “Battle Royale” fame first sparked controversy when he tweeted anti-Hallyu sentiments last month. “I’ll never watch Channel 8 (Fuji TV) again,” he said. “I often think it’s Korean TV. Japanese people want traditional Japanese programs.” 

When Takaoka was reportedly dropped from his agency following his Tweets, critics of Korean pop culture and right-wing nationalists organized the rally via the Internet. 

Twitter spread word of the anti-Hallyu charge, which took on a political slant as some protesters whipped out Japanese flags and chanted “Long live the emperor” while others belted out the Japanese national anthem.

Men's life expectancy rises, but women's falls

The average life expectancy of Japanese women slipped 0.05 year in 2010 to 86.39 years, the first decline in five years, but remained the highest in the world, the welfare ministry said Wednesday.

"Last summer's intense heat wave probably took a toll on many physically fragile seniors," an official at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said.

 

Heat stroke-related deaths reached an all-time high of 1,718, with those aged 65 and above accounting for 80 percent of the total. Deaths among the elderly from heart disease and pneumonia also increased — especially last summer — compared with a year earlier, decreasing women's life expectancy, according to the ministry.

Japanese men's life expectancy, however, hit a new high for the fifth straight year at 79.64 years, although the annual increase was just 0.05 year, down from 0.3 in 2009, the ministry said.

Worldwide, the longevity of Japanese women remained the highest for the 26th year running. Women in Hong Kong ranked second with a life expectancy of 85.9 years, followed by French women at 84.8 years.

Japanese men, meanwhile, moved up the global rankings from fifth in 2009 to fourth last year. Men in Hong Kong came top with a life expectancy of 80.0 years, while Swiss men placed second at 79.8 years and Israeli men were third at 79.7 years.