HR Manager 101
Before diving into the challenging HR Manager interview questions to solve when you are applying for this vacancy, let’s take a little more time to understand this role as a whole:
In general, HR Managers work closely with the leadership team to plan and execute the company’s HR strategies.
Functions such as Compensation, Talent Management, Recruitment and Compliance are some of the things that HR Managers oversee and provide guidance on. Other uncommon but important duties also include answering sensitive questions, mediating conflicts, investigating disciplinary issues and more.
Being a good HR Manager isn’t a simple task. Here are some of the required skills:
- Effective Communication & Negotiation
- Ability to resolve conflicts
- Excellent knowledge of employment laws & regulations
- Adaptive and agile when it comes to the latest HR trends and practices
Are you up for the task? If you are determined to be a People leader, we have prepared some of the most difficult HR Manager interview questions (& best tips) for you to ace your interview.
Top Challenging HR Manager Interview Questions
1. How would you handle difficult conflicts between the upper management and employees?
This important question is important to demonstrate your conflict resolution skills – which is truly an important function as an HR Manager. Highlight your skills by saying:
“Based on my years of experience, I have developed a framework to carefully handle conflicts and maintain productive working environments. Understanding the cause of conflict is the first and most important task.
Next is to clear up miscommunications – which is the main contribution to conflicts. I initiate a counselling session between both parties to clear things up and suggest fair solutions that are in the best interest of all parties.”
2. How do you resolve an unethical situation that could pose dangerous threats to the company’s reputation?
This question would test your ability to think on your feet, as well as your knowledge and experience in dealing with HR regulations. Elaborate on a specific incident that what concrete action you took against it.
“A sexual harassment case happened in one of my previous companies. We do not tolerate behaviours causing harm to our company’s workforce and reputation. Firstly, I had to be fair and hear cases from both sides to better understand the situation.
After it was verified, we’ve made the necessary actions to resolve it – employee counselling, terminating the employee to hold him accountable, as well as reinforcing consequences for unethical behaviour in the workplace throughout all levels of the organisation.”
3. How would you enhance our company’s culture to improve Recruitment and Retention efforts?
This is where company research becomes crucial in the job application process. You should identify their culture, management style, and gaps between the latest trends and best practices in Malaysia.
“I would focus on creating a culture that would value creativity, agility and perseverance. Based on the current culture that I’ve seen, it won’t be easy so I would communicate and negotiate with the upper management – do what it takes for me to perform the role effectively.
Having a better culture could better attract the best gen-z talents because most candidates go through our website; It could also boost employee retention as it will provide the best meaning in what our employees do on a daily basis.”
4. Experience or Skills, which is more important when it comes to hiring?
“Firstly, it depends on the type of candidates the company currently needs. If the company is in desperate need of quality talent, Experience would be my deciding factor because someone with excellent skills but no experience hardly provides an instantaneous ROI compared to those with years of experience and consistent performance.
However, generally, I would consider a balance of academic qualifications, skills, experience, attitude and mindset. Candidates’ attitudes are also important because hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
5. What are the new initiatives you’d bring to the company?
With the HR space constantly changing in the world, companies would naturally want their HR Manager to bring exciting new things to the table and transform their workforce for the better.
Consider mentioning these initiatives when answering this question, keeping in mind the company’s current state, future goals, culture and management style:
- Using a good HR management system to reduce manual & mundane HR tasks so that the team could focus more on the “People” aspects of HR
- Implementing an Employee Satisfaction Survey/Programme to understand the employee’s experience and needs, contributing to setting HR goals in the future
- Focusing on employee training & development to future-proof the workforce and be able to cope with the latest trends and business demands
- Improving the current Onboarding and Offboarding journey in the company, citing some statistics and initiating best practices
If you are able to show your research, understanding of the company and knowledge of the HR industry, you’ll get the hiring manager excited and be one step closer to your dream job.
Final Remarks
Being in HR which most often would require you to participate in the interview process, employers would naturally expect you to handle these HR Manager interview questions well yourself.
We hope that you have a better understanding of the role and expectations of an HR Manager, as well as knowing which best angle to take when answering these challenging HR Manager interview questions.
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