Welcoming questions
- Can you tell us about yourself and the business units or sites you have run, including the size of the P&L?
- Looking back at your last role, which result best represents how you lead a business?
Role-specific / technical competencies
- Walk us through how you built your last annual plan and budget. What assumptions proved wrong, and how did you adjust?
- How do you review performance across sales, operations, and finance without micromanaging each function?
- Tell us about a margin improvement you delivered. Where did the gains actually come from?
- How do you decide when to invest in growth versus protect profitability in a soft market?
- What is your approach to pricing decisions, and when did you last change prices and with what result?
Behavioural & culture fit
- Tell us about a department head who was underperforming. How long did you give them, and what did you ultimately do?
- Describe a decision where head office and your local team wanted different things. How did you handle it?
- How do you stay close to frontline staff and customers while running the whole unit?
Problem-solving / case
- Six months into the year, revenue is 15 percent behind plan but costs are on budget. Walk us through your diagnosis and your recovery plan.
- Your two strongest department heads are in open conflict and it is affecting their teams. What do you do this week?
- Head office asks you to cut 10 percent of unit costs while a key competitor is expanding in your market. How do you respond and what do you protect?
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