Top 10 Tips: Getting into Management

Have you thought about where you’d like to see your career go in the next five years? A lot of people I work with tell me they want to be a manager in the future, but they’re not quite sure how to get there. If you have your sights set on getting into management, these things can help make the transition easier.

#1: Ask Yourself Why

First, do a gut check to make sure that management is really where you want to be. The workforce needs managers who want the job because they like working with people, believe they can make the company better, and care about their team. It’s a hard job and comes with a lot of challenges that non-managers don’t have to face. If you end up becoming a manager but not enjoying the job, it can be a pretty uncomfortable conversation to have with your boss.

#2: Volunteer for Assignments

There are two types of assignments that you should take on. First are the jobs that are not fun, but need to get done. Second are assignments that will stretch you out of your comfort zone or have high visibility. Try to volunteer for a balance between these opportunities. Once you have the job, be sure to take it seriously and follow through. If it’s a stretch assignment, be resourceful and don’t be afraid to ask for help if you get stuck. Taking on both kinds of projects will show leaders that you are reliable and not afraid of a challenge.

#3: Lead a Group

There’s no substitute for having the hands-on experience of influencing people. Look for opportunities to get experience leading others. It could be signing up to run the next committee at work, or volunteering to lead a group at a local non-profit. Hands-on experience will make it much easier to talk about your leadership skills during an interview.

Mentor - Management

#4: Ask!

Make the most of your development conversations with your manager. You are your own best advocate, and you shouldn’t wait for management to ask you. Have the conversation with your boss and tell them about your goals. Ask them what areas they’d like you to develop to get there. Being open to the constructive feedback you might receive is essential.

#5: Find a Mentor

Look for a leader outside of your chain of command who can be a mentor. Make the most of the time you have by being prepared with topics and questions. If you build a good relationship, your mentor will be one of your strongest advocates with other leaders. Having an advocate during those closed-door leadership meetings will help accelerate getting into management

#6 Make Friends with HR

Talk to your HR team and see what resources and classes the company has to offer. HR is one of the first departments to know about job openings and can have a lot of influence on the hiring process. Get to know how the hiring process at your company works. Find out if there are rules about how long you need to stay in a position and how to apply internally.

#7: Be Kind

People don’t want to work for jerks. Remember to treat everyone with respect in the workplace and build strong relationships. Being able to disagree with someone and still have a respectful relationship is a skill that every leader should have. You don’t have to be friends with everyone, but keep it professional and stay away from the office gossip.

#8: Build Trust

Strong leaders are trustworthy and often spend more time listening to their team than talking. Start laying the groundwork and building a reputation of trustworthiness now. Ask curious questions and follow up. If you have trouble remembering details, write things down and set reminders to check in with people. Trust will go a long way in building strong relationships.

#9: Drink the Kool-Aid

Yep, I said it. If you’re not already, get on-board with the company mission, vision, and values. Leaders want to hire managers who believe in the company and will work to help the company succeed. If you’re struggling here, getting into management at that company may not be the best choice, and it might be time to start updating your resume.

#10: Prepare for the Interview

Remember to interview for the position you want, not the job that you have been doing. If you’re serious about getting into management, interview like a manager. Get familiar with the company is looking for in a leader and preparing stories showcasing your experience in that light. If you’re looking for help practicing your interview skills, I’d be happy to help.

Interview Tip: How to be a STAR

The next time you find yourself in a behavioral interview, draw a little star across the top of your paper. No, I’m serious. STAR is my favorite acronym. It’s a formula for job applicants to use when they’re answering interview questions. STAR stands for Situation, Tasks, Actions & Results. It is well-known by Human Resources and hiring managers, but we’ve found that a lot of our clients haven’t heard of this interview tip before. Let’s break it down:

Situation

Anytime you are telling a story to someone; you have to give them a little bit of context, so they understand what’s going on. Imagine you’re telling your friend about an experience at a restaurant. If you dive into the conversation saying “The food was awesome, we had crab cakes and pasta.” Your friend is going to be caught pretty off guard. The same goes for an interview. The situation helps set the scene. Instead of jumping right into what you had for dinner, you should mention the restaurant name, when you went, who you were with and even a little bit of info on the restaurant.

It’s important to set the scene when answering interview questions, especially if you aren’t currently working at the company. Help the interviewers understand the circumstances surrounding your example and more context. Just recently I coached a client who was telling me about a story leading a team. The example was okay but not incredibly impressive. Once I started asking more questions, I learned his role, the team size, and the budget associated with it. These three things (Director, 150+ employees, and a lot of $) added significant weight to the example.

Tasks

The task is the assignment you are given. In most cases, the situation and task run pretty close together in your significant. In the restaurant example, the task becomes pretty simple, to eat food. However, maybe your friend wanted seafood, or you had to find a gluten-free restaurant that could accommodate dietary needs.

As an applicant, you want to be very clear and concise about what the assignment is. Share where the task came from (boss, owner, co-worker asking for help) and what it was. Explain the scale of the project – how big was the team, what was the timeline, what were some of the significant challenges that you needed to overcome. You want to help the interview panel understand the importance of the story.

Actions

The whole reason companies use behavioral interviews is that a person’s past behavior is a good indicator of how they will behave in a similar situation in the future. The actions in the STAR format are where you get to show the hiring manager that you are capable of handling workplace situations well.

Actions should be the bulk of your story. As a hiring manager, I want to hear about what YOU did. One of the biggest errors we see in interviews is people use “we” instead of I. While this is okay when you’re explaining to your friend about your dinner, “We ate crab cakes, pasta, and ice cream” it doesn’t play well during an interview. Instead, be very clear about your role and the process you took to solve the problem. Don’t get lost in the details and be specific about your role in each example. Hiring managers are looking to hear about your process and how you resolve the story.

Results

Results are where you get to shine. So many times people forget to discuss their results, and it hurts them in an interview. As a hiring manager, I try to ask probing questions in case the job applicant forgot, but usually, I won’t keep asking if they continue to leave out the results on more than one example.

The biggest interview tip on this topic is to avoid using a story that is currently in process. It’s incredibly hard to demonstrate results on a project that hasn’t finished, and hiring managers care about the results. They want to know if your actions were effective or not, and if not what you learned and how you would do it differently.

The next big thing to try to do is to quantify your results. A story is much stronger when you can prove it through numbers. Did sales go up by a certain percentage? Were you involved in increasing customer satisfaction? Did you reduce the number of hours it takes to perform the task? Sometimes it can be hard to put numbers to a story, especially if it’s been awhile since you were in the situation. Try your best to recall but don’t make the numbers up. Honesty is important, and hiring managers might use their networks to fact check your examples.

“What do you do if the outcome wasn’t good?” Proceed with caution. One example with a negative result isn’t necessarily going to hurt you in an interview. I only recommend using this type of story in a couple of situations.

You can explain that the adverse outcome was to no fault of your own
The question is about a time you failed/made a mistake etc
As a last resort, and you can’t come up with another example

In all of these situations, you need to be able to explain what you learned from the example and how you would do things differently.