Management Interview Advice

[ultimatebob]

I have an interview with my senior personnel manager tomorrow, and I'm not sure what to talk to her about.

Here's some background, just so you understand my situation:

Two years ago, I had an interview with this exact same manager. When she asked me about my concerns, I told her that:

1) I was unhappy about how slowly my career was progressing. I had been with the company for 4 1/2 years at this point, and I'm still doing the same system administration job since I was hired.

2) No one on our team was receiving proper training on new products, which was making our job more difficult to perform.

It's now two years later, and I STILL haven't received a promotion. I was given plenty more work to do, but none of my old work has been transferred to people who can do it properly. I also never got much of the training that I was promised.

That said, here's the question... What should I talk about while I'm being interviewed by this person? Perhaps I'm being cynical (6 1/2 years of IT support will do that to someone!), but it seems that she has no real interest in helping my career progress. She's probably just talking to me in order to meet a quota to make her boss happy.

Is there anything that I can say that will leave an impact and potentially cause some change, WITHOUT making her angry and impacting what little chance I have at career advancement? Should I just ask her some "softball" questions in order to make the interview as painless as possible? What would you do in this situation?

Cliffs

Have a meeting with my bosses's boss.
Had a meeting with her two years ago, everything I told her was basically ignored
What can I tell her so she actually takes some action, or should I even bother trying?

 

[spidey07]

"I've taken on more and more responsibility with no promotion"
"What exactly can I do to advance? Specific examples with targetable goals and measurable results please in terms of advancement."
"I believe my training of Joe and Jane to lift them up recognizes my leadership ability and willingness to move to the next level."
"I don't believe length of service is worthy of promotion, however I have stepped up to the plate and consistently delivered. I am actively gunning for a promotion for going above and beyond and I expect one. That's how it works."

In short boss, show me the path or I walk.

 

[newnameman]

Originally posted by: spidey07
"I've taken on more and more responsibility with no promotion"
"What exactly can I do to advance? Specific examples with targetable goals and measurable results please in terms of advancement."
"I believe my training of Joe and Jane to lift them up recognizes my leadership ability and willingness to move to the next level."
"I don't believe length of service is worthy of promotion, however I have stepped up to the plate and consistently delivered. I am actively gunning for a promotion for going above and beyond and I expect one. That's how it works."

In short boss, show me the path or I walk.

:thumbsup:

 

[Xenon14]

If you are interviewing for a management role in a company you're working for, then bring your ideas to the interview. You obviously see problems with the way things are run currently, so come up with solutions and a rough plan to implement them. You should address both the actual work-related problems, such as training, and worker satisfaction problems (ie, advancement etc... and how that could hurt the company and productivity). Talk about what you would do about it.. incentive programs, promotions etc.

Essentially, address your concerns and then provide your solutions. If you don't get the position, I recommend you exercise some testicular fortitude and get another job.

 

[Xstatic1]

i hope u get around to reading this b4 your interview tomorrow:

* do you have a copy of your job description (the one when u were first hired)? it's OK if you don't, but go into the mtg with a list of all the new responsibilities/duties you've taken on over the past 2 years. if you're working more hours because of these new duties, notate the amount of time it takes you either per day or week next to that new duty. i'm about to make stuff up (so if i'm way off-base you'll know why) to use as examples:

New Responsibilities/Duties I've undertaken since x/x/xx:
- creating new computer IDs - 1 hour/daily
- backing-up network - 3 hrs/daily
- installing new custom software for X dept or 15 people, including brief training (installation to be entirely completed by X date) - 2 hrs/daily
- attend weekly meetings - 3 hrs/weekly


* the 2nd part of this document, have the proposed duties you think should be transferred to other people but don't put specific names of the people u have in mind (unless you absolutely have to), but their titles, so like if your title is Network/System Administrator 3 and wanna pass some stuff to the newbies or people whose computer skills aren't quite at your level, then:

Duties that can be handled by other IT members:
- Duty #1 - can be handled by a System Administrator 1 or 2 position
- Duty #2 - can be handled by a System Administrator 2 position

* the 3rd section of your document should be classified Training. basically you'll want to list all the software/hardware that you think needs training by the IT team and how the rest of the company relies on you folks for the answers. #s are the key here, so if you think you get x phone calls about a specific software on a weekly basis, put that down. if you think you're actually having to give more individualized training on a software, put how many hours you're doing that. sometimes companies are too cheap in letting ppl get training, so you want to justify as much as you possibly can why it would be beneficial for the IT team to receive it and how it would positively impact the company. it's always a stupid #s game, management always looks at it like if we spend X amount on training this person or dept, how can the company recoup that expense or how can other employees tap into that knowledge that this individual now has from that all training.

with you having something in writing, you're basically letting this Sr Personnel Mgr know you've given everything on that document considerable thought, but mostly that you have solutions to make the IT dept run more effectively. you mentioned promotion (which usually means a title change & a raise). the more responsibilities/duties you list in the 1st section &/or you being a key go-to person by other department managers will really give weight to your request for a raise. the slight problem i see is that if you wanna pass off some of your old responsibilities to the newbies/less knowledgable IT peers, it may negate/nullify your raise. I REALLY WISH I HAD READ YOUR THREAD EARLIER so i could have asked you stuff and we could have figured it out how to approach it. the other thing i can think of is if you can somehow get a hold of a job description that more or less describes the stuff you're doing (even if it's on an internet job board that lists the salary range), you want to bring that with you to the interview/mtg as well. one last thing, if you think the Personnel Mgr may drop the ball in doing anything with your document, let her know at the end of the mtg that you want it added to your personnel file and sign & date it. make sure you ask for a copy of it (yes a copy with your signature & date). hope most of this made sense.