On this page, I explain the most important behavioral aspects you should pay attention to during your job interviews to evaluate if the hiring manager would be a good superior for you or not.
They fall into only two main categories: networking and job interviews. Before I get to them, I would like to address some basics.
You’re offered a job with a boss
It’s a fundamental mistake to treat your job interviews like the exams you had to take at college. In most exams, you only need to focus on presenting yourself best. You don’t have to worry much about the examiner as you are likely to never see the person again.
In job interviews, the situation is more demanding. Here, you must also present yourself best but at the same time you need to evaluate the person who is hiring. And not just a bit, this task requires structured preparation and execution to come to the right conclusion. If you neglect that, you may accept an exciting position later that comes with a very wrong superior turning the anticipated great job into the opposite.
When you decide to take the position, the number of job interviews you’ve had with your new boss before is just a fraction of the many further conversations you’re going to have with him or her in the future. If you don’t feel very comfortable with the person during the application phase already, don’t expect that to improve at a later stage.
The importance of networking
I have mentioned the importance of networking for a successful job search regarding many other aspects on other pages already, which is why I limit it here to the one relevant to this article’s topic.
If you learn about a vacancy by networking and use your network to obtain more crucial information about the company, the position, and the people connected with it than what is available publicly, your understanding of the social environment you’re considering joining including the personality of your potential future boss will be much more reliable than without it.
What to watch out for during your job interviews
If you manage to obtain the answers to the following questions during your job interviews, the decision about whether you want to work for this person or not should not be too difficult anymore.
The list does not claim to be complete but it certainly comprises the most important aspects.
Has your potential new boss prepared sufficiently for the meeting with you?
The degree of preparation tells a lot about his or her respect for you and the topics to be discussed. You can expect the same from the person in the future.
How is the boss treating others? How is the person approached by others?
Observe how your interview partner communicates with other employees of the company and how others approach them, especially outside the conference room, before and after the actual job interview. It will tell you a lot about the social atmosphere around the person in general. Check if you would feel comfortable in it every day later.
Is the boss asking you relevant questions?
Apart from their relation to the degree of preparation I already mentioned, the questions you receive during the interview allow you to perform another kind of evaluation.
The more the questions live up to your expectations, the more the two of you seem to share the same perspective on what’s important for a successful collaboration. In turn, if you find the questions rather irrelevant, you can expect frequent disagreements of opinion in the future as well.
How is the boss answering your questions?
The importance of this aspect goes beyond how much you like what you receive as an answer. Pay also attention to the wording and the whole communication style the answers are delivered in and check how comfortable you feel with it. Again, this will not change.
How are weaknesses being discussed?
Blunt questions about your personal weaknesses are usually a serious warning signal. They indicate a very patriarchal management attitude, which many people find unacceptable nowadays. Just imagine what would happen if you turned the question around and asked the hiring manager the same.
However, it depends a lot on why the question is raised and how the discussion of it is conducted. If the manager starts with talking about a specific weakness of his or hers in order to ensure employing someone who would be a balancing match in the team, the result of the evaluation would be the complete opposite.
How openly does the boss address remaining reservations?
It’s a good sign if the hiring manager addresses remaining reservations about one or the other aspect of your suitability openly toward the end of the job interview as this gives you the chance to refute them.
Should you leave the conversation with the impression that there is something the other side apparently refuses to address, you can expect to experience that time and time again as an employee of that person in the future.
Conclusion
As a matter of fact, conducting such an analysis of your potential new boss is no rocket science. If you prepare well for your job interviews and write down all the aspects you want to pay attention to during the conversation, all else you’ll have to do is enter it and attentively watch.
As a result, you’re not likely faced with a weird combination of positive and negative results concerning the individual points I mentioned above. The truth is much simpler. Good bosses are likely to pass most of the tests and the bad ones will fail in most of them. However, remember that bosses are human beings too and are allowed to be imperfect just like you and me.
*Disclaimer: OK, how to ALMOST always get a great boss
Finally, I would like to put the catchy title somewhat into perspective.
Of course, even if you try very hard to put all of the above into practice, there is always a residual risk that you miss a critical insight or you have no chance to discover it. Such is life and that shouldn’t stop you from doing whatever is possible.
Moreover, my tips are limited to situations where you actually have a choice, of course. If the great boss you’ve had resigns and his successor is the complete opposite, the only thing you can do is leave as well (and then get back to my tips again 🙂 ).