Hiring the right manager for your agricultural team can be difficult. You want a candidate with the right mix of hard and soft skills to thrive in the role. The following examples can provide guidance for the types of questions that may uncover the valuable insight you are looking for from each candidate.

Choose among these 10 questions when interviewing a manager for your agricultural team.

1. How do you describe your management style?

Look for specific actions a candidate takes to guide their employees and concrete examples of their results. Determine whether this style would be appropriate for your team.

2. What are some ways you motivate your team?

Look for specific examples of how a candidate provided motivation and what the results were. This is necessary to maintain engagement and reach objectives.

3. Can you tell me about a time when you had to manage a difficult employee?

Look for a candidate who uses active listening and conflict resolution to increase productivity. These are characteristics you want in a manager.

4. What are some ways you measure success?

Find a candidate who effectively helps their employees create and reach goals and determine their level of success. The candidate should be able to do the same for your organization.

5. How do you delegate tasks?

Find out how a candidate identifies which team member is best suited for a task. Uncover how they recognize their employees’ talents and assign responsibilities in line with their strengths. You need a strategy like this to support your team’s learning and development.

6. What is your method for handling conflict among team members?

Listen for concrete ways they handled a disagreement and worked with their team members to find a solution. This keeps the team moving forward.

7. Which digital tools and technologies are you most familiar with?  

You want a candidate who is comfortable learning and using current technology to oversee their employees. This helps increase employee engagement, productivity, and retention.

8. What would you say your company culture is like?

Find out what a candidate’s current organization’s mission, vision, and values are and how the candidate demonstrates them. The more similarities you uncover with your own culture, the better leader the candidate may be.

9. Can you tell me about a time when you had to achieve a major objective under a tight deadline?

Uncover how a candidate overcame challenges to attain the desired outcome and how they measured their success. This shows the candidate’s ability to manage, allocate, and leverage resources and stay flexible while handling stressful experiences.

10. What has been one of the most gratifying milestones of your career?

Determine what motivates a candidate and provides a sense of growth and satisfaction. Use this information to assess whether they would sustain satisfaction in the environment they would be working in.

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