Help!

[Hoping4Mgmt]

Ok, I have an interview for management of a call center on Friday. I KNOW I can do a good job as a Call Center Manager. This particular call center has around 3,000 employees. We're in the US. It's a very high stress call center. I am interviewing for assistant manager, which is the lowest level manager, I would have a team of anywhere between 18 and 30 reps. As I said, I know I would be good at this job, but when I get in an interview, I freeze up and my mind goes blank. I've been through round 1 of the interviews and now it's the second and final round. There are two positions open and only three people got a second interview.

Any advice? Any stellar ideas that you've practiced that made your call center great? Anything to stay away from during the interview? What do you look for when you interview?

Any and all advice will be very appreciated!

[NBosch]

Originally Posted by Hoping4Mgmt

Ok, I have an interview for management of a call center on Friday. I KNOW I can do a good job as a Call Center Manager. This particular call center has around 3,000 employees. We're in the US. It's a very high stress call center. I am interviewing for assistant manager, which is the lowest level manager, I would have a team of anywhere between 18 and 30 reps. As I said, I know I would be good at this job, but when I get in an interview, I freeze up and my mind goes blank. I've been through round 1 of the interviews and now it's the second and final round. There are two positions open and only three people got a second interview.

Any advice? Any stellar ideas that you've practiced that made your call center great? Anything to stay away from during the interview? What do you look for when you interview?

Any and all advice will be very appreciated!

Well... first of all: Goodluck with your interview.

Now.. to the preparations. There is a wonderfull book out there, that I always use as a guide to finetune when I go for an interview, called "Interviewing with confidence" by Jeanne Knight.

Second. Since you will be going for a second round, you will most likely get 2 kinds of questions:
1. Situations and experiences from the past. Prepare some outspoken ones and be able to answer the following questions:
- What was the situation ?
- What did you do to resolve it ?
- How did you reach this solution ?
- What did you learn from it ?
- What will you do different next time ?

2. Situations that you will encounter when you get the role.
For instance, if your call centre has an issue resolving arround customer satisfaction, they will want to hear from you how you are going to deal with that, what you will do to improve it etc.
Be aware of any attention points in your specific centre and prepare management strategies to deal with these issues.

Since you made it to the 2nd round, I am not going to emphasize how important "professional" looks and attitude are.

Well... go get them !