Hr Manager Interview Questions Sample

INTERVIEW QUESTIONSTO ASK AN
APPLICANT FOR HR MANAGER
Created by Markus Biegel on behalf of Allied Protection Services, Inc.

INTRODUCTION
The questions included in this presentation where created for the purpose of
interviewing and hiring a new HR Manager for a security firm, Allied Protection
Services, Inc., that provides armed and unarmed security guards for various
protection needs.
This presentation only includes a small sample of the 100 Questions that were
created for the interviewing purpose. For some questions we have added
additional information.
The questions are not listed in any particular order.

PART 1: THE BASICS
We are starting the interview with some simple warm up questions that
allow the interviewee to get comfortable but at the same time already assess
important skills/experience relevant for the position of an HR Manager.

Employee Handbook:
What is your experience in writing and updating employee handbooks?
FIND OUT ABOUT CURRENT JOB OPENINGS AT WWW.ALLIEDPROTECTION.COM

Alternate Work Week Schedules:
What is your experience with alternative workweek schedules such
as 10hr or 12hr shifts?

Drug Testing:
What is your experience in Drug Testing employees? Can you speak
to some of the regulations concerning Drug Testing?

Union Experience:
What is your experience in working with Union employees?

Training Experience:
Can you tell us about your experience in administrating hands-on
training. What types of training are you most familiar with?

Professional Development:
Can you tell us how you have professionally developed the most in
the last few years?

Compliance Audit:
What is your experience in handling compliance audits? Which types
of audits have you previously been involved in and at what capacity?

Dysfunctional Teams:
Have you ever been part of a dysfunctional team? What did you do
as a team member or team leader to address this problem?

Corporate Responsibility Programs:
Can you tell us about your experience in creating and administering
Corporate Responsibility Programs?

HR Software:
What HR Software are you familiar with? Which one have you used
most recently?

Retention Strategies:
Have you ever worked for a company that has a high employee turnover?
What strategies have you used to increase employee retention?

Job Fairs:
What is your hands-on experience in using Job Fairs for recruitment
purposes? Do you believe this to be an effective recruiting method for
labor intensive industries?

Job Description:
What is your experience in writing Job Descriptions? For what type of
positions have you previously written Job Descriptions for?

HR Profession:
What do you like about human resources? Why do you want to be an
human resource professional?

Managerial Disagreement:
What do you do when you know you are right about something but
your boss disagrees with you? What would you do in this situation?

Team Player:
If someone asked you to do something outside of your job description,
what would you do?

PART 2: TESTING KNOWLEDGE
Now that the interviewee is warmed up we want to test some basic
knowledges about some of the laws and regulations affecting our industry.
A seasoned HR Professional should be able to answer all of these questions
without any difficulty.

Legal Counsel:
Can you tell us about your experience working with a legal counsel or
in-house legal team?
COMMENT: If someone lacks experience in working with a legal counsel then they simply
have not worked high enough in their organization to deal with this level of responsibility
or they certainly don’t have a background with labor intensive industries.

Changing Laws:
Laws and regulations affecting our industry change frequently, what
system do you have in place to stay informed on all those changes?
COMMENT: Staying in compliance in an ever-changing legal environment is a challenge.
There are various tools out there that help HR Managers/Directors ensure that their
operations stay within compliance.

Federal vs. State Laws:
If federal and state laws cover the same subject, which law must
the employer apply?
ANSWER: Whichever law is stricter, meaning the law that gives the employee greater
protection or benefit.

Employee Applications:
Are applicants entitled to receive a copy of their employment application?
ANSWER: Yes, employees and applicants are entitled to receive a copy of any
instrument they sing relating to the obtaining or holding of employment upon
request. Labor Code §432

Personnel File Access:
An employer must maintain personnel files for at least how many years
after an employee is terminated?
ANSWER: Three (3) Years. Labor Code §1198.5(c)(1)

Employee Access to Personnel File:
If an employee requests to receive a copy of their personnel file, how long
does the employer have to comply?
ANSWER: No later than 30 calendar days from the date the employer receives a
written request from the employee.

Credit Checks:
For the purpose of hiring armed and unarmed security guards, is it legal
for our company to perform credit checks to this category of employees?
ANSWER: No, Labor Code §1024.5 restricts employers from obtaining credit checks
on job applicants and employees in most circumstances.

Final Pay:
When must terminated employees be paid their final paycheck and
what does their final check include?
ANSWER: Employees must be paid their final paycheck at the time of termination.
Any accrued and unused vacation is considered earned wages and must also be paid
at the time of termination at the final rate of pay.

FMLA Job-Protected Leave:
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides certain employees
with up to how many week of unpaid, job-protected leave per year?
ANSWER: 12 weeks.

Living Wage Time Off:
According to the City of Los Angeles’ Living Wage Ordinance,
how much paid/unpaid time off are employees entitled to?
ANSWER: 12 Paid, 10 Unpaid Days Off

Workplace Safety:
California employment laws are enforced by several state agencies,
which agency enforces workplace safety issues?
ANSWER: Cal-OSHA

Discrimination Laws:
California employment laws are enforced by several state agencies,
which agency enforces discrimination laws?
ANSWER: Department of Fair Employment and Housing

Wage and Hour Laws:
Which agency in California enforces the wage and hour laws?
ANSWER: Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE)

Recovery Periods:
Can you tell us what the Cal-OSHA Recovery Period is and how often
employees are allowed to take them?
ANSWER: Defined as “a cool down period afforded to an employee to prevent heat
illness” and all employees who work outside must be allowed to take them
whenever they feel the need to do so to protect themselves from overheating.

Service Contractor Worker Retention Ordinance:
What can you tell us about the Service Contractor Worker Retention
Ordinance (SCWRO)?
ANSWER: The SCWRO requires successor contractors and its subcontractors to retain
for a 90-day period certain employees who worked for the terminated contractor or
its subcontractors for at least 12 months.

Sexual Harassment Supervisor Training:
Can you speak to the Sexual Harassment Training Requirements of
supervisors and newly hired or promoted supervisors?
ANSWER: Employers with 50 or more employees must provide at least two (2) hours of
sexual harassment training to all supervisors once every two (2) years. Newly hired or
promoted supervisors must be trained within six months of achieving their new position.

Age Discrimination:
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) protects individuals
at a certain age and over from discrimination in the workplace. What is
that age?
ANSWER: 40 and older.

ACA Fulltime Employee:
The ACA defines a fulltime employee as anyone who averages how
many work hours per week?
ANSWER: 30 or more hours per week.

Cognitive Ability Tests:
Can you describe what Cognitive Ability Tests are? What is your experience
in using Cognitive Ability Tests for the purpose of pre-screening employees?
ANSWER: Cognitive Ability Tests differentiate individuals based on their mental rather
than physical capacities. They include 1) verbal comprehension, 2) quantitative ability,
and 3) reasoning ability.

PART 3: TESTING EXPERIENCE
This is the most challenging part of the interview. This is where we separate
the good from the great by asking very specific situational questions that will
quickly allow us to assess how this interviewee thinks and what their real
level of experience is.

Hiring on Scale:
If you were required to meet a critical deadline in which we need to hire 30
security guards in 10 business days, how would you go about it?

Employee Referrals:
If you were to implement a recruiting strategy that is based on leveraging
employee referrals how would you go about it?

Case Law:
What is your familiarity with case law related to our industry? Could
you state a few that you are familiar with?

Mandatory Arbitration Agreements:
What is your experience with mandatory arbitration agreements? Can
you speak about the requirements that have to be met to make these
enforceable?

Improve Drug Screen Rates:
Let’s assume an unusual high amount of applicants are not passing their
Drug Screen Test, what would you change in the application process to
improve the Drug Screen Passing Rate?

Exit Interview Turnaround:
An employee wants to quit. This individual has been a great asset to the
company and the company does not really want to lose this employee.
During the Exit Interview what would you tell this employee to maybe
change their mind?

Cost Reduction Efforts:
What is your experience in implementing cost reduction efforts
whether HR related or otherwise?

HR Operations Alignment:
Can you tell me about a time when HR Operations needed alignment
with company goals and objectives. How did you handle the
situation?

Sleeping Employee:
An employee fell asleep on his post which based on company policy is
subject to disciplinary action including termination. Terminating this
particular employee would leave us short-staffed and incur significant
overtime. What would you do in this situation?

Measureable Performance:
Can you tell us about an experience where you had to be a consultant
to a line manager to help them implement measureable performance
objective.

HR Website:
What is your experience in leveraging a website to accomplish HR
goals? Can you list examples of how a website could be utilized in
that capacity?

Employee Morale:
What factors do you determine most important in either keeping
up or improving employee morale?

Company Culture Evaluation:
If you were tasked with the job to do a Company Culture Evaluation
how would you go about it?

Coaching Employees:
What experience do you have in coaching employees? Can you tell
us about a time when you had to coach an employee who had
performance problems?

Speeding Ticket:
If an employee using a company vehicle receives a speeding ticket,
who pays for the speeding ticket? What other action would you take?

Labor Forecasting:
How would you go about forecasting labor demand and labor supply?

Client Satisfaction:
Given what you know about our business and industry, what do you
believe to be the most important factors for client satisfaction? And
what do you believe our clients complain most about?

Admitting Mistakes:
Can you tell us about a situation you wish that you had handled
differently based on the outcome. What would you do differently
if faced with a similar situation again?

HR Role:
Giving your experience, how would you say has the HR role in
companies changed over the years?

Career Goals:
Where do you see yourself professionally in 5 years?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Markus Biegel is an entrepreneur and small business consultant specialized
in providing management consulting services to business owners and CEOs.
He is an active advisor to many startups, sits on several nonprofit boards and
is a City Commissioner in Carson, California.
Markus holds two Bachelor degrees in International Business and Marketing
and two MBAs in Human Resource Management and Finance.
For more information about the author please visit www.MarkusBiegel.com
For more information about Allied Protection Services, Inc. please visit www.AlliedProtection.com

Hr Manager Interview Questions Sample

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