127 Brand Management Interview Questions
December 8th, 2012 by lewis
SEE ALSO: Brand Management Interview Questions and Answers
Whether you’re interview with Procter & Gamble, Kraft, or Clorox, the top brand management companies have similar interview processes and questions. To help you get prepared, here’s a list of 127 brand management interview questions. We also have a course on preparing for brand management interviews.
Most Frequently Asked Questions
- What are your goals (short, medium, and long term)? How does our firm fit in with those goals?
- Why did you choose to attend your school? What are your concentrations? Why did you choose them? What have you learned so far?
- Why are you interested in marketing? What do you know about marketing? How are you currently preparing for a career in marketing? How do you know you will excel at it?
- Why are you interested in our organization? What do you know about our organization?
- What would you contribute to our organization? What unique skills and experiences can you bring to us? Why should we hire you?
- What personal or professional qualities are you proudest of? How have they helped you achieve your goals?
- Discuss your career progress to date. How do you feel about it?
- In your most recent position, what were your most significant accomplishments? What skills did you employ to arrive at those goals?
- Describe one or two of your most important personal accomplishments. Discuss the hurdles that made them challenging.
- How do your co-workers describe you? Members of your study groups at school? Your friends?
- How would you add to the diversity of our organization?
- Tell me about a time when you were most satisfied in your work. What were you doing? What was the most satisfying?
Communication and Persuasion
- Discuss examples of situations when you had to persuade a person of a different point of view to agree with you on an issue.
- What are some of the best ideas you ever sold to a superior or peer? What were your approaches?
- Describe a time when you had to use several approaches because your initial approach failed to persuade others.
- Describe your most satisfying experience in attempting to gain upper management’s support of an idea or proposal. What was the situation, and how did that turn out?
- What oral presentations have you made? What were the most successful? Why?
- Have you ever done any public speaking? Tell me about one of these events.
- Give an example of when you made a presentation to an uninterested or hostile audience.
- What are examples of the most difficult writing assignments you’ve ever had? Why?
- Describe a time when you had to convince someone, who didn’t directly report to you, to do something they didn’t want to do.
- Please compare your verbal communication skills to your writing skills. Which skill has most strongly enhanced your career progress? Why? What are specific strengths and weaknesses of your verbal and written skills?
Integrity
- Describe an ethical dilemma which you had to face during your career. How did you resolve the issue?
- Describe your character.
- Have you ever been involved in a situation in which a co-worker showed dishonesty on the job? If so, how did you deal with that situation?
- Sometimes strict company rules make it very difficult to get our work done. Can you think of a time when you had to bend a rule to get your work done more efficiently?
- Have you ever been asked to do something that you didn’t think was right? What did you do?
- Have you ever been in a meeting when your boss said something to make him/her or you “look good” and you thought the statement was inaccurate? What did you do?
The Organization
- What are our brands or services?
- What have you learned about our organization?
- What have you learned about our organization?
- What have you heard about our organization that concerned you?
- What’s the most important thing you would look for in an employer?
- How did you structure your research about our organization?
- What was your first impression about our company?
- What did you think of our corporate presentation?
Innovation/Creativity
- What ideas have you developed that were creative or innovative?
- It’s difficult to develop new ideas every day, so sometimes it’s important to combine existing ideas creatively to seize a new opportunity. Tell me about a time when you did this successfully.
- Sell me this pen.
- Describe a situation in which you worked with others to develop a unique and resourceful solution to a difficult problem. What was your role?
- Tell me about a time when your standard approach to problem solving didn’t produce the desired solution. What did you do?
- In your last job, what did you do different from your predecessors? Why?
- How important is creativity in your personal life? How do you express this?
- Did you express any new ideas to your boss in the last 6 months of work? What were these ideas and how did your boss respond to them?
- We all know that some problems just don’t have a solution. Tell me about a problem you tried to solve but couldn’t. What solutions did you try? How did you come up with these solutions.
Business Analysis
- Discuss a project which best demonstrates your analytical skills.
- Describe a complicated business analysis issue you have had to deal with on your job or at school, how did you identify or gain a better understanding of the problem?
- Which type of thinking is more important in marketing – analytical or creative thinking? Why?
- Describe a situation in which you identified key problems early on in a project and were able to avert a crisis.
- Describe the steps involved in analyzing a brand’s share declines. Why is each step important?
- Walk me through a situation in which you had to research and analyze the results for one of your projects.
- We’ve all had occasions when we were asked for ideas in solving work issues in which we didn’t have much knowledge or experience. What have you done when this has happened?
- Tell me about a time when you had to analyze or interpret numerical or financial information.
- Describe a project, situation or assignment that challenged your business analysis skills. How did you handle the situation?
- What information did you use in choosing your school? And how did you decide to eventually go to that school?
“Marketing” Questions
- What is the best commercial you’ve seen in the last few months and why do believe that is effective?
- Briefly describe a marketing plan for yourself.
- Name some of the most recent new products launched by a consumer products company in the last 6 months? Which of these impressed you? Why? Do you believe that they will be successful in the marketplace?
- Let’s pretend that today is your first day at work as a brand manager on Brand X. What are the 10 most important questions you would ask to find out most about the brand?
- If you had your choice among all the brands/products in the United States, which would you want to market? Why? Which would you not want to market? Why?
Leadership
- Describe a situation in which you had a conflict with another person in a corporate or school setting, and how you resolved it.
- Everyone has some development opportunities within his/her leadership style. What are yours? What have you done to overcome them?
- Accomplishing team goals requires that all team members fulfill their responsibilities. Tell me about a situation in which you have helped to clarify team members’ roles and responsibilities.
- Discuss some situations in which you successfully supervised a diverse group of people towards a difficult goal. What skills did you employ in supervising them? What did you learn?
- How would your subordinates describe you as a leader? How would they describe your weaknesses?
- Describe your leadership style. Do you believe in giving others a free rein, or do you prefer close supervision?
- Describe a situation in which you had to lead a group towards a goal despite difficult opposition from others.
- Sometimes team get off track when working toward a specific project or goal. Describe a time when this happened and you had great difficulty in getting your team back on track. What did you do?
- Describe a situation in which you had to provide constructive feedback to a co-worker or team member.
- Have you held leadership roles in extracurricular activities? How did you lead? Give me an example.
- Team members don’t always agree about how to get things done. Tell me about a situation in which you had to resolve disagreements among team members. What did you do?
- All of us have been in situations where we assigned work to other people and they didn’t follow through. Can you tell me about one of these? Why did it happen? What did you learn from that experience?
- There are many obstacles that can prevent a team from accomplishing its goals. Describe a time when you were able to remove obstacles so your team could achieve a goal.
- Think of a time when you had a major role in developing a team that became very successful. What did you do to contribute to the team success?
- When have you inspired someone to work hard to do a better job? How did you do that?
Teamwork
- Are you a team leader or follower? Give me examples of your teamwork style.
- Discuss examples of how you effectively dealt with difficult individuals in your workplace.
- Tell me about a time you were on a team and had to involve other team members in decisions and actions. What was your approach?
- Discuss an incident at work where you were angry at someone or at a situation. How did you handle it?
- Describe a situation in which you were able to build team spirit during a time of low morale.
- When making decisions, how much consideration do you give the needs/feelings of team members? Give examples.
- Describe a situation in which other team members views conflicted with your own views. What did you do?
- Describe a time when you intervened to get your team back on track because they couldn’t resolve or decide on an issue.
- Describe a situation in which you wished you’d acted differently with someone in your work group. What happened?
- Tell me about a time when you worked with someone who wasn’t as cooperative as you needed him/her to be. What did you do?
- Have you ever had difficulty in getting along with co-workers? How did you handle the situation?
- Tell me about some of the toughest groups with which you’ve had to work. What made the group tough? What did you do?
- Describe the most effective techniques you’ve used to encourage team members to contribute their talents to the team’s function or goal. Give me a specific example of a time when you used one of these techniques.
- Have you ever been in a group with an unproductive person? How did you handle the situation?
And Finally, Some General Questions
- What do you do in your free time?
- What has been the most useful criticism you have ever received?
- Describe the biggest crisis in your life or your career.
- What is your biggest disappointment in life?
- What is your greatest weakness?
- What motivates you best?
- What kind of boss gets the best work out of you?
- Do you feel that your grades at school accurately reflect your abilities?
- How well do you take criticism? What’s the most painful criticism you have ever received?
- School can be stressful. What aspect of school is most stressful for you? Why? How do you respond?
- Tell me about your most spectacular failure.
- Tell me about a time when you weren’t very pleased with your performance.
- What are the highest-pressure situations you have been under in recent years? How did you cope with them?
The Strangest Interview Questions
- “Let’s say I’m an anthropologist. How would you explain the importance of brand management to me?”
- “Everyone lies on their resume. Where on your resume did you lie? Come on, there must be something!”
- “Which continent would you like to be and why?”
- “How would you plot brand management companies on a perceptual map?”
- “Give me three reasons why we should NOT hire you. Then, give me three reasons why we should hire the person who’s interviewing AFTER you.”
- “Is money important to you?”
- “What were your favorite cartoons as a child? How did they shape your character?”
- “How would you react if we fired you after a week on the job?”
- “Wow, I really like your shoes. can you take one off and show me what the lining is made of?”
- “What were you thinking when you were sitting outside waiting of me to call you into my office for this interview?”
- If you were a piece of art, what kind of art would you be?
- “I believe that an occasional demonstration of anger on the job is healthy. how do you choose to express anger at work?”
“Okay, tell me the truth. The fact is, you don’t really want this job, do you?”
Smart Questions to Ask of the Interviewer
- What is the one thing you would change about the company you work for today?
- What is your biggest disappointment with this company?
- What distinguishes your organization from the other packaged good companies?
- Is your organization growing in just a few areas, or just a few select categories?
- What would you do differently if you were going through the recruitment process out of school again?
- Among your company’s marketing managers, what is the balance between internally developed and outside hires?
- In two years, with a good track record, where do you see me in the company?
- Describe the training process and the skills the company wants every manager to have. Is there a process in place to ensure that these skills are taught? How often is that process reviewed?
- What unexpected things have happened to you here at this company?
- Why did you decide to join this company? Have your expectations been met? Why or why not?
- Tell me about a typical day here.
- What is the most exciting thing about your job?
Source: SC Johnson Brand Management Interview Guide