Master 30 Social Service Manager interview questions covering program oversight, crisis intervention, and community partnerships.
Question 14 of 30
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Shelley Story is a coach and higher education administrator with 25 years of experience. She has designed multi-day, on-site interview processes and has conducted thousands of interviews and mock interviews with college students and recent grads.
The interviewer wants to know how you will approach new responsibilities in a new organization with new coworkers. Do you have strong ideas that you want to implement right away, or are you more likely to observe for some time to learn the norms of the organization?

Shelley Story is a coach and higher education administrator with 25 years of experience. She has designed multi-day, on-site interview processes and has conducted thousands of interviews and mock interviews with college students and recent grads.
While you may have a typical style when taking on a new role, don't answer this question in a way that makes you sound too rigid or inflexible. Your interviewer has knowledge of the organization's culture and history that you probably don't have. If you give a very specific answer, the interviewer can imagine your response in a concrete and specific setting and may imagine that it wouldn't work. Leave enough flexibility to show that you can adapt to the organization's current norms, even if they eventually need to change.

Shelley Story is a coach and higher education administrator with 25 years of experience. She has designed multi-day, on-site interview processes and has conducted thousands of interviews and mock interviews with college students and recent grads.
"While I have examples of strategies that have worked well in my past roles, I know that every organization is different and that the people who work there help determine how things have gone and how they will go. I would spend at least the first few weeks listening and observing as much as possible to get a good understanding of the status quo. I would also hold individual meetings with members of my team to hear their perspectives on what's going well and what could be better."

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Written by Shelley Story
30 Questions & Answers • Social Service Manager

By Shelley

By Shelley