Purchase Executive Interview Preparation Guide

This question is one of the most frequently asked questions. Where do you start? What do they really want to know? Are you to begin from elementary school or college? You have to be very careful on how you answer this question because your answer here sets the tone for the rest of the interview. This question is mostly asked as an icebreaker but if you did not prepare for it, it becomes a real problem.

The right approach to this is to discuss your key strengths and how they relate to the job. Talk about a few of your accomplishments. Talk about your current employer and then tell them how you see yourself fitting into a position at their company.

Whatever you say, your response must be measurable targets. Your interviewers are trying to size up what you truly bring to the table and it is better for you to offer quantifiable answers. A good response would be “Management basically has the responsibility to set goals and ensure that these goals are met. Building a strong team capable of withstanding any pressure, working with relevant data and ensuring that all deadlines are met. The company will always continue to grow under my supervision.”

The reason why you are asked this question is to hear what you consider difficult and how you approached the situation. Select a difficult work situation, which wasn’t caused by you and can be explained in a few sentences. You can then show yourself in a positive light by explaining how you handled the situation.

This is a good question for a lot of prospective employers to ask you at the start of the interview, as it allows them to weigh up your motivations. Obviously this question requires you to understand the job advert/spec inside and out, so have a good think about why you wanted to apply. There are lots of different reasons you could use; it could be that it was the company in particular or a specific aspect of the job description that you were interested in. That said; try not to use the salary as a reason, it just looks like you’re only in it for the money, which is never a good sign for a prospective employer.

"At X company I was responsible for creating and managing a budget of $. I have been doing it on a regular basis as a part of my job and I am pretty good at projections." This question clarifies your ability to handle scale and scope. If your experience in on smaller budgets, include how your models have the ability to scale.

A possible follow-up to above, but more specific.

Leadership comes with responsibility so an effective way to approach this question would be “ everyone that works with me is an extension of my effectiveness as a manager and as such, I will have a heart-to-heart with the employee in question however, if nothing changes and it starts to affect the company bottom line, well, that’s my responsibility as well”

Discuss your method of assigning responsibility to the best candidates. How you communicate with employees to make them understand what is expected of them and how you make sure that the employees have the resources needed to carry out specific tasks. You should also chip in your follow-up procedures.

Employers are asking this question to check your problem solving skills to improve the present situation and to check how much you are updated with the present market challenges.

So, a good answer probably, that as companies are challenged with finding ways to meet ever-rising customer expectations at a manageable cost. To do so, businesses must identify which parts of their supply chain process are not competitive, understand which customer needs are not being met, establish improvement goals, and rapidly implement necessary improvements.

This is a "core knowledge" question as purchasing from a single source has unique risks that need to be minimized. Answering this question is fairly easy if you have good amount of experience in this industry.
You can explain what method you use for determining if the price is fair or not and why you trust your method.