Special Offer 

Jumpstart your hiring with a $75 credit to sponsor your first job.*

Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed with Urgently Hiring make a hire 5 days faster than non-sponsored jobs.**
  • Visibility for hard-to-fill roles through branding and urgently hiring
  • Instantly source candidates through matching to expedite your hiring
  • Access skilled candidates to cut down on mismatched hires

Business Operations Manager Interview Questions

Our mission

Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

Read our editorial guidelines
7 min read

A Business Operations Manager helps streamline internal processes, improve efficiency and support cross-functional execution. Their responsibilities often include managing budgets, evaluating systems and workflows, improving operational tools and identifying opportunities for cost savings or performance gains. Strong Business Operations Manager interview questions should assess a candidate’s ability to solve practical issues, manage competing priorities, work across teams and improve tools and workflows. In Indeed’s guide to interviewing Business Operations Managers, these questions can help you evaluate candidates who can improve operations while cutting costs.

  1. Can you walk me through a time you improved a business process that affected costs or performance? See answer
  2. How do you manage competing requests from different departments when resources are limited? See answer
  3. What operational metrics have you used to measure team performance? See answer
  4. Have you ever led a systems implementation? What part of the process did you manage? See answer
  5. Can you give an example of a time you spotted an issue that wasn’t being reported? See answer
  6. How do you help teams work together when their systems or goals don’t align? See answer
  7. What tools have you used to improve operations or reporting? See answer
  8. Tell me about a time you helped a team reach a goal without adding staff or increasing the budget. See answer
  9. How do you decide whether to fix, replace or remove a broken process? See answer
  10. What steps do you take to prepare a team for a major change? See answer
Show more questions Show fewer questions

Hire your next Business Operations Manager today.

Post a job

Hire your next Business Operations Manager today.

Post a job
Our mission

Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

Read our editorial guidelines
Create a Culture of Innovation
Download our free step-by-step guide for encouraging healthy risk-taking
Get the Guide

10 Business Operations Manager Interview Questions and Answers

Can you walk me through a time you improved a business process that affected costs or performance?

This question evaluates whether the candidate can identify opportunities for improvement and take practical steps to improve them. You’ll learn how they think about processes in terms of impact, not just function, and whether they can connect internal workflow changes to measurable business outcomes. It also highlights their ability to work with cross-functional teams to reduce costs or improve results. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Process improvement supported by internal feedback or system data
  • A clear link between changes and performance outcomes
  • Willingness to build collaboration across departments
Example:

“We were losing time during client onboarding due to repeated document requests and unclear internal steps. I reviewed the process from end to end, brought in feedback from our CS and compliance teams and built a shared intake tracker. We also introduced a checklist that reduced back-and-forth by nearly 40 percent and helped new hires ramp faster.”

How do you manage competing requests from different departments when resources are limited?

This question helps you understand how the candidate makes operational decisions under pressure. Business Operations Managers often juggle conflicting priorities, and their ability to assess trade-offs, communicate clearly and stay focused on overall business value is critical. Strong candidates use structured decision-making and support alignment rather than defaulting to urgency or volume. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Use of frameworks or scoring methods to evaluate priorities
  • Engagement with collaborators to gather context
  • Focus on business impact over individual department demands
Example:

“I usually apply a scoring model that considers business impact, urgency and risk. When sales and engineering both submitted requests for operations support, I gathered input on timelines and dependencies. We prioritized the sales project tied to a renewal deadline and scheduled the other for the following sprint so both teams could plan with clarity.”

What operational metrics have you used to measure team performance?

This question explores whether the candidate understands how to track operational health beyond top-line output. A strong Business Operations Manager should know how to select metrics that reflect quality, consistency and throughput while also enabling coaching or resource planning. Their answer should show fluency with both quantitative reporting and its real-world application. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Familiarity with process-level performance indicators
  • Ability to communicate and act on data insights
  • Use of metrics to drive accountability and improvement
Example:

“I’ve used cycle time, rework rate and throughput to evaluate internal teams. In logistics, we tracked pick accuracy and fulfillment time to spot delays. I also built a monthly dashboard showing SLA adherence, which helped department leads adjust staffing with confidence.”

Have you ever led a systems implementation? What part of the process did you manage?

This question assesses a candidate’s ability to lead or support operational change through technology. Systems implementations often require strong planning, communication and change management and a qualified candidate should be comfortable working across technical and non-technical collaborators. Their answer should reflect practical engagement before, during and after rollout. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Involvement in requirements gathering, testing or training
  • Attention to adoption and impact across departments
  • Willingness to manage follow-through beyond launch
Example:

“I helped lead our CRM migration as the operations representative. I worked with team leads to define user requirements, tested custom workflows and coordinated training. During pilot testing, we caught a permissions issue that delayed lead routing and corrected it before going live.”

Can you give an example of a time you spotted an issue that wasn’t being reported?

This question helps assess a candidate’s initiative and problem-solving instincts. Business Operations Managers often surface problems that don’t show up in formal reports or metrics, and the ability to spot those early is a key asset. Check for signs that the candidate relies on data, feedback or observation to detect risks before they escalate. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Regular review of operations reports and workflows
  • Curiosity about edge cases or inconsistencies
  • Confidence taking action to resolve hidden issues
Example:

“Customer complaints about shipping delays were rising, but our warehouse metrics seemed normal. I reviewed inventory movements and found a barcode scanner miscalibration that led to miscounts. I worked with the warehouse manager to fix the scanner and added a quarterly hardware check to prevent it from recurring.”

How do you help teams work together when their systems or goals don’t align?

This question evaluates a candidate’s ability to build alignment across teams with different priorities or tools. Business Operations Managers often bridge gaps between siloed departments, and their ability to create clarity, consistency and cooperation is essential. Check for responses that focus on lasting solutions and shared visibility. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Development of shared workflows or definitions
  • Use of tools or processes that simplify coordination
  • Focus on making collaboration easier, not just possible
Example:

“Our support and product teams both tracked feature requests, but used different formats. I facilitated a quick working session to agree on shared categories and connected their tools with a simple sync. We also created a shared weekly digest, which reduced duplicates and improved roadmap planning.”

What tools have you used to improve operations or reporting?

This question helps you evaluate how the candidate leverages tools to drive efficiency, visibility or consistency. Strong Business Operations Managers use technology to reduce complexity and improve access to critical information. Check for responses that balance practicality with creativity and show value without overengineering. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Familiarity with platforms like Airtable, Excel or Power BI
  • Ability to build or adapt systems to meet operational needs
  • Focus on making tools usable and accessible across teams
Example:

“I’ve used Airtable and Power BI to create dashboards and workflow trackers for vendor management and intake processes. I also built a shared request form that fed directly into a tracker with status updates and due dates, which replaced an old email chain and improved transparency for the whole team.”

Tell me about a time you helped a team reach a goal without adding staff or increasing the budget.

This question explores whether the candidate can improve team performance through process improvements rather than additional resources. Business Operations Managers should know how to reallocate effort, remove blockers and use simple adjustments to unlock capacity. Their answer should reflect sustainable changes, not temporary fixes. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Process or tool improvements that saved time or reduced workload
  • Strategic task distribution or automation
  • Long-term impact without burnout
Example:

“Our legal ops team was falling behind on contract renewals, but we couldn’t increase headcount. I set up a shared calendar that flagged renewals 30 days out and rotated weekly reviews across admins. That change spread the work more evenly and helped us stay on schedule within two weeks.”

How do you decide whether to fix, replace or remove a broken process?

This question helps you understand how the candidate makes high-leverage decisions about legacy workflows. Business Operations Managers often deal with outdated systems or redundant steps, and their ability to evaluate process value and propose changes thoughtfully is critical. Strong candidates balance efficiency with feasibility. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Structured decision-making based on frequency, value and impact
  • Willingness to retire ineffective systems
  • Involvement of key users or data in the review process
Example:

“I start by asking how often the process is used and who relies on it. If it’s broken repeatedly or slows people down, I dig into the root cause and gather input from users. In one case, we eliminated a manual report that was duplicated elsewhere and freed up hours per week for the team.”

What steps do you take to prepare a team for a major change?

This question reveals whether the candidate can guide people through transitions in systems, structure or strategy. Change management is part of every Business Operations role, and success often depends on how clearly you communicate and support the shift. Check for responses that highlight planning, transparency and follow-through. Evaluate responses that demonstrate:

  • Clear, early communication about what’s changing and why
  • Tools and check-ins that support adoption
  • Continuous support after the change is launched
Example:

“When we rolled out a new task management system, I shared a short overview deck and offered live demos during team meetings. I also created a Slack channel for questions and hosted weekly check-ins for the first month. That kept the rollout on track and helped teams stay engaged.”

Create a Culture of Innovation
Download our free step-by-step guide for encouraging healthy risk-taking
Get the Guide

A group of five people in a modern office setting, two of them appear to be giving a presentation while the other two are seated at a wooden conference table with laptops and a coffee cup in front of them. They all seem engaged in a discussion. The room has a bright atmosphere with natural light streaming in from the side window.

Hire your next Business Operations Manager today.

Post a job

Explore Interview Questions by Title & Skill

No search results found