School Business Manager Interview

[TokenGinger]

Hello there,

I am just wondering if anybody has ever been through the interview process for a School Business Manager post, and if so, do you have any helpful tips or pointers on questions they might ask?

The interview is for a one form entry primary school, and the successful candidate will be managing the administration team and site management team too.

The process consists of:

Two tasks first thing in the morning
A presentation

If I pass those two, I'll move on to an interview in the afternoon.

Any idea on what the tasks may be? Or pointers on what legislation / policies etc. to study?

Many thanks in advance!

x

I just had a basic interview for my bursar/business manager role, but I would expect one of the tasks would be an inbox activity, the other is likely to be based around how you manage people.

For legislation, look at health and safety, or safeguarding, both are huge areas you'll need to be familiar with.

Good luck!

Brilliant! Thank you so much :) xx

Hi, I am just looking at a SBM role - how did you get on in your interview TokenGinger?

Hey!

I got on really well. Unfortunately, the successful candidate just so happened to be the school's Chair of Governors, and so I've learned that in future, I will ask whether they have somebody in mind for be post as I put a lot of time and effort in to it.

The process was as follows:

Three days prior to the interview, I was given a pack of league tables and had to produce a presentation based on what I believed the data suggested and from this, what areas I would like to explore further to ensure best use of school resources.

On the day of the interview, We had an hour to complete a task. The task was asking what areas you would look in to to set the school budget. Followed by three questions relating to salaries. It gave three different scenarios of members of staff requesting to make changes to their working hours and/or progressing through the pay scale and therefore the impact it would have on the budget in terms of pension payments, NI payments and total of payments made in salaries.

During this task, we were taken out for 10 minutes to give a presentation on our findings from the data packs.

The successful candidates (myself included) were taken through to the questions in the afternoon.

Oh wow that sounds very tricky to me!!! I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew!!! It's so unfair when they have somebody already in mind for a position when all the candidates go to so much time and trouble to prepare.

It probably sounds more intense than it seems when you read how I've typed in. Actually in the situation, I felt ok. And I've never worked in a school before - only been on school governing bodies.

I think as log as you have a good grasp of how to manage data, you're fine. A lot of the questions were common sense, I think. And I've spoken to a friend who's also a BSM and she said my process sounds very extreme and so I think it's slightly out of the ordinary x