As a program manager, one of the roles you play is to put together the best team to help you lead your program to success.
Programs with virtual training components have unique needs: they are both instructive and technological. This requires an elearning pro who has a mix of adult learning principles and also managing and communicating online.
[Related How to Build The Best Online Training Team]
Technical skills are relatively easy to assess on a resume. So when you post your job, make sure you ask important questions about experience with learning management systems, training technology or other technical questions unique to your setup. Check with your IT team for suggestions.
But if you want to make sure you have the right person to do things like assemble a training schedule, handle online conflict and coax the best out of people over a computer, start with these questions when you’re hiring a remote training admin.
Good Interview Questions
What kind of training format do you prefer: self-paced, instructor-led online or webinar? Why?
What ages of learners have you worked with?
What hurdles do you expect when you schedule a training program?
How do you handle conflict among learners?
Explain a time when you had conflict with a coworker.
What’s your response if someone shares private health data?
What do you spend the most time doing each day? Week? Month?
How do you keep up on remote training trends?
What’s your proudest moment in training and how did you accomplish it?
What are the most useful statistics in online training, and how do you analyze them?
What kind of training format do you prefer: self-paced, instructor-led online or webinar? Why?
Your job posting will include specific questions about the type of learning management systems or other platforms your admin has worked with. So in the interview, ask them to expand on that by describing what kind of training format they like best. This will reveal their knowledge of different ways of training people and what they know about it.
What ages of learners have you worked with?
Asking the candidate how old the trainees are is a simple but revealing question. Learning program administrators who have worked with children will have different experience than those who work with adults. Some admins are purely technical, so ask them if age makes a difference to how they run courses.
What hurdles do you expect when you schedule a training program?
Ask something deeper than if they have experience putting together an annual training program by asking what kind of barriers they might face. This will reveal their knowledge of promotion, recruitment and mixing together schedules for administrators and also learners.
How do you handle conflict among learners?
Most online learners are in a course to learn. But conflicts in forums or chat rooms still happen. Digital communication makes it easy to say something unkind quickly and permanently, and it’s just as easy to misinterpret a comment as negative. Find out what kinds of conflicts your candidate has experienced and what they do to make sure it doesn’t derail the course.
Explain a time when you had conflict with a coworker.
Having asked how they deal with learner-to-learner conflict, extend the question to find out if they’ve had a conflict with a coworker and how they dealt with it. This will tell you how the candidate will gel with your team and if they’ll be happy working there.
What’s your response if someone shares private health data?
If you work at an agency that contains health data, it’s critical that no private information about patients appears online. Find out what your candidate does to mitigate this risk and deal with it if it happens.
What do you spend the most time doing each day? Week? Month?
Ask your admin candidate questions about how they organize their day, week and month. Make sure there are differences between daily, weekly and monthly activities!
How do you keep up on remote training trends?
Remote training is a new reality for your agency as well as everyone else’s. It’s important that whoever you hire realizes this and spends some time studying trends and where the industry is headed. Find out what they think and where they find that information.
What’s your proudest training moment and how did you accomplish it?
This open-ended question will help you coax out your candidate’s best strengths. It’s a better way to ask this question than the typical, “What are your greatest strengths?” That rote question is likely to receive a rote response. Asking people what they’re proud of is also a smart way to encourage them to expand and talk about themselves.
What are the most useful statistics in online training, and how do you analyze them?
Reports are important elearning statistics that reveal what your participants are getting out of your program. Ask candidates this question to find out what they know about reports and how to analyze data. You can ask a follow-up about how some of that data can be used to improve a learning experience.
Interested in more information about how to run an online training program? Download Talance’s free Virtual Training Planner.
