Behavioral Interview Questions for Production Scheduling

Production schedulers develop the forecasts and production plans for manufacturing operations. These positions are critical to the success of a company and have to adapt to changing business conditions quickly. This makes behavioral interviews a great choice for assessing production scheduling candidates.

A behavioral interview focuses on assessing the candidate’s past performance by asking questions about specific situations the candidate has encountered. Some of the behavioral questions you may see for a production scheduling position include:

• Tell me about a time when you had to schedule around a major unplanned equipment outage.
• Tell me about a time when you had to add a new, large customer on short notice.
• Tell me about a time when you faced the loss of a large customer on short notice.
• Tell me about a time when you were significantly overstaffed for your forecast.
• Tell me about a time when you were significantly understaffed for your forecast.
• Tell me about a time when you planned for a new product introduction.
• Tell me about a time when you faced finished goods inventory levels that were too high.
• Tell me about a time when you faced a large backlog and could not ship all orders on-time.
• Tell me about a time when a major supplier could not deliver enough to meet your plan.
• Tell me about a time when you worked with an operations manager that disagreed with your production plan.
• Tell me about a time when you had to overcome technical problems with your MRP system.
• Tell me about the worst production schedule you have ever built.
• Tell me about a time when you were able to reduce inventories through changes in scheduling.
• Tell me about a time when you had to overcome a major bottleneck.
• Tell me about a time when a major quality problem affected the ability to meet your production plan.

To be successful answering behavioral interview questions, you need to discuss specific situations. A clear, easily understood story of a challenge you faced, how you dealt with the challenge and the results of your actions can make a very impressive presentation.

Failing to prepare for a behavioral interview makes it very difficult to succeed. The best presentation requires specific details of the situations discussed. A general answer, lacking specificity, will not make a strong impression and will not be remembered.

The questions listed about above cover a range of challenges a production scheduler may face, but they are far from an inclusive list.  There are thousands of potential interview questions.  The key to preparing is to develop stories you can use to answer a variety of questions.  If done effectively, preparing a number of stories can allow you to adapt to almost any interview question.