LIKELY QUESTIONS
- How have you led the HR and Administration function in a utility, service, or similarly regulated environment, and what results did you achieve?
- What approach would you use to review and update job descriptions, job requirements, and organizational structure with line managers at MOWASSCO?
- Tell us about your experience ensuring compliance with employment law, statutory HR obligations, and internal HR policies.
- How have you managed end-to-end recruitment to ensure fairness, transparency, and adherence to approved process?
- Describe your experience implementing or improving performance management systems in a busy organization.
- How do you handle employee grievances, disciplinary matters, and conflict resolution while maintaining fairness and confidentiality?
- What is your experience with HRIS, payroll inputs, and using HR data such as exit interviews, engagement surveys, and training needs analysis to drive decisions?
- As HR Manager reporting support to the Managing Director, how would you balance strategic HR leadership with day-to-day operational demands?

BEHAVIOURAL QUESTIONS
- Tell us about a time you had to resolve a sensitive employee grievance involving multiple stakeholders.
Model approach: Situation - Briefly describe the grievance, parties involved, and business risk. Task - Explain your responsibility to investigate fairly and protect confidentiality. Action - Outline how you gathered facts, listened to all sides, applied policy and law, engaged managers, and recommended corrective measures. Result - State the resolution, reduced conflict, compliance outcome, and any process improvements made.
- Describe a time you improved an HR process such as recruitment, onboarding, performance management, or offboarding.
Model approach: Situation - Identify the weak process and its impact on service delivery or compliance. Task - Clarify the improvement goal, such as reducing delays or increasing consistency. Action - Explain how you mapped the process, consulted users, updated procedures, trained managers, and tracked adoption. Result - Quantify improvements such as faster turnaround, better compliance, improved candidate experience, or cleaner records.
- Give an example of when you used HR data to influence management decision-making.
Model approach: Situation - Describe the business issue, for example turnover, absenteeism, low engagement, or training gaps. Task - State your role in analyzing the issue and advising leadership. Action - Show how you used exit interviews, survey data, payroll or HRIS records, benchmarking, and presented practical recommendations. Result - Highlight the decision taken and measurable impact on retention, morale, productivity, or cost.
- Tell us about a time you led change that was initially resisted by employees or managers.
Model approach: Situation - Explain the change, why it was needed, and the resistance encountered. Task - Define your responsibility to implement while maintaining trust and continuity. Action - Describe stakeholder engagement, communication, manager coaching, policy clarification, and phased rollout. Result - Show how adoption improved and what organizational benefit followed.

SMART QUESTIONS TO ASK
- What are the top three HR priorities for the person stepping into this role in the first 6 to 12 months?
- How would you describe the current organizational culture, and what specific culture or workforce challenges is MOWASSCO trying to address?
- What is the current state of the performance management system, and where do you feel it needs the most strengthening?
- How mature are your HR systems and reporting capabilities, especially around HRIS, payroll input controls, compliance tracking, and workforce analytics?
- How is success measured for this role, and what would excellent performance look like by the end of the first year?

RED FLAGS TO WATCH FOR
- Vague answers about HR compliance, unresolved audit issues, payroll control weaknesses, or frequent legal disputes involving employees.
- Signs that leadership wants HR to enforce decisions without proper process, documentation, or regard for policy, fairness, and confidentiality.
- High turnover, low morale, or persistent conflict that interviewers minimize without showing a clear commitment to fixing root causes.