LIKELY QUESTIONS
- Can you walk us through your experience leading research, innovation, or consultancy functions and how that prepares you for the Deputy Director Planning role at KASNEB?
- How have you identified priority research areas, developed proposals, and delivered studies that informed organisational strategy or public policy?
- Tell us about a time you translated research findings into policy briefs, management papers, or legislative input that influenced decision-making.
- What approach would you use to design data collection methodologies and coordinate surveys across multiple functional areas within KASNEB?
- How do you ensure research quality, methodological rigour, ethical compliance, and practical relevance when managing multiple studies at once?
- KASNEB needs regional and international policy analysis. How have you benchmarked policy or institutional practices across jurisdictions and applied the insights locally?
- How would you strengthen internal and external awareness of research and knowledge management principles in an organisation like KASNEB?
- This role requires senior stakeholder engagement. How have you worked with executives, technical teams, regulators, partners, and consultants to deliver research outputs on time and within scope?

BEHAVIOURAL QUESTIONS
- Describe a time you led a complex research project involving multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.
  Model approach: Situation - Briefly set the context, such as a cross-departmental research study with tight timelines. Task - Explain your accountability for scope, methodology, stakeholder alignment, and delivery. Action - Show how you structured governance, assigned roles, managed risks, validated data quality, and kept stakeholders engaged. Result - Quantify outputs such as completion on time, adoption of recommendations, improved policy decisions, or publication of briefs.
- Tell us about a time your analysis challenged an existing policy, assumption, or management position.
  Model approach: Situation - Outline the existing policy position or assumption. Task - Clarify your responsibility to produce objective evidence and advise leadership. Action - Explain how you gathered data, reviewed literature, benchmarked externally, and presented findings diplomatically with options. Result - Show the policy shift, process improvement, cost saving, or stronger strategic decision that followed.
- Give an example of a time you had to improve research capacity or knowledge management within an organisation.
  Model approach: Situation - Describe weak research systems, fragmented knowledge, or low staff awareness. Task - State your goal to improve standards, tools, and uptake. Action - Mention frameworks, templates, training, repositories, dissemination plans, and monitoring mechanisms you introduced. Result - Note improved research quality, faster access to evidence, better report turnaround, or increased use of research in decision-making.
- Describe a situation where a project faced poor-quality data, delays, or resistance from internal stakeholders. How did you handle it?
  Model approach: Situation - Present the project challenge clearly. Task - Define your obligation to recover the study and preserve credibility. Action - Explain how you diagnosed the issue, adjusted methodology, escalated where needed, negotiated cooperation, and implemented quality controls. Result - Emphasise restored timelines, stronger stakeholder buy-in, credible findings, and lessons embedded into future projects.

SMART QUESTIONS TO ASK
- How does KASNEB currently define its top research and innovation priorities, and what would be the most urgent deliverables for the person in this role within the first 6 to 12 months?
- How is the Research and Business Development function structured, and how does this role interface with examinations, policy, strategy, finance, and external partners?
- What does success look like for this position in terms of research output, policy influence, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge management improvements?
- What level of autonomy will the Deputy Director have in proposing research themes, commissioning studies, building partnerships, and shaping dissemination strategies?
- Are there any major policy, legislative, regional benchmarking, or consultancy initiatives underway that this role would immediately support or lead?

RED FLAGS TO WATCH FOR
- Vague answers about priorities, mandate, or success measures for the role, which may suggest unclear expectations or limited strategic alignment.
- Limited commitment to evidence-based decision-making, for example if research is described as compliance-driven rather than something that informs policy, planning, and institutional improvement.
- Weak resourcing for the function, such as unclear budgets, insufficient staff capacity, or heavy expectations without authority to coordinate across departments.