After a few years in junior to mid-level roles, you might have reached a point where you want to become a people manager.
Yet how do you show that you are capable of becoming a people manager when you don’t have experience managing a team?

Even without past management experience, what’s important is that you can demonstrate that you have the capabilities that managers need in their day-to-day role.

Even if you’re well-prepared for a job interview and have rehearsed your answers to common questions, sometimes a hiring manager will ask an unusual question to see how you can think and respond on your feet, as well as find out more about your soft skills and cultural fit.

Here are six real-life examples from Glassdoor of unusual questions people have been asked in job interviews and how to answer them if they come up for you:

In Japan there is a term called mottainai, which expresses regret when something good is wasted. For environmentalists, avoiding mottainai involves the four Rs of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Repair.

In my outplacement work with organisations, I deal with another form of mottainai: is the waste of talent that can occur when companies don’t proactively manage their workforce. When time is tight and with the imperative to cut costs or patch crucial talent gaps, companies often feel they have no choice but to do it reactively – wasting resources, in-house talent and hard-won morale.

Hudson avoids mottainai in the context of managing workforce change by using another principle of four Rs:

If your organisation only provides career transition support in the form of outplacement services for employees once they have been made redundant, you’re missing out.

There’s no such thing as too early when it comes to career coaching and transition support – especially for transforming industries.

If you’re in an industry or sector that is rapidly changing – whether that’s due to automation, digital technology or global economic shifts – you’ll know that some roles will ultimately become redundant as a result of changing skillsets and business requirements. For example, we’ve all seen this playing out in postal services, print media and publishing, financial services, and in manufacturing.

As technology rapidly evolves and job functions change, how do you make sure you remain employable in one, three or five years’ time?

When you have been in a role for a while, it can be easy to become complacent and focus only your current job. However, if you suddenly find yourself faced with redundancy, or your realise it’s time to make your next career move, it can be challenging to find a new role if you haven’t maintained a strong personal brand and network, or kept your skills up to date.

Here’s what you need to do now to ensure you’re at the top of the candidate list for the best job opportunities in the future – if and when you need to make your next career move.

Any manager who has ever hired someone who didn’t end up performing as well as expected – or perhaps was a complete disaster – knows that recruitment selection can be an inexact science. As human beings, our unconscious biases lead us towards hiring people we like or who resemble ourselves. We can get swayed by CVs that tick all the boxes, or by someone’s impressive interview skills.

When a new employee doesn’t fit well into your team or struggles to perform, it can be a humbling experience to realise that you’ve made the wrong call – as well as being a negative experience for the employee and the team, potentially with serious consequences.

Between the creative resumes that go viral, video applications and the increasing need for everyone to have a digital presence, you might assume that it’s time to file away the traditional two-page career summary for something a bit more flashy.

The resume hasn’t disappeared yet, but its role is changing. If you’re looking at finding a new job in the near future, you may need to re-think your approach to getting your career history in front of the right people in order for you to make the shortlist for an interview.

Despite the shift towards more flexibility in the workplace, flexible work options can still be daunting for candidates to bring up at the interview stage, for fear of missing out on a role.

Yet job seekers are increasingly looking for flexibility, such as part-time work, working from home or different work hours, as technology and changes in society are re-shaping the workplace.

A new website, FlexCareers, hopes to alleviate this fear by providing job seekers with opportunities from employers who are happy to discuss flexible work options right from the first interview.

A politician achieves mass popularity due to a strong vision of the future, but fails to deliver on key promises.

A football coach leads a struggling team to victory, but gets fired the next season as the team can’t maintain their winning streak.

A manager delivers on a major project, but most of the team quits within a year.

I’m sure we’ve all seen people who clearly have exceptional leadership strengths, yet are ill-suited to the situation they are in.

Have you recently missed out on hiring a brilliant candidate for a role because you couldn’t get budget approval for the salary they were demanding?

Employers might assume that using the same hiring process they have always done will achieve the same result.

In fact, the market is more competitive now. In a competitive market, you need to be prepared to make a good offer upfront and approach the whole recruitment process differently, otherwise you could miss out on the best people.