Executive Officer Test

You ask your boss to approve a raise for Jake, a member of the team you supervise. He is great at handling necessary clerical work, such as resolving clients' scheduling conflicts and proofreading to ensure clients receive error free communications. Your boss knows Jake's performance is excellent but denies your request because she feels it sets a bad example to reward low-level work.

What should you do to persuade your boss to approve Jake’s raise?

Your colleague at DelbCo supplier sends you a video message explaining which sales orders you should call about while she is on vacation.

From the following DelbCo sales orders, which ones should you prioritize calling about?

Your assistant attended several meetings on your behalf while you were out on sick leave. You need to include a summary of each meeting in your next team newsletter. For each meeting below, choose the clearest and most concise way to restate the key points your assistant compiled.

You are assigned to a team where each member is reporting their regional office’s performance data. Your role is to make sure the data is accurately reported so that executives can use it to allocate bonuses to each office.

You notice that one teammate, Ronan, rounded up the numbers for his office so they look better than other offices' numbers. For example, he reported $19.1 million in sales as $20 million, which is higher than Sue’s report of $19.3 million in sales as $19 million.

What do you do to make sure your teammates accurately report the data?

As their manager, Tom emails you that Maria is using her work computer in the office for her personal business, which violates company policy and can be grounds for firing. Both of them are excellent workers who are key to the team's success but they do not like each other.

Germany's economy avoided falling into recession during the final three months of last year. This means that it avoided two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, which is the definition of a recession. This was a small, but positive, surprise for all analysts who, after the July-to-September period that featured a 0.3% decline, predicted the continuation of this negative trend.

Reasons for slower growth last year include a slowdown in the global economy and a weaker car sector, with some German consumers less willing to buy new cars amid confusion over new emission standards.

Joe Johnson, senior financial analyst, told the BBC that US tariffs on EU car exports, which US President Donald Trump has threatened, could have a major impact on Germany. He thinks that, if this happens, Germany might fall into recession.

What can be concluded from the text above?

Your company’s leadership team has developed Return to Office rules to improve productivity and collaboration. As a member of the leadership team, you are in charge of communicating the rules in a company-wide email.

What email subject line should you use to inspire remote employees about the new rules?

Your unproductive teammate has been going home early each day before he finishes his work on your shared project. You have been staying late to do his work every day so the project stays on schedule. You have to pick up your kids after school next week, though, so you can't stay late.

Which actions do you take to increase the chances that the project will stay on schedule?

Before you are promoted from cafe manager to district supervisor next month, you need to recommend that one of your two assistant managers fill your position. They both started at the same time and one supervises the opening shift while the other supervises the closing shift.

What metrics will help you assess which assistant manager has performed better?

You have identified a new budgeting software package that can save the company over $1 million annually. Your boss agrees with your findings but informs you that the CEO, who chose the current software, and the budgeting team that uses it, are both satisfied with the existing system. She asks you to come up with strategies to get the company to adopt the new software.

Which of the below strategies should you present to your boss?

As part of a global team, you work in an online, shared document. Your teammates are in a different time zone and typically start editing the document while you are sleeping. One morning, you discover that some of your teammates updated your work in the document with incorrect information.

After correcting the updates, what do you do to help keep this from happening again?

Li Jie has joined your team after working in another department for a hostile manager. He rarely says anything in meetings and seems nervous whenever you ask for his opinion. He follows instructions and his work is great but you sense that he can contribute more.

As his manager, what do you say to Lie Jie to help him achieve his full potential?