Starbucks Shift Supervisor Interview Preparation Questions and Answers

Why do you want the position?

I want to become a Shift Supervisor because I'm eager to take on more responsibilities, lead a team, and further develop my leadership skills. I see this role as an opportunity to make a meaningful impact by ensuring the store runs smoothly, maintaining high standards, and providing guidance and support to team members.

Discuss the Starbucks Experience with the candidate. Share how creating Best Moments come to life in your store from a partner and customer perspective.

As partners, I think it is important that we're working towards creating a nurturing environment for both our customers and our fellow partners. For us it's just a cup of coffee but for our guests the interaction with us can be a really important and integral part of their day. I feel like one way we're able to do that is to also have a nurturing work environment. Having a good work environment enables us to create a more comfortable dynamic with the customers as well create stronger ties between partners.

Describe a day in the life of a shift supervisor

Shift supervisors typically begin their day by checking the daily records book as well as communicating with the current shift supervisor on the floor. After they are up to date with the current events of the store, they'll typically make sure that the current play is working correctly for that time. After that, it's important that the shift lead communicates with their partners to see if there's anything they need on the floor. After making sure that the team is supported on, a shift lead can begin to work on their shift lead tasks such as pulling food, checking temps, counting milks, or counting money. It's also important to check with customers and make an attempt to create connections. It's important that a shift supervisor presents a sense of welcoming to the customers in order to set the tone for the rest of the partners. It's also important for the shift lead to communicate to their team that if they feels like they need support

What excites you about leading others and being a role model in a customer facing environment

What excites me about leading others is being able to be the person I wish I had when I first started at Starbucks. I want partners to feel comfortable talking with me about anything. I love helping others and teaching them what I have learned through my time here at Starbucks. I want everyone to be successful and I believe that would shine through being in a role model position.

At Starbucks we initiate connections with our customers, can you walk me through an example where you've done this?

We have a lot of regulars at our store so I make connections with them by trying to remember their names and/or their drinks. We have one regular Bill who always comes in to do work. When I took his order one time I had told him that I remembered his name and drink and he seemed a little taken a back and needed up telling me a little bit about some situation with his granddaughter that he seemed upset about. So before I handed out his drink to him a just wrote a little encouraging messing on the cup and he told me that it really made his day better. I just feel like little things like this can really make a big impact on a guest's day, especially if it's a bad one

Describe a time you coached a team member to more effectively provide the expected service standards or build customer connections

I recently had the opportunity to coach a partner to try and connect more with guest while being on DTO. I noticed during busy points they would sound annoyed taking orders to the point where others were noticing. I told them privately that if they're feeling overwhelmed or need help to ask me or another partner we can help take orders for a little bit, and shared with them my belief that speed and accuracy are definitely important but a good attitude and respect are essential to our customer connections, and that having a cheerful tone makes guests feel more welcome and more likely to make this their go to store

Tell me about a time when you engaged a customer to learn about their experience.

We have a regular who always orders an iced coffee with very light cream. And almost always she asks for it to be remade to the point where everyone is always apprehensive to make her drink and a little annoyed that she always asks for it to be remade. From what I noticed, everyone usually just remakes it for her to avoid her getting upset. So when she came in one day to have it remade I apologized to her and asked her specifically what she's looking for and what we're doing wrong so she doesn't have to keep coming back in to get her drink re made. Doing that she was able to tell me exactly how much she wanted, which I was then able to relay to the other partners every other time she's come in to get her coffee

Tell me about a skill you wanted or an experience you wanted to gain to improve your performance

I've wanted to develop more leadership qualities and responsibility within the store. I chose this because responsibility is one of my strengths as well as an important trait in a shift supervisor. Through using this skill I've been able to work more on being a leader and I have learned to take initiative on more things like organizing FOH and BOH, helping delegate tasks to newer baristas, putting away the order, coaching new baristas to the standard, and doing things to make more of a team environment where everyone feels included.

Tell me about a time when you had a different point of view from your team, manager, or organization

A while back I was closing with an old shift and we had a customer that wanted a shaken espresso with no ice at all, to which she obliged. I asked her about the standard since it explodes everywhere with no ice. She just told me "it's fine" and that was it. It frustrated me because this customer had come before asking for the same thing but we've always told them we can't do that because of our standard. I didn't want to push the situation any further at that moment so I asked her later in the back why she did what she did and that I was frustrated by it. She told me that in the moment she was just overwhelmed and frustrated and that she wanted to give them what they wanted to get it over with and that looking back it wasn't the best choice. After everything I was glad I brought it up with her directly that same night instead of letting negative feelings grow and make it into something bigger than it needed to be

What's the toughest feedback you've given to a member on your team

There was a day where a new barista was on bar while I was on the window. I would notice little things like them not pulling the correct number of shots or too many pumps of syrup. I stepped in and told them the correct proportions of the beverage whenever I noticed. It turns out they did not know many of the recipes yet just because they hadn't gotten much bar time. I connected with them later on and I told them that they can study all the recipes in their downtime and showed them the recipe cards and where they can find them on the tablet as well as telling them that making a drink with incorrect shots or syrups messes up our beverage quality. It was difficult for both of us because you could tell the partner was upset that they had been messing up drinks and I was concerned about coming off mean but it needed to be said to make her better on bar. And it turns out I had nothing to worry about because now they kill it on bar and we can even have them solo bar now

Tell me about a time when a new product, promotion, or operational standard was launched

Prior to the BOGO fall drink promotion I made sure to work with all the other baristas as to what the promotion was, what drinks were included, and how customers can take part in the promotion. Just because I knew, at least for the first one, it was going to be pretty busy and there was going to be a lot of confusion for the customers, so I wanted to make sure that at least the baristas I worked with knew what to expect. In doing this everyone was more prepared while taking orders and it made answering guest's questions about the promotion easier as well as make the whole experience go more smoothly as a whole.