Questions are from the above resource. Answers have been modified to best fit anyone's need.
1. What do you think about the term
project management?
Answer: Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time. In the project management, it is also essential to
manage time, success rate, and cost of the project.
2. According to you, what are the important skills for project
managers?
Answer: leadership skills, time management skills, and
communication skills.
3. Where do you see yourself in next 5 years?
Answer: I want to give best performance for the success of every
project and I want to take county forward with my position.
4. How will you explain the project life cycle?
Answer: Every project goes through 5 phases namely:
It is very important to go through every phase in a proper way
for the success of the project on the basis of the project life cycle.
5. Can you tell about the projects that you have handled with
the previous company?
Project Management Scenario-based Interview Questions and
Answers
Answer: There are many
skills, a project manager should go for apart from technical skills in the
answer to this question during the interview. You can include leadership
skills, decision-making skills, risk management skills, time management skills,
and prioritization skills If the interviewer asks you about the qualities
of the successful project manager, here are the 10 qualities that are expected
to be in a project manager to become successful.- Vision
- Integrity
- Communication
- Compassion/Empathy
- Delegation
- Competency
- Enthusiasm/Passion
- Team Building
- Composure
- Problem Solving
7. How will you start a new project as a manager?
Answer: I will take the proper steps
to understand the objective and purpose of the project and make the proper strategy to start it, before I meet the team.
8. How will you deal with any of the changes in the project?
Answer: Manage time, deadlines, cost etc. Example when we moved from serena to TFS.
9. You are working on a major project
as project manager and going halfway through the project you realize that
you’ve made a mistake due to which you will have to rework on the project from
the very beginning. How will you handle this situation meeting the deadline of
the project?
Answer: I’ll first stop
whatever I’m doing to find out the mistake. I’ll investigate if the mistake is
small to correct it instantly; if so I’ll try to rectify the issue immediately.
In case the mistake requires the complete rework on the project and it may even
delay the delivery beyond the deadline, I’ll inform the supervisors immediately
and will let them know the complete scenario.
According to the
situation, I’ll have to discuss with my team and make a plan, if needed, we’ll
decide to give extra time to meet the deadline without affecting the project.
Although it will be painful and time-consuming I’ll learn from the situation
and make a note of the scenario so it could help us in the future.
10. Did any of the employees or managers challenge your decisions in your previous job?
Answer: Yes, my decision to send gridview data into pdf for easy readability and print. Managers thought it will strech their budget and user's thought it will increase testing for them. I created a small sample project to bring it to the table rather than explaining it in words.
11. How will you ensure that your team will stay on the right
track to complete the project on deadline?
Answer: Communication is the key. “I will communicate on the basis of expectations from the project
before starting it with the team. I will take the regular updates of the
progress and I will discuss every phase of the project with the team. With
appreciation and feedback from the team members, I will make sure that they
will complete it on the given time”.
I will set realistic goals as per my teams capabilities and abilities.
I will set realistic goals as per my teams capabilities and abilities.
12. If any of the customers are not happy with the quality or
results of the product, what will you do as a project manager?
Answer: Customer or end user is the sole reason we create software. If the customer is unhappy with the results or
quality of the product, I will see which kind of modifications they expect
from the product. Then, I will try to do that by discussing with
your team so that the project can meet the requirements of the customer with
perfection.
13. How should project managers communicate on the failure
of any project with the team?
15. Do you think that integrity is an essential quality of any
project manager?
Answer: The obvious answer to this question is “Yes” and
you have to describe it properly to the interviewer. Any of the companies want
the employees who will share principles and values of the company. If you are
at a responsible position of project manager, you have to show the proper way
to other team members for the project. It is essential to earning the trust of
your boss and the respect of your team members to become a successful project
manager.
1. Share one of the challenging situation you have faced & what is the greatest challenge you feel in the offered job?
Answer: When I just came on board, I inherited the system that was not fully functional yet. UI was not very user intuitive. I had to reverse engineer some of the processes, desingn that exchnaged many hands before it came to me and aggressive timeline that I had to comply with. I made a plan and then I consulted with my supervisor and then I met with SME's. That gave me clear ideas f what areas that need to be worked first. Piece by piece I redesigned the system.
Another such challenge was switching from CA to Tremolo. Authetication piece. Meeting with the vendor, try and understand what is there in the black box and figuring out the best approach.
2. What is your one greatest weakness & one greatest strength?
Answer: Sometimes I get too pulled into my work and that take my time away from other things. I have also been told that I am too critical of myself at times. Strength: I like to plan for what's coming as I strongly feel that project without a plan is a recie to failure. I am team player and a collaborator, I like to be thorough and I am very determined and I like to finish my targets on time and sometimes I get restless if they are not met and I keep trying unless best outcome is reached. You can consider this as my weakness as well as my strength.
3. How do you handle pressure situation? Do you use some creative problem-solving techniques?
Answer: Rather than getting overwhelmed, I try to analyze the issue first. Then I try to make a plan on how to resolve problem in hand. I try to start from root level and analyze it piece by piece. I try to take inclusive approach and bring everyone involved together to come up with the best resolution.
5. What do you believe more in, a Leader or a Manager and why?
Answer: I believe in good leader but at the same time I believe manager is also a good leader. Leadership is required for Project Management as without that a manager can’t become a great mentor and role model for the team. At the same time, the manager is required to manage the project efficiently and has to take some tough decisions during the course of the project.
6. Why should our organization hire you for this role? Give a few reasons.
Answer: I have over 15 years of experience in IT and I have seen both side of the spectrum including COTS and other technical implementations. I have been involved in complete SDLC software development cycle starting from initiation, requirement gathering, planning, designing, developing, testing and maintaining the developed product. I have adaptive personality, I am team player and I am quick and keen learner. I truly believe in growth mindest and I believe firmly on the fact that there is no end to learning. Its' a continuous and life never ending process.
7. What is the reason for you to quit your current organization?
7. What is the reason for you to quit your current organization?
Answer: I am looking for more challenging position. And looking at the requirement I felt that it matches my profile and I strongly feel that I will be a asset to this role.
8. Dealing with difficult people
I strongly believe that good manager can motivate people. Still I understand
Start with one on one conversation with the them. I try to understand what is the reason behind their behavior, if its family situation, or if its related to work or if there is conflict with another party. I will talk to parties involved seperately and then bring them together. I will stay assertive and fair during this process.
My last resort would be to make them aware of the consequences.
____________________________________________________________________
8. What’s the most important thing for a project manager to do?
Answer: Generally, this question can have multiple thoughts in the mind of interviewer and answer should be based on your homework about the organization i.e. whether the organization is inclined towards traditional Project Management or Agile. More the inclination towards one, the answer should be amended accordingly.
The point here is Project Manager can be expected as an integrator which is the most important thing for an ideal Project Manager to do but if the organization is agile focused, the answer should be more towards flexibility in management and inclined towards leadership. Agile doesn’t believe in traditional Project Management of allocating work and monitoring rather it believes in self-organized and self-motivated teams.
9. What is one main driver towards project success? For you, Project success is defined in terms of what?
Answer: In this project management interview question, the interviewer wants to check if you know about project success drivers based on triple constraints and the metrics e.g. schedule variance, cost variance, and other indexes.
One should be ready with the metrics used in your earlier projects and knowledge about Project Management EVM metrics. The drivers of project success in a traditional project management way will be expected majorly related to triple constraints, however, the person also has to touch upon agile projects success drivers which should be nothing but working software and regular demonstrations to the client. As per the job profile and organization, you have to take this call
10. How flexible schedule helps in a project? Do we need to compress schedule if required?
Answer: This is one of the latest project management interview questions that judges a major quality required for Project Management i.e. schedule. Project schedule and monitoring of the deadlines & milestones is a day to day activity for a manager and one has to be ready with this question.
Flexible word in the question emphasizes indirectly on the agile way of working so definitely flexibility should be related to welcoming change. But in the next section of the question the intent is if it’s a regular project are you aware of schedule compression methods as well as experienced in such situations of schedule challenges.
11. What are the risks during any project? How will you manage them?
Answer: During the project manager interview, you may definitely face this question because the interviewer wants to know if you are able to work on risk handling in a proper way or not. In any project, there will be several kinds of risks for sure and you have to handle it with the proper knowledge to make sure about the success of the project.
The project risks will depend on several factors including internal or external as well as technical. It will also depend on the type of project and the team working on it. Risk assessment and handling should be essential qualities in any project manager.
12. How can you know if the project is going off track?
Answer: Every project is unique and it is important for the manager to track and monitor the complete process to immediately know if the project is going on the right way or not. It may be one of the most common project management interview questions that you may need to face during the interview for the post of project manager.
With the help of the right tools for tracking and monitoring for the process of the project, it is possible to know if the project is going off track. With early detection of such kind of risks, you can make be required changes according to the Benchmarks in the project.
13. What will be the ideal project for you?
Answer: Most of the candidates will definitely go for the project that they are hiring for. However, it will be better to be honest while going to answer this type of project manager interview questions during the interview. There will not be any such ideal project but there may be some of the specific areas of work that you will like according to your organization.
It will be better to go with your strong points and make sure that it is relevant to the organization where you are going to join as a project manager. make sure to make some research and know about the type of projects that they will give you during your work.
14. Do you need any kind of help outside of your project team?
Answer: Of course, you are not the person that knows everything and no one is perfect in everything.in any kind of project, you may definitely require the help of other employees of the organization and you may need to discuss several things that will ensure the successful progress of the project.
During the interview, you should not say no in the answer to this project manager interview question but you should handle it in an appropriate way. You can say that there are many come situations when you may need any kind of help of other people but it will all depend on the situation.
Management-based Project Management Interview Questions
For a project manager position, it is important to have good management skills so that you can work properly as a team and bring the project to the success. So, during a project management interview, you may come across multiple questions related to management. So, read the following some of the best project management interview questions to be asked and prepare yourself to crack the interview.
15. How do you provide status at different Management levels? Any tool you have used?
Answer: In this type of project manager interview questions, time is to evaluate your management skill to demonstrate the project progress. It will also judge if you know what level of details should be communicated at different levels as well as to different stakeholders.
Reporting is one form of communication. Communication management and stakeholder’s management are two areas where a project manager spends maximum time. The answer should focus on your understanding of communication needs and stakeholders understanding. Examples from your past experience about some tough project manager will help
16. How do you manage office politics?
Answer: Conflict management is an area where project success is dependent as if not resolved at right time, it can create a lot of issues. This question is trying to judge your conflict management skills.
The answer to this question should be theoretical knowledge about different conflict management techniques like Avoid, confront etc. as well 2-3 examples from earlier experience. These kinds of management skills generally come from skills. One should be prepared for it by having certain examples thought through in advance.
17. What are the different kinds of tools that you can use for project management?
Answer: It is true that the tools can make the work much easier and f about any specific tool used by the company, you can go with the tool used by the company, you can go with that one with good knowledge. Otherwise, it will be better than you can make research in the markets to know about some of the most popular and useful tools.
With the knowledge of these tools, you will definitely get better chances of a successful interview for the post of project manager so make sure to go with the tools you have previously used or had some knowledge about.
18. How will you improve the knowledge about project management?
Answer: For any company, it is always a big investment to hire employees. They always want to see the improvements in your skills and knowledge after the post of project manager.you will definitely get lots of improvements in your knowledge and skills with the time and with the projects.
However, it will be good if you are going to use the tools available in the market as well as you will need to join the workshops so that you can grow your knowledge in this field to provide more benefits to the organization.
19. What is the preferred methodology for project management for you?
Answer: There are several different ways to manage any kind of project for the organization. You will need to get complete information about all these methods when you are going to prepare for the interview.
Either you can use traditional methods like the waterfall or you can go with hybrid methods for project management as a manager in the company. You will need to make changes in the method according to the type of project and the current situations in the workplace.
20. How will you manage a change request with the proper handling?
Answer: It is a very normal thing in any company to find the requirement of any kind of specific change in the final project or product. In this situation, the manager of the project will need to handle the change request in the proper way.
First of all, you will need to analyze the situation and the possibility of the required changes in the project. There may be some of the specific things that you can easily change while you may need to waste lots of time and money for some of the other changes. The estimation of the final project and cost will also depend on when you are going to face such kind of change the request.
Preparing to become a certified project management professional? Here’s is the list of articles that will help you in your Project Management Certifications Preparation.
Conclusion
So, here we’ve covered top project management interview questions and answers. Hope these questions will prove as a helpful resource in your preparation for the project management interview. As these are only 20 questions, you may find them very less to get prepared for the interview. So, to help you more, we have recently written another blog 30 most common project management interview questions. So, prepare with these best 50 project management interview questions and get ready to crack the project management interview.
Tell me about yourself?
Sure. Let me begin by thanking you all for giving me an opportunity to be interviewed for this position. I’ve been working for the past sixteen plus years in IT industry. During that time I’ve worked on both private, public and semi government agencies with most of my experience being focussed to government sector. I have contracted for various govt deptt of Paa before landing into a permament position with Fairfax County in yr 2011.
I had a project that was interfered with by outside management that continuously interjected non-related tasks into this project. I reset the expectations of management, documented the deliverables and made sure that management supported my deflection of the outside tasks to other responsible staff.
What is a DNS? How does it work?
It translates domain names, which can be easily memorized by humans, to the numerical IP addresses needed for the purpose of computer services and devices worldwide.
