Program Manager Interview Questions And Answers

Apart from the portfolio, everyone has some project or aspect of their jobs that they hold close to their heart. This is the time to inform the interviewer about what your favorite project was and why. Of course, you have to make sure that you do not go on a ramble and genuinely discuss some of your favorite projects.

This question helps you assess how effectively the candidate handles communication in challenging situations. The second question helps you understand how the candidate engages with others and assess whether they demonstrate good sense and judgement and are able to use language effectively.

A Project Manager must tackle multiple tasks and issues. To be successful, the Project Manager has to choose their battles wisely. Since resources are always limited, they need to be prioritized. Time is a valuable resource for the project because once lost it cannot be recovered easily. As a result, time management is one of the key skills for a Project Manager. The Project Manager is responsible for creating efficient ways to execute tasks.

It tells you how honest they are with themselves and compels them to talk about an instance when they failed. It shows how the candidate handles failure and learns from it.

I hope that this list of competencies and related questions will help hiring managers to recruit the right candidates. These 10 areas are not an exhaustive list but will structure an interview in a way that covers the most important project management skills a candidate will need to succeed.

It can demonstrate their awareness of PMI Code of Ethics and even if they aren’t aware of that, their general approach to work. You can also use it to open up an interesting discussion and allow you to judge how they will fit into your business culture.

You have to be prepared for this project manager interview question. Because, your answer to this question will show your limits about your experience. Note that, this question might come with additional questions asking about how many people there were in the team, who you were reporting to, and how many projects in total you were managing at the same time.

This project manager interview question will assess your risk management and communication management experience together. Bear in your mind that, failures, emergencies or critical points about a project must be communicated face to face. If face-to-face communication is not possible, then, you should choose teleconference meeting or phone call.

This project manager interview question assess your technical knowledge and scope management skills. Gold plating is a technical term in project management. Gold plating is delivering more than what is required in the scope. If the project team performs an extra activity and delivers extra work, which is not in the scope of the project, this is called gold plating.

This question is not special for a project manager interview. Most of the human resources personnel ask this question to evaluate a candidate during job interviews.

There can be hundreds of other applicants that you have to surpass to get a project manager job. Your background, skills, and resume should be impressive and matching the requirements of the job description. This is obvious. However, you have to be unique when providing answer to this question. Interviewer must say, “Wow, he knows what we exactly look for”.

Every work culture is different. By asking this question, you get an idea of how the candidate handles their daily workload, whether they are more hands-on or prefer sit back and observe their team in action.

You’ll get a good idea of how their personality blends with your organization, and may be able to lead from this question into examples of how or if they may have improved processes at their previous job.

One of a project manager's core responsibilities is managing groups of people. And where there are people, there are conflicts.

A good project manager knows that some conflict is inevitable -- and even healthy -- on a project team. Avoiding or glossing over conflicts that arise can be detrimental to the project's objectives and can actually exacerbate underlying issues, causing them to bubble up and wreak havoc later down the line.

Rarely is an inexperienced person taken in as a project manager. Any project manager would have at least two or three years of experience either as an employee or as a project manager. Therefore, this is one of the basic questions asked. Make sure that you give a brief and concise answer to this question, without going too much into the details. Also, make sure that everything you say as an answer to this question is factual.

This question enables the candidate to think about the top challenges of the industry in which your organization operates. The response from the candidate reveals his understanding of the industry, the market, current challenges, and possible solutions. This knowledge is critical to the success of any Project Manager as they will be tackling these challenges inside the organization if they get hired. So this question helps the hiring managers assess whether the candidate has the domain knowledge that makes them fit for the role.

This will show you how they value their career and whether they see themselves progressing in a PM role. Ask them why they chose that rating.

Not everyone has the chance to work on business critical, exciting projects that make for a great CV, but everyone has the chance to offer some suggestions for improvements (even if they aren’t taken up). Look for someone who has ideas and who isn’t afraid to put them forward.

If the company you applied for is a multinational company, international project team management will be a critical evaluation factor. You might not have this experience. In this case, say no honestly.

This question might be followed by additional questions asking about how the experience was and whether you have any strange story about your international project team management experience.

A typical human resources interview question! This interview question assesses whether you have a career plan and if it fits with the position.

For a project manager interview, you have to draw a career plan that fits to a project management path.

The answer to this project management interview question gives you insight into the candidate’s business skills. Some project managers will revisit a project days or weeks after completion, others wait months or a year, and some never do. There is no right answer, but there is one wrong one. A project management candidate who never revisits a project is a poor choice.

Everyone has something they dread doing.

Project managers are tasked with a wide variety of projects that may frequently change. Knowing in advance what tasks your candidate dislikes can be highly beneficial. You’re looking for answers that show a candidate who is open to working on anything, even if there are portions of a particular project they may not be crazy about. They need to be flexible and ready to do what the company needs to meet its goals, even if their personal preferences aren’t in agreement with it.

While this may seem like a simplistic project management interview question, it allows the interviewer to explore the software a potential hire is acquainted with, why they like it, and what problems they’ve encountered using it.

If you’re lucky, the answers to this question may also lead to a valuable anecdote. Additionally, if you do end up hiring this prospect, you’ll already know what they need on their computer.

This is a very common and tough to deal situation in project management. Although you delivered the project scope as you agreed with the customer in the beginning of the project, customer may not accept the product at the end of the project.

This project manager interview question assesses your convincing and justification skills.

In case you receive this kind of question, you have to demonstrate the agreed scope and how your end product fits with the agreed scope. Note that, final stop of a disagreement like this is courts. However, never mention this during your project manager interview. Because, you have to fix conflicts with communication and companies do not wish to go courts in these cases since it will take years to reach a conclusion.

Success and failures, these are inevitable facts of life and your professional career as well. Do not even think to answer “No, I never failed in a project”. This will not be counting a positive mark in your evaluation believe me.

Actually, this project manager interview question assesses your risk management experience. Therefore, think of an event, meeting, activity or a moment in project where you had trouble. Then, answer this question accordingly.

This gives you an indication of how they do their job. Someone who spends all day at the PC may suit your environment, or you might be looking for a project manager who gets out and visits clients most days of the week. Remember that they might be prepared to do something other than what they do now, so if you hear something that doesn’t fit with the post you are recruiting for, don’t rule them out before exploring this further.

A Project Manager relies on their team to execute activities in order to achieve the desired results. It is important that a Project Manager can assess talent, contribute actively towards developing team members, offer constructive feedback, and mentor and coach their team members. Responses to the following questions will reveal if the candidate is someone able to motivate the members of a team.

A project manager has to take into consideration several disagreements. They can be between employees, between the superior and the employees, or even the client and the employees.
If you reply that you have never had any disagreements, the interviewer will wonder whether you were really a project manager for your skills or simply because you are a people pleaser.
Make sure that you come up with at least one incident where employees and superiors had differences in thought and you were instrumental in changing the scenario.