Technical Project Manager Interview Questions And Answers

Does the candidate have experience in your industry? If they don’t, it’s not a game-closer. Much of project management is the same from industry to industry. Perhaps they have strong skills that relate to your industry, even if they don’t have direct experience. However, if they do have experience in your field, that’s a plus, so ask how those relevant projects panned out. Note how confidently they answer. You want an authentic person who is comfortable in the position.

This is another classic question that directly stems from asking about managing projects and leadership. A project manager is nothing if not an effective communicator. They need to be able to speak to team members, stakeholders, vendors, etc. Each group will need a slightly different approach. Stakeholders want the broad strokes, while teams will need more detail. If a project manager can’t clearly communicate, the project is doomed before it has begun.

This is an telling project manager interview question. Some project managers are going to think you want a person who is wholly independent and pulls from an inner-reservoir. Fair enough. But more resourceful is the project manager who knows when they’re over their head and asks for help from a mentor or a network of professionals.

A project manager needs tools to plan, monitor and report on the project. There are many, from simple to more complex. This question reveals first how up-to-date the candidate is regarding software and project management tools. Additionally, it provides a picture of what tools and processes they use to manage a project.

Ouch. Yes, you need to go there and make the candidate uncomfortable. It’s not that you want to learn some secret or catch them in an unethical act. Less important than the content of their answer is the way they deal with the question. You’ll get a better picture of the person instead of the persona they’re presenting. It also shows their communication skills while under pressure. It might seem cruel, but it’ll help you get to the heart of the person that you’re going to trust with the management of your project.

If your interviewer asks this, you’ll want to assure him or her that you are an effective communicator who motivates others on your team. Not only should good project managers be encouraging when delegating to their team, but they should also be clear in their expectations. Make sure you point out that you understand the significance of being an effective communicator as a project manager.
While the first question helps the interviewer assess how effectively you can handle communication in challenging situations, the second question helps understand how you engage with others, whether you demonstrate good sense and judgement and are able to use language effectively.

Current clients make the best repeat customers, and it’s important to maintain excellent relationships, beyond just delivering them what they paid for. The person interviewing you wants to know you feel this way also, so as you explain the ways you’ve maintained excellent customer relationships, be sure to stress the importance of always having a very happy customer.

As a project manager, it’s important to routinely stay on top of your team members’ tasks and responsibilities. Discuss how you do this with specific examples—whether it’s by scheduling brief meetings, using project management software, and so on.

Your interviewer wants to understand your work process and see that you’re detail-oriented. Explain how you check in with your team throughout a project. For example, you may want to point out that you believe effective and regular communication is key to ensuring that a project stays on track.

Through this question, the interviewer is essentially trying to check your clarity of thought. He/she wants you to describe the important first steps you need to take to ensure the success of a project. A good manager would try to understand ‘what’ of the project before ‘how’. What it means is you first try to understand what is the objective or purpose of the project before diving into how to achieve the goals of the project. Hence, anything on the above lines would get you some brownie points.

By very nature, projects are unpredictable. Hence, it is essential that a manager anticipates problems that can occur and plans ahead. Your answer then has to reflect the importance you attach to proactive project management. Show the interviewer that you can handle risks and rise to the challenges that can occur during the course of the project.

It’s important to get a snapshot of the applicant to bring their resume into sharper focus. Knowing a bit about their life story can inform how they might respond to issues at work, and whether they will fit into the corporate culture. The same goes for their professional history. Staying at a single job for a long time can be either bad or good, but you won’t know until you put their choice into context.

The ideal project is the one that you’re hiring for of course! But seriously, try to get them to answer honestly. It will let you know what sort of projects they prefer to work on. In doing so you’ll get a better feel for what kind of work excites them and maybe even what they excel at. This can help you place the project manager with the right project, or help them adapt to the project you’re hiring them to manage.

There are almost as many ways to manage a project as there are projects. From traditional methods like waterfall to hybrid methodologies, you want a project manager who understands the many ways to work. And more importantly, can they use the methodology that best suits the work at hand?

This question will test your knowledge about the project management industry. Not only should you describe three relevant challenges, but possible solutions as well. Good examples can include challenges you’ve had personal experience with, along with effective solutions that you’ve used.

Think about the top challenges of the industry in which the organization operates. Your response will reveal your understanding of the industry, the market, current challenges, and possible solutions. This knowledge is critical to the success of any project manager as you will be tackling these challenges inside the organization if you get hired.

Prioritization is important. There’s going to be more work in a day than can be accomplished, so any good project manager is going to have to determine what is crucial and what could be left undone if necessary. It will prove interesting and informative to see how the candidate makes these decisions.

Talk about not being prepared. Who is going into a job interview with this information in their head? You don’t really want an accurate answer to this question, but you do want to see how the project manager deals critically and seriously with the question. Because, during the project they will be sidelined with unexpected challenges and questions.

It helps to drill down into specific experience. Naturally, if the candidate has specific skills they’ll be briefly sketched in the resume, but here’s your opportunity to get a deeper sense of where they stand in terms of budget management. Project managers are known as planners. They schedule and lead teams to success. But there’s often money involved, so they better know how to handle a budget.

This takes the conversation from the theoretical to the practical. You can see how the person responded to real-life problems, which helps you determine how they would manage projects at your organization. This question also provides a sense of the person, such as how they lead teams and deal with conflicts. By asking about a challenging project, you can see how they act when pushed to their limits and beyond.

This is a top project manager interview question. The answer shows whether you have realistic expectations from the job you are applying for. It helps the interviewer check if your personal goals align with that of the company.
If you are applying for an entry-level position, it might be too ambitious to say ‘I want to be the CEO of this company’. It helps to research on the employee growth in the company and estimate where you could reach with your best performance in the next 5 years. On the other hand, if you are applying for a senior position, you can talk about how you wish to take the company forward and what your contribution towards that would be.

It’s always important to take initiative as a project manager, and your interviewer wants to see just how you do that. Think of specific project examples that included a lot of proactive decision-making, but don’t also be afraid to include examples that don’t include the workplace.

No project goes without a hitch, and people expect that. What your interviewer wants to see is how you handle anything that can result in a potential setback. An effective project manager should always have a few tricks up his or her sleeve.

This is your chance to show your knowledge on some of the many different technologies that project managers use these days. Be sure to name any software programs, online tools and other things that you’ve used to complete your daily tasks. Be sure to also explain that you are always open and eager to learning new tools or programs.

Think about a time when you reluctantly agreed to a challenging request, because as a project manager, you’re expected to make things happen. Explain to the interviewer how you managed to juggle your tasks and effectively manage your time in order to ensure that you would be able to follow through with a difficult promise. Even though you may have had a lot on your plate, interviewers want to hear specific examples that show you were still successful in accommodating additional requests.

☛ Please describe yourself, your background briefly.
☛ What was the biggest or most challenging project you managed?
☛ Do you have budget management experience?
☛ Have you ever failed in a project? Do you have any experience of handling failures?
☛ How do you monitor projects whether it is going on track?
☛ Can you tell me an example of how you communicated a failure to your team, manager and customer?
☛ How do you motivate project team?
☛ Do you have outsource personnel or supplier management experience?
☛ Do you have international project team management experience?
☛ How do you deal with gold plating in your project?
☛ You managed the project work as per requirements. However, customer is not happy with the result and does not accept the project. How would you convince the customer?
☛ How do you deal with underperforming project team members?
☛ How do you resolve conflicts in your projects?
☛ What are the three words that describe you best?
☛ Why should we hire you?
☛ Where do you see yourself in five years?
☛ What is your current salary and compensaion package?
☛ What is your salary expectation?