How To Prepare For A Pm Interview

Describe How You Deal With Project Escalations

Your escalation approach refers to how you handle project issues when they occur. When answering this question, emphasize your critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.

Example: “When planning projects, I make sure I establish an escalation committee and anticipate potential issues that I may face. I also quantify project risks to determine whether to escalate to upper management or handle it within my team. I feel it’s important to try to solve project issues within a team, but I also understand when to get others involved.”

Get Familiar With The Product Manager Interview Process

The interview process for Product Managers will vary significantly depending on the company, the specific role, your level of seniority, etc. However, there are some elements that are pretty typical across the board.

So, in this section we’ve summarized common elements of PM interviews to help you get an overview of what to expect. This is an important first step because it will help you gain a high-level understanding of the steps you need to prepare for, allowing you to be more strategic with how you allocate your prep time.

Startup Specific Interview Preparation Tips

The PM interview process at industry-leading tech companies is often general. Thats not to say that theyre basic or simple. However, they dont focus nearly as much on your specific area of expertise.

Conversely, at a startup, you can expect that the company wants to hire a specialist. They want to bring someone on board who has experience and knowledge of their space. For instance, if youre experienced in augmented reality or virtual reality, youre best suited for a company thats building a product in this space.

Here are four startup specific interview preparation tips that will put you on the path to success:

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Where Should I Focus My Efforts During Preparation

Most of the PM interview guides and books will help you prepare for the interviews by focusing on answering the questions. Additionally, its helpful to learn a bit about the individual PM domains. This is often a challenge for those that are not already in Product Management.

Its a to answer questions and pivots if you know the core concepts of the underlying specialty areas. Well look at the key domains and apply the Pareto principle here. Yes using a PM concept to study for PM interviews sounds about right. Youll want to learn enough about each topic to know enough to answer the questions with confidence.

How Would You Deal With A Difficult Stakeholder

This situational question aims to get clarity into your people skills, a crucial part of being a successful project manager.

How to answer: Communication and negotiation are likely to be an important part of your answer here. Knowing your teamâs needs, capacity, and the projectâs available resources might also influence your answer.

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What Is Your Communication Style With Your Team

If your interviewer asks this, youll 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 judgment, and are able to use language effectively.

What Was A Challenging Project And How Did You Manage It

This behavioral question takes the conversation from the theoretical to the practical. You can see how the project managers 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 persons project management experience, such as how they lead teams and deal with conflicts. By asking about a challenging project, you can see how they apply their hard and soft skills when pushed to their limits and beyond.

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To See If Theyll Enjoy Working With You

Will they enjoy working with you day after day? Will they find pleasure in coaching you? Are you the type of person who is coachable and willing to learn?

As noted above, the VP of product, product lead, head of product, or director of product leads a group of PMs. If the person doesnt like your personality or considers you difficult to coach, they wont recommend you. They dont want to choose a candidate with a high chance of failure, even if you meet all the other qualifications.

What Have You Done

It can be hard to predict what sorts of questions youll get in a PM interview. But theres one thats almost guaranteed: Tell me about a recent project.

This one is a natural ice-breaker question, says Alan Zucker, founding principal at Project Management Essentials. Be prepared to describe the project, your role, things that went well, and challenges encountered. Your initial response should be less than two minutes. Practice. Stay focused and high-level.

And be ready to be specific on this one. Project managers need to be prepared to answer questions that center on real experiences and challenges and how they overcame them, says PMIs Garrett. Avoid hypothetical answers that do not prove how you reacted to and managed your circumstances.

Part of the specifics you deliver should be honestly about when things went less than perfectly. You might get specific questions about this: Tell me about a time when you felt overwhelmed by your workload and Can you describe a situation in which you missed a deadline? are two examples offered by Mandy Bennett, director of creative development at Scorpion. You should use questions such as these as an opportunity to talk about how you have overcome adversity.

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Carefully Examine The Job Description

During your prep work, you should use the employers posted job description as a guide. The job description is a list of the qualifications, qualities and background the employer is looking for in an ideal candidate. The more you can align yourself with these details, the more the employer will be able to see that you are qualified. The job description may also give you ideas about questions the employer may ask throughout the interview.

Have You Managed Remote Teams

Not all projects are executed under one roof and remote teams are very common. With more dynamic project management tools and a global workforce to choose from, many project managers might never meet the members of their team, at least in person, but theyll be able to work together using project management software. Then there are the necessary resources that will be outsourced, which involves a different resource management technique than when working with employees. Knowing how they have managed people and resources can help you get an overview of their leadership skills and be a crucial point in your decision to hire or not to hire.

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How Do You Deal With Team Conflict

Team conflicts can affect project success. Interviewers ask this question to evaluate your conflict-resolution skills and how you ensure good collaborative work environments.

Example: “As a delegative project manager, I encourage teammates to work things out first. I feel this is a good way to foster healthy relationships and improve communication skills. However, I’m also aware that I may need to intervene in some situations. For example, a team member often came later for her shift at my last job. This caused disputes between her and other team members who had to cover for her. I called the persons involved to a private meeting, and we discussed a solution that benefited everyone.”

How To Find Courses Related To Pmp Certification Training In Rochester

To become an expert in project management, all you need is the right course. Though you can discover various courses related to PMP certification training in Rochester, you should be smart enough to choose the right course that meets your needs and requirements.

Certain tips for finding courses related to PMP certification training in Rochester are as follows.

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Work From Home Has Become The New Normal In The Post

In the present world, project managers often choose their teams from a global workforce and are expected to manage teams remotely. You should be equipped with the knowledge and skills to work with team members virtually. It calls for a different management technique. Your answer to this project management interview question should clearly describe the project management methodology you may choose to manage people and resources in a remote environment.

Consider Your Answers To Common Interview Questions

While you wont be able to predict every question youll be asked in an interview, there are a few common questions you can plan answers for. You might also consider developing an elevator pitch that quickly describes who you are, what you do and what you want.

There are some jobs that may involve a test or evaluation during the interview process. For example, if you are interviewing for a computer programming, development or analytics role, you might also be asked to write or evaluate lines of code. It might be helpful to consult with colleagues in the industry for examples of tests theyve been given to prepare.

You should also prepare to discuss your salary expectations, just in case. If youre unsure about what salary is appropriate to ask for the position youre applying to, visit Indeed’s Salary Calculator to get a free, personalized pay range based on your location, industry and experience.

Here are a few examples of common interview questions:

Why do you want to work here?The best way to prepare for this question is to learn about the products, services, mission, history and culture of the company. In your answer, mention the aspects of the company that appeal to you and align with your career goals.

Example:Id love the opportunity to work with a company thats making a difference. Finding a company with a positive work environment and values that align with my own has remained a priority throughout my job search, and this company ranks at the top of the list.

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How Did You Prepare For Your Microsoft Interview

Roughly six months back, I decided to switch from my current company to a top tech company. And with that, I set my sights on Microsoft among a handful of others. I had a 10-step thought process while preparing:

• Update my resume with current skills and experience.
• Explore PM career opportunities on all applicable job platforms.
• Connect with my network for references.
• Maintain a job tracker to keep an updated list of positions I applied for.
• Spend two to three hours per day preparing, especially after I received the Microsoft interview screening call.
• Learn more about the current structure of the questions commonly asked at Microsoft.
• Resume review to ensure familiarity and to create examples to back up the information shared.
• Preparation focused on system design, product design, and estimation questions, as these are common at Microsoft.
• Preparation focused on soft skills and non-technical questions, including frameworks for answering them.
• Practice, practice, and practice some more.

Pm Job Interview Question #: Do You Have Outsource Personnel Or Supplier Management Experience

Managing outsource personnel or supplier is a different project management skill. If you are applying to a company that works with outsourcing personnel or suppliers, this project manager interview question will be an elective one.

If you have a project management experience in a vendor, most probably, you will have outsource and supplier management experience as well.

Let us first define what outsource and supplier is. Outsource personnel is hired or acquired by a company only for a limited time or for a specific project. For instance, assume that you are installing a database for a utility service provider in the scope of your project. You need a database administrator for this work. However, your company does not have a full-time database administrator. You have to hire or outsource the database administrator for a limited time to work for your project.

Suppliers are material, equipment, tools, etc. providers of your project. In your project, if you need database servers, and if these servers will be provided by a 3rd party company, this company is the supplier of your project.

After defining outsource and supplier management, letâs go through a sample answer for this project manager interview question.

The answer clearly shows the outsource and supplier management of the project manager interview participant.

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Whats Your Leadership Style

Talking about managing a project will inevitably lead to a discussion of leadership style. There are many ways to lead, and all have their pluses and minuses. Depending on the project, a project manager might have to pick and choose how they lead, ranging from a top-down approach to servant leadership. See how well-versed they are on leadership techniques and how they apply them to project management.

Brainstorm 3 Solutions Explain Tradeoffs And Recommend One

Now its time to show your creativity. Think about the problems that your users are facing, as well as your business goal. How can you use the problem and optimize your goal? The is to be as creative as possible.

Some creative ideas for the alarm clock for blind people might include:

• Wrist band that has voice recognition and vibrates to wake up user
• Ear piece that is modified as an alarm clock
• Modification to the bed
• IoT device with Alexa/Google Assistant integration

After you list your creative ideas, then you should explain the tradeoffs of each approach and select one solution as the recommended one.

IMPORTANT: It is super helpful to have some backup creative ideas that work with multiple problems, in case you cannot think of something exciting during the interview. The following ideas might be helpful:

• IoT device
• Machine Learning

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Common Project Manager Interview Questions And Answers

This article has been approved by an Indeed Career Coach.

Related video: Top Interview Tips: Common Questions, Body Language and MoreIn this video, we dissect an entire job interview from start to finish. We analyze everything from common interview questions to etiquette and how to follow up.

In an interview for a project management position, the hiring manager will seek to determine whether your management style and experience are a good fit for the position. Your answers to interview questions should outline your leadership skills and relevant experience. In this article, we’ll address questions you may hear during a project management interview and explain how to answer them.

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Why Is Project Management Important

Project management is becoming more prevalent and important as an increasing number of companies are adopting more project-oriented business strategies. Project managers lead the teams that are responsible for completing major workplace projects. They guide the project through every phase of development, from the initial planning stages to the launch. In addition to guiding the entire process, project managers also establish and manage the resources, teams and budget that will be necessary to effectively complete the endeavor.

It is through the leadership and guidance of project managers that projects are able to remain focused and organized. Implementing project management in a company provides many benefits, which include:

• Increased quality control

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Can You Walk Me Through A Specific Project You Worked On What Your Role Was Who The Stakeholders Were And What Problem You Were Solving

While you may have already given an overview of the kinds of projects youve worked on, an interviewer might also call on you to talk through one example in detail.

By asking this, were hoping to get a better sense of how a candidate approaches managing a project and how clearly they can communicate an idea, Jensen says.

List Of Product Manager Interview Questions From Top Companies

Examples of Product Manager interview questions that some of the top tech companies ask candidates include:

• Pick a product that you used this morning and tell me why you like it.
• Pick a product you hate and tell me how you would improve it.
• Which tech trend are you following at the moment?
• What is your take on leadership?
• Tell me about a time you had a difficult problem to solve.
• Tell me about an unpopular decision you made on the job.
• Tell me about your greatest innovation.
• What is something that you learned from a failure?
• How would you improve X product?
• How would you design X product for Y people?
• Tell me about a competitive move by a company in the past six months and what you think about it.
• Explain the concept of protocol to a four-year-old child using an ice cream store as an analogy.
• Describe a typical page load time distribution on desktop. What about on mobile?
• Pick an app or product. How would you improve it?
• Take any production chain. How would you optimize the production process?
• How would you motivate users to use an app every single day for a month?

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