C Inadequate Skill Level Of A Team
You see, nowadays, all IT projects are urgent.
Clients want to get their solutions as soon as possible.
And they cost a lot.
So, when the project starts, you dont waste time hiring new people. You take all the resources available TODAY.
Otherwise, you may lose the client who will go to your competitors because they have the resources on demand.
But be careful with selecting the right words. Dont make it seem like you are a know-it-all person, and your team is unskilled.
Reason : A Great Investment For Your Future
The exam itself falls into about the middle range in terms of cost. While not as expensive as many of the high-tech, very specific exams, it isnt something you are likely to take lightly. At $555 a test , it doesnt seem too expensive.
The passing rate of the PMP exam is estimated to be around 50 60%. Once you consider the pass/fail rate, you may decide that you need formal training. These types, of course, can cost between $1,500 and $2,000not counting the cost of the exam.
What Experience Do You Have As A Project Manager
While interviewers can review your resume to understand your project management experience, this question enables you to describe how your work experience prepares you for the role. In your response, ensure you quantify your experience and make clear connections to the position’s expectations.
Example: “I started my career as a project supervisor. As the current project manager, my primary duty is to guide my team to reach all project targets and manage risks, budgets, and other resources. My last project achieved 85% customer satisfaction, and I aim to use my strong project management skills to achieve similar results here.”
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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.
List Of Project Manager Interview Questions: Project Management
Project management-related questions will assess your understanding of the role and your knowledge about processes and practices. Employers will also want to learn more about your past project management experience. They will want to know more about the last project you worked on and get insight into your project management career so far.
A few examples of these types of PM interview questions include:
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How Should A Project Manager Communicate A Failure To His Team
A good project manager is optimistic. The way you handle failure reflects the true leader in you. If your team worked on a project and it ultimately failed, they are bound to be unhappy. But as a manager, it is your duty to ensure that failures dont affect the morale of the team. You can tell the interviewer that instead of blaming a particular person or a group, you make it a collective responsibility. Also, mention that you communicate with the team members to learn from the mistakes they made in this project and not repeat them in the future.
Trick #: Use Your Network
Dont be afraid to use any resources at your disposal. If you have connections to a company through a friend or family, ask that person for a referral.
When you land an interview based on a referral, it can break the ice and offer some common ground between you and the hiring manager. If the two of you share a common connection, you might start the interview by quickly talking about that person or sharing a quick laugh.
That helps you build rapport and ultimately makes for a more relaxed interview.
This isnt a replacement for good preparation, but its an excellent way to gain an advantage.
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Technical Skills And Methodology
Your interviewer may begin by asking about your technical skills. An introductory question might be:
-
What software have you used to manage projects in the past?
That question may be followed by a more specific query:
- If I gave you a laptop to plan your next project, what software would you want on it?
Once youve established your technical competence, expect questions about your methodology for handling projects, says Joseph Logan, author of Seven Simple Steps to Landing Your First Job.Whether youre a Project Management Professional or not, general questions you can expect include:
- Whats your approach to managing a project?
- Whats your school of thought on project management? Are you an agile person?
- How do you do your scheduling?
- How do you allocate resources?
- How do you do status updates?
They have to have a methodology, says Donna Farrugia, executive director of The Creative Group, a recruiting firm for interactive, design and marketing professionals in Menlo Park, California. Maybe they use software or a book, or they just have years of experience.If you are PMP-certified, discuss the certification processwhen you earned your PMP, what the hardest part was for you, what you liked the most, etc.
Great project managers possess interpersonal skills that help teammates get along.Questions about interpersonal skills can be general:
- How do you handle politics?
Or specific:
What Project Management Tools Are You Proficient With
As a project manager, you need to be comfortable using various project management tools, especially those your potential employers use. Research the company and check the job description to determine whether you have relevant experience using the listed project management tools. If you don’t find any, discuss common tools when answering this question.
Example: “In previous positions, I used Microsoft Project and Basecamp to manage projects and save time, costs, and energy. I’m also comfortable using Trello to oversee my team’s tasks and delivery timeline. I’m a fast learner who enjoys staying up-to-date with new project management software.”
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Question #: How Do You Ensure That Your Project Meets The Deadline
The purpose of this question is for the hiring manager to see if you can deliver a project on time and on budget. Roadblocks happen, but you’ll have to prove that you’re a skilled planner and can ensure that a project runs smoothly. Think about the following when responding to these project manager interview questions:
- How do you manage your team effectively?
- What is your typical approach to meeting deadlines?
Sample Answer:
“At the start of a project, I make sure that my team has a strong grasp on the scope of the project. Every team member needs to understand their tasks as well as their colleagues. This way, there is less chance for conflict. Then, I’ll move on to scheduling and time management processes to ensure the project is delivered on time. The whole team needs to have easy access to the schedule to avoid confusion. There are times when unforeseen issues arise, but I make sure to check on progress frequently, so if I come across a roadblock, I can deal with it promptly.”
How Have You Improved Project Management Processes At Your Current Firm
Reason to ask: 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 .
Look for someone who has ideas and who isnât afraid to put them forward. Even if their company then decided not to go ahead with the change proposed.
Candidate tips: This is the perfect question to showcase your ability to effect change. Talk about how you identified what needed to be changed with root cause analysis, any stakeholder analysis you did, how you identified the most important tasks and used your organizational skills to deal with common issues in the older process.
If your suggestions were not taken forward, say so. The interviewer will also be looking at your communication style, so if your process improvement ideas didnât happen, try not to come across as bitter about it!
Bad response: âItâs all pretty rubbish there but I havenât bothered to do anything about it as thereâs no point.â
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Focus On Efficiency And Effectively Reaching Goals
A truly successful project manager is able to effectively delegate tasks and use resources to reach their goals. Furthermore, they do so by empoweringâinstead of overly managingâthe members of their team. They must be able to approach and prioritize their tasks in order to manage their time and resources in a way that is efficient and effective. During your interview, make sure that your answers reflect your ability to remain focused during stressful situations.
What Are The Steps That You Will Take To Do Risk Planning
Effective risk planning is central to the success of a project by minimizing threats and maximizing opportunities. The steps involved in risk planning are:
- Discovering risks
Source: ownerteamconsult.com
Risk planning compiles all the risk events, their probabilities, impact, and response plan that will serve as a reference point for establishing cost estimates and project schedules.
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How Will You Avoid Gold Plating
Gold plating in project management terminology is when a team member or manager adds extra functionality not defined in the project scope to showcase their skills. The interviewer asks this question to check how you handle team members who do not follow instructions.
Example:”I am always on the lookout for signs of gold plating. If I encounter any extra functionality, I will speak directly with the concerned team member. I will instruct them not to add extra functions without getting approval from the client first.”
Why Should We Hire You
What They Want to Know: Hiring managers who ask this question want to know why you would be the best person for the job so youll need to give them a persuasive sales pitch. Try to describe at least five qualifications that you would bring to the position, quantifying them with percentages if you can.
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Project Manager Interview Question #1: What Are The Three Words That Describe You Best
Hint: Do not risk your next PM Job Interview! Attend in PM Mock Interview sessions, see how you perform, and improve your PM interview skills.
When answering this project manager interview question, try to remember your positive attitudes and what your colleagues say about your work behavior.
The following can be a good sample answer to this interview question.
The best three words that would describe me can be discipline, result-driven and analytical thinker.
My colleagues call me German. I am not a German you know it J. They tell that I am working in a very well discipline, record every detail and approach in a systematic way to the problems in the project.
When I am working on a project or task, I always keep in mind that âwhat is the expected result?â Sometimes, if you forget what you are trying to achieve, you can deviate from your targets. Therefore, keeping in mind the expected results help me to focus on what needs to be done during the project.
I try to rationalize status, progress and alternative solutions to a problem. I do this by approaching analytically to a problem. For instance, I create dashboards for waiting issues, waiting time, assignee etc in a project to monitor how well the project team is resolving issues. Similarly, I record the number of codes each developer produces a day to forecast remaining activities in the project.
Can You Briefly Describe A Successful Project You Handled
Interviewers ask this question to evaluate your ability to plan and execute projects successfully. It offers you the opportunity to show that you understand the required steps for project success.
Example: “My most successful project was designing a website for an online sales company last year. I worked on a similar project before, so I was confident I could meet the delivery timeline and budget requirements. After meeting with the project owners, I explained the concept to my team and assigned tasks.
I divided the project into five milestones – ideation, content creation, programming and UI designing, testing, and launching. My team completed the project two weeks before the deadline and we received excellent feedback. To date, the client still uses the website, and it helped them increase their profits. The key to success was planning the project effectively and delegating responsibilities based on my team’s strengths.”
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What According To You Is An Important Skill For A Project Manager To Succeed
Well, if you are a project manager you might already be thinking that there cant be one skill that is enough to be successful. And, you are right. Your answer could be leadership skills, communication skills, or time management skills. What the interviewer is looking for is the justification for the answer. So, before you blurt out anything, have your reasons ready.
What Are Your Career And Project Goals For The Next Six Months
Be honest about any short-term project goals you have currently, as this shows the interviewer that you are enthusiastic about your projects and that youre goal-oriented. When it comes to discussing your career goals, be sure to include the company youre interviewing with as part of your goals. If youre interviewing with a recruiter for job placement, you may not have a specific company in mind, and thats okayjust be sure to be clear about what type of role you see yourself working in.
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How To Interview For A Management Position Without Experience
Are you worried you don’t have enough experience to interview for a management role? You may be more qualified than you think.
You know you’re ready to take on your first management position, but you don’t have any actual management experience or do you? Depending on your specific roles and tasks, there’s a good chance that your current skills are a solid base for taking on management responsibilities.
Knowing how to interview for a management position means knowing the right way to present both yourself and your experience during the job interview. Done well, a hiring manager or employer will be convinced you’re ready for management even when your experience doesn’t necessarily align with the job description.
Did Your Colleagues Or Your Manager Ever Challenge Your Decisions
Many people think that its better to say no to this question and move on to the next. But, disagreements in projects are quite common. So, it is extremely unlikely nobody disagreed with your decisions . So, its better to say yes and go on to describe how you handled the situation. Show that you are a person who can take feedback constructively and can take everybody along with you in a collaborative manner.
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How Did You Handle Mistakes You Made When Managing A Project
Everyone makes mistakes, including project managers. You can learn a lot about a candidate by asking about where they stumbled. It can help you understand how the candidate deals with mistakes and learns from them. The question can also give you a sense of the candidate’s character, honesty, maturity and willingness to take responsibility for their actions.
Interviewer tips
Encourage candidates to discuss specific incidents. There are no wrong answers, but be wary of candidates who can’t come up with examples. It could indicate a lack of honesty or integrity on their part, or it might mean they’re not aware of their own mistakes, which is just as bad.
An example of a good candidate answer
One of the biggest mistakes I made was on a large project that included several working parts. When defining the milestones, I failed to account for the effort needed to integrate the various components and test that integration. As a result, I didn’t allow enough time in the schedule to complete the project, and I had to call a meeting to inform everyone of what had happened and how, because of my mistake, we might miss our delivery. It was a difficult admission, but just putting it out there was let us move ahead to a solution. After that, I’m more careful to set realistic milestones and schedules.
Suppose The Project Has Gone Off The Rails What Steps Would You Take To Get It Back On Track
Once you realize a project is not going as per the pre-planned time, budget, scope, or goals, the next top priority is to get it back on track. The project manager should be efficient enough to take the necessary steps to resolve the discrepancy between actual progress and planned progress. Your answer to this project management interview question may include re-adjusting resource management, finding the real cause of off-tracking, putting in extra effort, and more.
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What Are The Basic Stages Of The Project Lifecycle
This question will give you the opportunity to assess the candidate’s knowledge of the main stages of the project lifecycle. The candidate does not need to go into elaborate details about each stage, but they should demonstrate conceptual knowledge of each one and tie them back to their own experiences.
A candidate might discuss a specific project, describe how project management tools helped move the project forward or outline a strategy for addressing one or more stages. Regardless of the approach, the individual should be able to demonstrate knowledge of the entire project management process.
Interviewer tips
The exact terminology might differ among candidates, depending on whether their background is in software development or some other IT area, but they should be conceptually close to these five stages: initiation, planning, execution, management and review. For example, some candidates might refer to the management stage as quality control or monitoring and control, or they might refer to the final stage as completion or closing.
An example of a good candidate answer
I typically begin a project with the initiation stage. I get an idea of the project’s scope by interviewing stakeholders and conducting any necessary research. At the same time, I identify the resources we’ll need. I also perform a feasibility analysis and take any other steps to prepare for the next steps.