Technical Questions For Project Manager Interview

What Do You Think Is Better

Back up your opinion with certain examples and answer what according to you is right.

Here is one possible answer:

I believe that it is always better to be good and deliver on time. Time is money to the organization. If we are good and on time, then there is always room for improvement and enhancements. But if we deliver it late, then no amount of perfection can make up for the time lost.

Do You Have Any Certifications Thatare Relevant To This Position

There are many software, tools, and programs being invented onthe regular in the project management industry, so it becomes important to stayrelevant and up to date.

Added certifications may not be obligatory but they are a sign of how serious and invested you are in your job, and companies want employees that are fully invested in what they do.

Tip #1: You canalso bring up your interactions with other project managers in the industry, asit shows that you are in touch with what is on the go.

Tip #2: If youhave a career plan as a project manager over the next couple of years and itinvolves getting new certifications, be sure to bring that up.

Sample Answer

I intend to apply for PMP certification. I definitely see myself proceeding with the course within the next few months. I want to move up the ladder, past project management and onto program management and various other opportunities.

I am planning on taking ITIL foundation certification to add to my IT service management skills and a PMI-ACP certification to add to my agile project management skills. I believe that constantly enhancing my skills and applying for new certifications will hone my abilities to manage projects.

What Are The Techniques You May Use To Define The Scope Of A Project

With this question, the interview panel is trying to understand your knowledge in the concerned domain. You can explain these various concepts involved in defining the scope of the project that include Product Breakdown, Requirement Analysis, Systems Engineering, Systems Analysis, Value Engineering, Value Analysis, and Alternatives Analysis.

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Project Manager Interview Questions On Prioritizing And Time Management

A project manager must tackle multiple tasks and issues. To be a successful project manager, you have to choose your 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, Project time management is one of the key skills for any project manager. The following questions are asked to assess whether you are capable of taking up the responsibility for creating efficient ways to execute tasks:

How Do You Prioritize Tasks On A Project

Task management is important. Theres 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 time management and task management decisions.

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What Is Your Leadership Style Of Choice

There are several different leadership styles out there and while some may be more popular than others, there is no right or wrong leadership style. In fact, your team members may benefit from different leadership styles depending on their unique personalities, the projects theyre currently working on, and the challenges theyre facing.

What the question means: While the terms leadership and management are often used interchangeably, not every manager is a leader and not every leader is a manager. If the interviewer asks this question, theyre probably looking for someone who can be bothso its important that you know what your leadership style is.

How to answer: Be sure that you know what different leadership styles entail. Know the risks and benefits of your leadership style so you can confidently answer follow-up questions about your specific leadership skills like:

• As a democratic leader, how do you ensure that your team still trusts you when you make a decision without their input?

• How do you approach conflict resolution as an affiliative leader?

• As a transformational leader, how do you combat pressure your team may feel because of your constant involvement?

• What is your communication style as a transactional leader?

• As a laissez-faire or delegative leader, how do you keep your team on track?

Project Manager Interview Questions On Goal Focus

Being focused on goals is essential for project managers. You need a clear focus to succeed. It is important for candidates to demonstrate the ability to align resources to achieve key objectives, to plan and identify ways to improve and achieve greater efficiency and to monitor and fine-tune execution with agility, hard work, perseverance, and good judgment. Key questions asked in this area are:

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How Do You Keep A Project On Track

A technical project has many moving parts, and keeping it on track is a challenge. This question will assess whether a candidate has the skills to monitor a project effectively, determine when it’s not meeting benchmarks and get it back on track. The question can also help you determine the candidate’s ability to monitor and manage risk. Candidates can demonstrate they’re detail-oriented enough to keep a project moving without micromanaging team members.

Interviewer tips

Encourage candidates to provide examples of how they’ve kept projects on track, as well has how they’ve handled derailed projects. Probe for specific project management tools and techniques they have used to monitor progress and resolve issues.

An example of a good candidate answer

Throughout a project’s lifecycle, I assess progress regularly and determine whether we’re on track to meet benchmarks. For most projects, I do a weekly review of how it’s progressing, although I might assess specific pieces more frequently if there are extenuating circumstances. I frequently check in with team members, either one on one or in team meetings. This approach can alert me to issues I might not have discovered right away. Yesterday, for instance, I learned of a bug in the platform my team is using by asking a few questions in a meeting.

What Will You Do If Any Of The Customers Are Not Happy With The Quality Or Results Of The Product By The End Of The Project

To handle an unhappy customer, you must:

• Show the customers that you value them
• Understand why they are not happy
• Figure out what modifications they want
• Try to incorporate the modifications if possible
• If not possible try to convince and explain to the customer that the project fits in with the agreed scope

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Have You Worked In This Industry Before

Does the candidate have project management experience in your industry? Thats important because they might excel at the project management methods your company uses or may have the right risk management skills to manage your projects. If they dont, its not a game-closer. Much of project management is the same from industry to industry. Perhaps they have strong project management skills that relate to your industry, such as project management software skills even if they dont have direct experience. However, if they do have experience in your field, thats a plus, so ask how those relevant projects panned out. Note how confidently they answer behavioral interview questions. You want an authentic person who is comfortable in the position.

Whats Something You Dont Want Us To Know

Ouch. Yes, you need to go there and make the candidate uncomfortable. Its 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. Youll get a better picture of the person instead of the persona theyre presenting. It also shows their communication skills while under pressure. It might seem cruel, but itll help you get to the heart of the person that youre going to trust with the management of your project.

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What Are The Major Industries In Rochester

Rochester’s high-tech output stands at 20th out of 319 metropolitan areas in the United States. Computer & electronic products, machinery, fabricated metal products, plastic and rubber products, chemical and printing equipment, are some of the significant industries in Rochester. Hence PMP certification training in Rochester will help you get employed over here.

Project Manager Interview Questions To Explore Digital Passion:

• What the coolest digital thing youve seen recently?
• What are people talking about in the world of SEO/Analytics/UX/Coding/Design?
• What was the last bit of tech you bought? Whats good about it? What would you change?
• What is your favourite app? Tell me what you would change about this app?
• How do you personally make sure that you continuously improve?
• Whats your approach to learning and sharing knowledge?

As an interviewer, give the interviewee some slack here theyre probably a bit nervous and some might be a bit of a mind blank. It can be helpful if you prime the conversation with lots of examples to see if they can reciprocate.

As an interviewee, make sure you do some reading. If youre good at your job youll be doing it anyway, but be clear that demonstrating some passion for the industry that youre trying to work in is important. This is an opportunity to talk about any side projects you might have, or volunteer work you do that demonstrate youre not just a 9 5 kind of guy.

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Technical Knowledge Interview Questions

The purpose of these questions is to verify how far your technical knowledge goes. Some positions require less technical know-how while others have a strong focus on the development phase of the product.

If you are interviewing for a company with complex technical solutions, expect to hear several of these questions. Your interview will also have a strong focus on this type of interview question if you are interviewing for a Technical Product Manager position.

• If you could redesign one of our products now, which one would it be? Why?
• How have you previously integrated the development team with the product vision?
• What would you say that separates a product averagely designed to a product exceptionally designed?
• Our engineering team develops products using Agile Scrum methodology . How familiar are you with it?
• How would you describe our product to an engineer that doesnt know the product?
• Have you ever had to cut a product feature even if it would make your product more usable, for priority reasons? How did you convey this to your developing team?
• How do you see the importance of the engineering team as a stakeholder?
• Can you tell me about a technical solution that you designed with engineers that became a commercial product?
• How do you decide what is not worth it to build?
• How do you integrate quality assurance procedures into the products development?
• What strategies do you use to translate strategy aspects into technical requirements?

Explain The Entire Team Forming Process You Follow For Your Team

Developmental stages of the team generally consist of:

• Forming: In this stage, the entire group unites for the first time where the focus is to build relationships within the team and clarify the mission or vision of the project.
• Storming: In this stage, team members get more comfortable in sharing their opinions with the team and with a possibility of internal conflict within the group.
• Norming: In this stage, the project team receives clarity and support on the tasks to proceed with the project.
• Performing: By this stage, the team members learn to trust and accept each other. Each of the team members becomes competent, and autonomous and is able to handle the decision-making process without anyones supervision.
• Adjourning: This is the final stage of the team forming process, which takes place after project completion. In this stage, the team is broken up and resources are released.

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How Have You Managed Challenging Projects

This project manager interview questions will help you see how the candidate tackles problems, deal with conflicts, and lead teams.

You should also get a sense of their problem-solving abilities when working on difficult projects and tight deadlines.

This is also a good chance to see what kind of project management methodologies they prefer such as Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, Kanban, Lean or other types.

Introducing Project Manager Interview Questions And Answers

I wanted to create this guide to interviews and interviewing for project managers because the process can often be a confusing one. Interviews for project managers can take a long time, often with a few rounds of interviews. But its really worth taking the time to hire the right people. Ive been guilty, too many times, in panic hiring and ending up hiring someone who turns out to be totally unsuitable.

As an interviewer, Id really recommend not trying to short-cut this process. Start by working out whether or not the chemistry is right with a candidate ask yourself, can you see yourself and your team working well with this person? Then dive deeper into character is this someone who can be trusted to lead teams and represent the agency well? Finally, do a deep dive into competence to establish someones level have they got the right experience to do the job that we need them to do?

And as an interviewer going through the interview wringer its going to take some time to get through all this, so good luck!

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Do You Have Any Experience With Project Management Tools

All organizations use some sort of project management software and tools. So, it becomes important that a candidate is familiar with using them. You dont need to know all of them, but you should have a solid understanding of a few. Elaborate on what you do know to help the interviewers understand how proficient you are in certain skills. All job descriptions mention the tools they use, so make sure youre aware of what theyre looking for. If you’re familiar with the tools used, great! If not, show your eagerness to learn the software and tools they use. Heres an example:

I have experience using ProofHub. I particularly like it as it eliminates the need to have too many tools. I’ve also had the chance to work in EasyProject. What I like the most about EasyProject is that it can be integrated with Outlook, Project, Excel, and Redmine. Basecamp is one another tool that Im familiar with, and I consider it to be great for collaboration. Im also open and eager to learn any other necessary tools for future projects.

What Is A Weakness You Have With Project Management

Your answer to this question can show your ability to recognize your errors and strive for self-improvement. Briefly describe what weakness you have or had as well as what you have done or are currently doing to fix or strengthen it.

Example:”One weakness that I have is sometimes delegating too much of a task to a single person. While I know someone has the skills to complete a task, there have been times when I have relied on a single person too much. I now try to minimally increase a team member’s workload to ensure the project gets completed successfully.”

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Types Of Tpm Interview Questions

System Design: These interview questions evaluate the ‘technical’ in technical program management. The responsibilities of a technical program manager are a little more big picture than that of a software engineer. For example, these questions are typically focused on system design. In many instances, TPM candidates are asked to think through and design a product’s system architecture.

• Program Sense: As the title suggests, another critical piece of the TPM role is managing programs. These kinds of questions evaluate your ability to think and work through technical dependencies, product context, execution strategy, and impact on a team.
• Cross-functional Partnership: As we mentioned, technical program managers sit at a crossroads between many different teams and departments. Cross-functional partnership questions, then seek to discover your capability at managing these cross-functional relationships.
• Behavioral: Behavioral questions are common in many interviews. Chances are, you’ve been asked plenty of them interviewing for your previous roles. Nevertheless, behavioral interview questions are meant to get to know you better based on how you performed in past roles and situations.

Below, you’ll find several sample questions for each category. We recommend practicing one type of question at a time. That way, you’ll get a better idea of your particular strengths and weaknesses.

We also recommend brushing up on key concepts in our technical interview cheat sheet.

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.

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