Project Management Interview Questions


Introduction:

The role of a project manager is most important role within any project life cycle, since he is the person who manages projects based on time-schedule, quality and budget. The key responsibility area of a PM is to get the job done by delegating the work to others. It is therefore imperative for a project manager to have technical, financial and business development knowledge and skills.

This article provides a 25 best project management interview questions for a project manager (PMO):

  1. How would you start a project?
  2. What are three critically important things that must be done by a project manager in order for the project to succeed?
  3. List the metrics that need to be used to determine the on-going success of your project?
  4. How are non-productive team members handled?
  5. How are team members who are burned out or bored motivated?
  6. What are your career goals? How do you see this job affecting your goals?
  7. Have you ever faced any disagreements in your previous job? How did you solve it out?
  8. What experience have you had in project management?
  9. Five signs that indicate your project may fail
  10. When assigned with a project, what steps do you take to complete the project?
  11. Your three month project is about to exceed the projected budget after the first month. What steps will you take to address the potential cost overrun?
  12. This assignment will require interacting with different types of people (specify the group). What experience do you have working with such people?
  13. Companies have historically looked at technical skills, but more and more business managers are realizing that not have “people” skills tend to cripple projects.
  14. In today’s business environment, what does it mean to be loyal to your manager? Is it particularly important?
  15. A successful project in which you participated and how you contributed to the success of that project.
  16. The skills you will be looking at if you have to hire a project manager.
  17. A team without a proper hierarchy has a couple of good techies in the project that has same skills and experience. It there is a conflict between two of them since both are good technically and very important to the project, how do you handle conflict between them?
  18. What kind of resources would you hire for a particular project?
  19. How do you get your team working on the same project goal?
  20. How well do you think you can negotiate with middle and senior resource managers when interests conflict?
  21. How would you motivate and manage a matrixed team, where the people on your team do not work for you?
  22. What is the project management structure in your project? Is a PL assigned to the project?
  23. When you come in to the office, how do you know what you have to do during the day?
  24. How can you verify that the requirements identified for a project are actually included in the final delivery to the users?
  25. List the main objectives of a project manager