Top 10 project manager interview questions

In this article, we have compiled a list of frequently asked project manager interview questions, which project managers could refer to before their next interview.

According to a report by Glassdoor, a  project manager role is one of the most sought-after jobs in the UK. If you are applying for a project management role, you may be required to qualify through an interview with a recruiting team to determine if you are the best candidate for the job. Though every interview is different, you’re likely to be asked questions regarding your interpersonal skills, technical expertise, and past work experience. 

What does a project manager do?

A project manager (PM) is usually responsible for organising, planning, and executing a project while adhering to budget and scheduling constraints. Good interpersonal skills and leadership qualities are some of the traits preferred in a project manager. In today’s times, project managers can potentially play an important role by promoting digital initiatives and using project management software to optimise processes.

We will now discuss some commonly asked questions during PM interviews.

1. Which skills are the most important for a project manager?

To answer this, you may want to choose abilities that are crucial for being a project manager and highlight skills that you already have. Consider your own career and prior projects, and reflect on why your most successful projects were so successful. Once you have zeroed in on the required skills you feel are important, you may want to explain what is an important characteristic for any PM to possess and why it’s an area in which you thrive. To demonstrate your skills as a project manager, you could ideally showcase a diverse range of your skills, including leadership, communication, negotiation, and time management, to name a few.

2. What types of projects have you worked on in the past?

To answer this question, you may want to describe your past projects’ key details, such as the goals, team size, and how you addressed any challenges you faced. It would be best to consider talking about what went well and be sure to include anything you might have done to improve the outcome. Having some data and statistics on hand to indicate a project’s results might also be helpful in this situation.

3. What is ‘RAID’ in terms of project management?

RAID stands for ‘Risks’, ‘Actions’, ‘Issues’, and ‘Dependencies’, all of which may have a role in a project’s ultimate success or failure. If asked this question, it may help to give specific details of what these components mean individually, such as:

Risks 

These are the potential challenges that may positively or negatively influence the project, causing the final product to deviate from the original deadline. While doing the analysis of the potential risks, it may be crucial for project managers to devise a plan to cope with the risks identified if they occur in the future.

Actions

Actions are the tasks that need to be performed during the project by the team members. During this step, every activity or task which is assigned for completion should be allocated to an owner. Having a task owner ensures that the task status is in a controlled state and that it does not get lost in the shuffle of a busy project.

Issues 

These are the risks that are likely going to affect the project negatively while the project is in the execution phase. The roadblocks that you encounter throughout the project life cycle should be effectively handled or they may cause delays or failure of the project.

Decisions

Decisions   are the actions or tasks you decide to undertake during the course of the project. Ideally, a PM should keep a log of which decisions were made by whom, and why. Every decision made during the project should be tracked and recorded so that teams may use it as a reference for future initiatives.

4. What are the phases of a project life cycle? 

A project management life cycle is a set of activities/tasks that must be completed in order for project objectives or targets to be met. There are usually five stages involved, which we discuss below. 

Phase 1: Initiation  

During this step, it is determined whether or not a project is feasible and if found feasible, the aim of the project is specified. In this phase, the team members figure out the project’s objectives, resources, and scope along with the tasks assigned to them.

Phase 2: Plan 

After the aim of the project is defined, the next step is to move forward to the planning phase which broadly determines how the project will be carried out. During planning, bigger projects are broken down into smaller tasks and a timeline is assigned to each one of those tasks.

Phase 3: Execution

This is the process of putting the project plan into action. This process also entails creating deliverables and meeting client needs. This is one of the most crucial steps since the success or failure of the project is mostly dependent on how efficiently tasks are performed during this phase.

Phase 4: Monitoring and control

This step often runs simultaneously with the execution phase. During the monitoring and control phase, the aim is to check the status of the project and individual tasks and look for any roadblocks. During this phase, project managers are usually in-charge of keeping a check on the expenses to ensure that the project stays within budget. 

Phase 5: Closing 

This is the last step in the project life cycle where the project managers hand over the project documents and final deliverables to the stakeholders and mark the project as closed.

5. How do you manage conflict within your team?

Internal conflicts are likely to arise when a group works together to achieve a common outcome. Project managers may often be required to apply their conflict resolution abilities to handle internal and external issues with stakeholders. PMs may want to ask questions like what is the conflict’s underlying cause? What impact does it have on the project? What can they do to deal with this scenario without causing the staff to get demotivated? 

Your job as the project manager would be to identify if there are disputes within the team. If a conflict arises between two or more project team members, it ideally should be handled as soon as possible. According to an article by Harvard Law School, conflicts can be resolved in a variety of ways, including negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and litigation.

6. What is an ideal project according to you?

This can potentially be an essential project manager interview question as it could convey to the interviewer the kind of projects you’d want to work on. By answering this question with honesty, you may allow an opportunity for your potential employer to assign you the types of initiatives that interest you or in which you feel you could thrive. Your response may include a variety of topics and considerations like if you prefer to work in a group or individually, what type of deadlines you prefer, whether you are interested in new and creative projects, and so on. 

7. How do you manage teams when working from home?

In today’s environment where remote working may be gaining prominence, project managers may possibly select their teams from a global workforce and manage them remotely. In such cases, it may be important to have the knowledge and abilities necessary to collaborate with team members virtually. To answer this question, you should likely emphasise the need to communicate clearly and timely with your team. According to an article by Forbes, providing numerous opportunities for team members to connect with one another across cities, countries, and continents is a terrific approach to create trust and form partnerships.

To boost work productivity, you could also suggest making use of cloud-based project management software and tools. You can also talk about conducting daily/weekly meetings —as per the need— to address project updates and issues, and assign and prioritise tasks. 

8. How do you ensure that your project meets the deadlines? 

Prioritising tasks is possibly an essential step that likely aids in the effective completion of tasks within a specified time frame. For this question, you could talk about checking in with team members on a regular basis to see if there were any roadblocks in the way of meeting the deadline and if so, making it a point to offer alternatives. Meeting deadlines potentially necessitates a careful mix of scope and schedule management. First and foremost —as a PM— you could talk about how you can help make sure that everyone on your team understands the project’s scope and then work on schedule management, which includes the time management practices necessary to finish the project on time.

9. How do you handle scope creep?

One of the primary responsibilities of a project manager is to guarantee that the project stays within budget and on schedule. Scope creep is a term that describes any challenges or roadblocks that cause the team to fall short of their initial goals. For instance, poor communication among team members or constant change requests by clients could lead to delays. In your answer, you should ideally give a specific example of a significant project you oversaw that had a huge scope and saw some unexpected hurdles. Scope creep is typically inadvertent, but it should be addressed quickly to avoid a situation where the team misses a deadline or blows through its budget before the project is completed.

10. Tell us about challenging projects you have managed so far? 

With this question, the interview panel may be looking for examples of how you cope with significant problems and conflicting scenarios during a project. You could concentrate on talking about how you have previously handled external issues such as an abruptly cancelled project or financing that was cut in the middle of a large undertaking.

What’s the key takeaway?

We have listed only some potential project manager interview questions based on our understanding. Of course, there can be many more questions and there usually isn’t be a single correct response to all of the questions. When answering PM interview questions, these suggested answers could act as a guide, but remember to consider your personal experiences, background, skills, and shortcomings. Good luck in your job search!