Eight
months back, I was enthusiastically looking for a job change and appeared in
discussions with various IT companies in Delhi and NCR. I have listed Interview
questions based on my experiences in job discussions. I was able to get an
offer letter from three fabled IT companies with just one month of preparation.
There are a lot of scenario-based questions, and the interviewer wants to know
how you fit in their requirement. Below is the list of common Project
Management Interview questions.
(There
are lot of Agile Methodology related questions that I have posted separately.
You can refer the link below
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scrum-master-interview-questions-abhishek-prasoon-pmp-/)
Generic
Questions
1. Can you explain your current
project, and what is your role and responsibility in the project? The
interviewer tries to understand what kind of projects have you worked earlier
on, nature of the project, duration of the project, project cost, technologies
used and client information
2. What is your day to day activity?
Where do you spend most of your time each day?
3. When was the last time you did
coding / how much are you involved in the technical decisions of the project?
Do you also participate in other technical activities?
4. What amount of time do you spend
in Management and Technology?
5. Are you also involved in Pre
Sales activities?
6. Do you participate in Project
audit? If yes, what are the parameters of a project audit?
7. Do you manage a single project or
multiple projects?
8. Why did you want to change your
current organisation?
9. What are the latest technology
trends in the industry?
10. What is your team size and
structure? What is your position in the organisational hierarchy?
11. What are the project management
tools/softwares you have used?
12. Did you ever fire anybody? If
yes, then share the scenario.
13. How do you manage arrogant and
overconfident team member?
14. How PMP and other project
management certifications help you?
15. How is Government project
different from the corporate project?
16. What is the difference between
Project management and Product Management?
17. Do you know what is expected of
you, as a Delivery Manager?
18. Have you managed remote teams and
outsourced resources?
19. What's the biggest mistake you've
made on a project?
20. Have you worked on overseas
projects / US projects?
21. Are you open to working in night
shift?
22. Are you ready to work on a
contract?
23. Are you open to travel? Or
long/short term relocation?
24. Where do you see yourself after
five years?
25. Which is more important - team or
client?
26. How do you handle office
politics?
27. Do you write article or blog and
respond to questions on various knowledge-sharing platforms?
28. How do you balance work, family
and learnings?
29. Describe your "out of the
box" initiative or value addition in your past projects?
30. What do you do in your leisure
time? What are your hobbies?
31. What are your weaknesses and
strengths?
32. Have you ever made a mistake as a
Project manager?
33. Tell me about your career path,
and what brought you to Project Management? (In one of the HR rounds, the HR
manager discussed my entire Student and Professional life)
34. Why do you want to work with this
company?
35. Do you have any questions?
Project
Management Skill Questions
36. Case study based questions – They
provided me with a real-life project scenario and asked me to provide a project
plan of it.
37. What is the difference between
Agile and Waterfall Methodologies?
38. What is the difference among
Project, Program and Portfolio?
39. What are the essential skills of
a Project Manager?
40. Are you also into vendor
management? If yes, what kind of vendors?
41. If I assign you a project, which
is already in the execution phase, what is the information you will acquire
first? How will you start it?
42. How do you estimate project
duration and cost? What are the different estimation techniques?
43. What are the challenges you faced
during the project execution?
44. You have people in your team who
do not meet their deadlines or do not perform. What are the actions you will
take?
45. Can you explain the concept of
baseline in software project management?
46. What does a project plan consist?
47. How do you manage a change
request in your project?
48. Can you explain the traceability
matrix?
49. What is configuration management?
50. Have you worked in the greenfield
project? How will you start a project? What are the necessary activities and
actions you perform when starting a project?
51. You have a team member who did
not meet his deadlines. How do you handle it?
52. How do you motivate your team
members?
53. In your team, you have highly
talented people. How do you handle their motivation?
54. How do you balance between
underperforming and outperforming people?
55. One of your team members is
asking for a salary hike. How will you handle it?
56. List out some of the significant
risks of your project. How did you plan your risks? What are the different
risks mitigation techniques?
57. Can you explain WBS?
58. How do you allocate resources?
59. Can you explain the Critical
path? What do you do if you have multiple critical paths in your project?
60. Can you explain Float and Slack?
61. How you manage scope creep and
gold plating?
62. What are the metrics you have
used to track your project progress? What are the parameters you share with
your supervisor for project health?
63. How do you ensure smooth user
acceptance?
64. How do you develop your team and
motivate them?
65. How do you analyse bugs or
incidents which are logged in bug tracker?
66. When do you know the project is
going off-track, and what is your next step?
67. How do you determine the
performance appraisal of your team members? What performance metrics do you use
to evaluate your team members?
68. What are the different types of
contracts?
69. How do you communicate delay,
missed deadline or failure to the customer?
70. How do you deal with rude
clients?
71. How do you manage conflicts
between two members or among the team?
72. What is the difference between
Risks and Issues?
73. How do you perform RCA of the
issue?
Technical
Skill Questions
Good
technical skill is one of the main criteria of the evolution of IT Project
Manager. Technical questions depend on your project and the specialisation on a
particular technology. I will post a separate article to cater to all these
questions. Few of them are:
74. What technologies have you used
earlier in your project? On what basis do you select the technology?
75. What is the software requirements
specification?
76. Scenario-based questions like
have you ever worked in data migration project?
77. Do you use Automation in your
project? If yes, what are the tools you have used?
78. Do you use CI/CD Pipeline in your
project?
79. Do you use Cloud Services /
Azure?
80. Can you draw an architecture of
your project?
Reasoning
ability and Psychosomatic Questions
In a few
organisations, I have been asked the questions related to Reasoning ability, IQ
and EQ. They also want to check how psychologically stable are you.
There is
no boundary of questions for the IT Project manager profile. Prospective
Employer may ask any type of questions. Project Manager is a very responsible
position, and complete project success depends on him/her, so the employers
don't want to take any risks. They need somebody intelligent, honest, flexible,
stable, smart, leading and technically knowledgeable. Excellent communication
skills are also the major criteria, so be careful about your Grammar and
Fluency while answering the question. If you don't know any answer, simply say
"I don't know"- don't provide any false or misleading information.
For example, if you have a gap in between academics or jobs, mention as it is
and prepare a suitable explanation of it. I hope these questions will help you
while preparing for your interview. All the best!
Please
mention your interview questions in the comment section.
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