interview questions and answers for project management

If you want to be the top candidate for a project manager job. The project manager is often the most important role within any company’s product cycle or project life cycle. make sure you can answer questions about your technical competence, business methodology and interpersonal skills in the job interview.

This article provides wide-ranging project management interview questions and answers for the project manager.

List of project management interview questions

• Tell me about yourself?
• Why did you leave your last job?
• How do you think can you bring in Innovative designs into the project?
• What experience do you have in project management field?
• What have you done to improve your project management knowledge in the last year?
• What have you learned from mistakes on the project management job?
• How to maintain project management job activities?
• What are common risks for project management field? And how to face?
• What are the three constraints on a project?
• What do you do when a project is initiated and given to you and you have a gut feeling the scope is too large for the budget and the timeline?
• What formal project management training have you received, where did you attend, and what have you learned from it?
• How stakeholder expectation is managed?
• How internal and external project risk is managed (quantitatively if possible)
• How would you go about organizing a project that had enterprise wide implications?
• What is your approach to managing projects and how does it vary based on the size and complexity or the project?
• Who should lead projects?
• Who should be accountable for the project’s outcome?
• What was the budget for the largest project you have managed?
• What and where are the policy statements for software project planning?
• Explain the various activities you do (as a PL) when the project is started up.
• 33. What training have you undergone in project planning?
• How did you choose the appropriate lifecycle for your project?
• What are the documents that you will refer to create the plan?
• What is your greatest weakness?
• Tell us about your experience in managing different projects and how this can contribute to our position?
• Describe how you recently managed a diverse project team towards a common goal?
• Describe the most complex project you have managed from start to finish?
• What are some of the project that you handled in the previous job?
• What is the tool that you have used to create project plan?
• What do you think should be the proficiency level of the Project Manager when it comes to technical details of the project?
• How would like the team to be informed of their achievements and goals on a regular basis?
• What are the steps that you would take to improve the competency of team members?
• How does the technical and functional documentation help in managing the project?
• How would you anticipate the risks and hurdles that you might face later in the project development phase?
• What is Monthly Project Management Methodology?
• How do you estimate the effort for your project? Where is the estimation procedure documented?
• What procedures do you follow to arrive at the project schedule?
• What are the five control components of a project?
• What experience have you had in project management?
• Name five signs that indicate your project may fail.
• Tell us about a project in which you participated and your role in that project.
• When you are assigned a project, what steps do you take to complete the project?
• Tell us about a successful project in which you participated and how you contributed to the success of that project.
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• What would you like to get from this new assignment?
• What are two common but major obstacles for a project like this? What would you do in the face of these obstacles to keep your team on schedule?
• Which tool would you use to define, manage and control projects?
• What is risk management and how will you plan risk response?
• What are the methods used for project estimation?
• What methods have you used for estimation?
• What metrics would you expect to use to determine the on-going success of your project?
• How are your soft skills? Can you “sell” the project to a team?
• You have a team member who is not meeting his commitments, what do you do?
• What kind of release management practices do you follow?
• What is velocity? How do you estimate your team’s velocity?
• What is earned value management? Why do you need it?
• Describe the type of manager you prefer.
• What are your team-player qualities? Give examples.
• How do you prioritize your tasks when there isn’t time to complete them all?
• How do you stay focused when faced with a major deadline?
• Are you able to cope with more than one job at a time?
• In your opinion, why do software projects fail?
• How do you start a project?
• How did you do resource allocations?
• What is continuous and staged representation?
• How do you estimate maintenance project and change requests?
• What are all the skills you will be looking at if you have to hire a project manager?
• What is your current role and responsibilities? What did you like most in your current job?
• How does your day normal look like? What are some of challenges you face on a daily basis?
• How do you estimate? What kind of estimation practices do you follow?
• How do you improve your team’s efficiency?
• You are joining as project manager for a team, which already exists. How do you gain respect and loyalty of your team members?
• You are getting Adjusted Function point count. How do you convert it into Effort?
• How do you manage difficult people/problem employees?
• How do you build your teams morale?
• For some reason you’ve encountered a delay on an early phase of your project. What actions can you take to counter the delay?
• What is Function point analysis? Why do you need it?
• How many projects you handled in the past? Deadlines met? On time/ within budget? Obstacles you had to overcome?
• Do you understand milestones, interdependencies? Resource allocation?
• Do you know what Project Software the new company uses and is there training for it?
• Are risk constant through out the project?
• Can you explain different software development life cycles?
• What is triple constraint triangle in project management?
• How is normally a project management plan document organized?
• How do you estimate a project?
• What is the software you have used for project management?
• What are the metrics followed in project management?
• You have people in your team who do not meet there deadlines or do not perform what are the actions you will take?
• What is team building? What are the stages in team building? Do you consider it as an important thing? Why? 
• What are some of your lessons learnt with your previous iteration delivered? How do you use your lessons learnt in your iteration planning?
• Can you describe this company to me as if I were an investor?
• How do you get your team working on the same project goal?
• When you come in to the office, how do you know what you have to do during the day?
• What distinguishes a project from routine operations?
• Do you have any questions?
• Describe what you did in a difficult project environment to get the job done on time and on budget.
• What actions are required for successful executive sponsorship of a project?
• How did you get your last project?
• What were your specific responsibilities?
• What did you like about the project and dislike about the project?
• What did you learn from the project?
• Tell me about a time when you ran into any difficult situations. How did you handle them?
• Tell me about the types of interaction you had with other employees.
• Tell me of an accomplishment you are particularly proud of and what it entailed.
• Do you have people from your past consulting services who would provide a professional reference?
• What other similar consulting or independent contractor services have you rendered?
• Discuss how you would envision working as an independent contractor or consultant for us.
• What conflicting responsibilities will you have?
• What would be your specific goals for this new role as a consultant or independent contractor?
• 5What experience do you have that you think will be helpful?
• This assignment will require a lot of [describe]. Will that be a problem for you?
• This assignment will require interacting with [describe the types of people]. What experience do you have working with such people?

By preparing your answers to common project manager interview questions, you can help the hiring manager appreciate your mix of business acumen, technical competence and people skills needed to expertly manage projects.

Anyway, the key to succeed in the project management interview is to present this philosophy you have and be able to use it effectively and logically in various types of projects. We wish you good luck!