image: Vancouver Film School (cc)

Project management is not an easy task. According to Gartner Survey, 70% of organisations implementing PMOs report that project success rates have improved significantly as a result.

As a project manager, you’ll be in the middle of a triangle formed by the company’s management, the staff and the clients. Your responsibilities will include costs, schedules, workflow and customer experience –and you’ll have to make the right decisions to make sure everything runs smoothly.

To tackle a project management position, you will need technical knowledge (depending on each particular project), a business-oriented mind and great social and communication skills.

Knowing that, expect the hiring manager to focus the interview not only in general topics, but also mainly on behavioral questions –the type of questions you have to answer using your own previous experience i.e. asking about your reactions to specific real life scenarios.

In order to prepare for this interview, it would be good to start recalling your experiences and creating your own story. Ask yourself: which projects have you worked on and what problems you encountered? How did you face those problems? What decisions did you make and what were the results?

Aside from that mental exercise, you will have to really research your prospective employer and wonder about the kinds of questions you will be asked for this specific role.

To get you started, we have prepared a list of 10 questions you may get asked in an interview for a Project Manager position. Let’s go through them.

1. What project management methodologies are you most familiar with?

Whether you use a specific software, follow the guidelines of some book or just have years of experience, you must have a methodology. Describe your method accurately and explain why you think it would fit to that particular project. Don’t hold out from sharing experiences. Make sure to read up and research more about these.

2. How do you plan a schedule/workflow for a project?

For this question, you could explain how have you done it on previous projects and how you think you could adapt it to this particular project. It is important to note what services, if any, you have used to manage tasks. For example, Trello is an easy to use and convenient way of managing workflow. Try to be familiar with at least one tool.

3. Give me an example of team motivation tactics.

Give real examples of previous projects you have worked on. If you have experience with specially unmotivated teams or team member, you should explain how you handled it. But, also, it may be a good idea to focus your answer on the strategies you follow to keep your team members motivated during a long term project. In brief: what do you do to get the best out of your team? Also, what keeps you motivated? If you think about it in that sense, it will probably help you answer this question.

4. Have you worked with a distributed team? How did you organize it?

Working with a distributed team can be tricky. Explain how you organized schedules when your team members live in different day times. List the communication channels that you know how to use and describe the results. If you’ve never worked for a distributed team, show the recruiter you’re not afraid of challenges. It would be helpful to read on use cases beforehand. The Buffer team does a great job with this, you should check out their recommendations to keep your remote company on track.

5. How do you handle different points of view inside your team?

Different points of view are not rare at all and, in some occasions, they can lead to rough arguments between the team members. How would you handle this? For this question, it is good to explain your previous experiences and detail the decisions you have made along with their consequences. Also, it would be good to share examples, I can’t stress it enough. If you have had different points of view with a company manager or another team member, don’t be afraid to share it. How did or would you handle differences?

6. Share an example of a time some manager wanted to change someone in your team. What did you do?

Has it ever happened to you that the company manager made changes to the team that you didn’t agree with? Or maybe you needed to prescind of a specific team member? Share how you handle these types of changes, how do you communicate it to the rest of the team and to those team members affected directly by the changes. Also, explain some of the reasons why a team would need some switching. It would be good to also note the steps you took or would take to make sure workflow and team stability were not affected.

7. What were the biggest challenges on your last project?

Describe the difficulties you went through on your last project, the way you faced them and what you learned from them. Explain your ideas to avoid or minimize those problems in future projects.

8. Have you worked on any unsuccessful projects? What happened? Would you change any of the decisions you took?

Don’t be afraid of talking about unsuccessful projects. And don’t lie. Describe the project and the causes that led it to fail, explain what would you have changed and take responsibility for your own actions. Don’t put all the blame on others: show you have learned from your mistakes so you won’t repeat them.

9. How do you prioritize projects?

With several projects running at the same time, as a project manager you’ll have to decide which project to prioritize –and your opinion may significantly differ from that of the CEO. Explain to the hiring manager which criteria do you use to prioritize a project. Do you give more value to ROI? Budget? Human Resources? Deadlines?…

10. How do you measure and define success in project management?

We all have an intuitive sense of what’s successful and what’s not, but the truth is success can be a very elusive concept and, as a project manager, you have to put it on numbers and figures. Describe your definition of “success” and detail the criteria and the tools you use to measure it. Give some examples of how you have measured success on previous projects.

JobFluent’s suggestion!

Transmit confidence and security by asking your own questions. Here are a couple of examples:

1. May I use my own tools?

2. Will I be able to work and take decisions with total autonomy?

3. Will I be able to take decisions about my team members?

4. How often will I have to report and whom?