50+ Project Manager Interview Questions

From the sound of it, the job of a project manager sounds like an unnecessary addition to a team, what with the extra costs to accommodate an overbearing figure in the company. But consider it like having a teacher monitoring the students in a class to ensure they are working hard and completing their tasks on time. Moreover, a project manager is the glue that binds different teams together. For any project to succeed, you need various departments like tech, marketing, sales, content, creative, and web dev to come together and deliver the goods under strict deadlines. If they all stay on track, the project is successful. If even one of them fails, the project derails. It’s essential to manage projects efficiently and prepare contingency plans in case anything goes wrong. To help demonstrate your skills as an efficient project manager, here is a list of 50 project manager interview questions:

Q1. Give a brief background of your total industry experience.

Q2. How did you manage challenging projects?

Q3. What’s your leadership style?

Q4. If someone has issues with your leadership style, how would you deal with it?

Q5. How do you communicate with various stakeholders in the project?

Q6. If one or more stakeholders fail to provide the required information, the how would you bridge this gap with the team?

Q7. Do you know how to create project dashboards?

Q8. How do you know when a project is off-track? What will you do to get it back on track?

Q9. Do you have experience managing budgets?

Q10. Do you have experience managing remote teams and outsourced projects?

Q11. How will you manage those team members who are not adhering to the project guidelines?

Q12. If a personal issue arises but a critical project task is underway, how would you manage the two?

Q13. If a stakeholder is being adamant on an unreasonable demand, how would you deal with it?

Q14. Do you seek the help of external resources when required?

Q15. If you are loaded with extra work, then do you delegate some of it?

Q16. What’s the biggest error you have made on a project?

Q17. How would you prioritize different tasks on a project?

Q18. What are the different project management tools you have used?

Q19. What’s your preferred methodology for project management?

Q20. If more than two teams are disagreeing on some issues, how you bring them all to agree?

Q21. What’s the most important skill for a project manager to succeed?

Q22. What’s your approach for a newly-assigned project?

Q23. What are some of the most memorable projects you have handled?

Q24. To be an effective manager, what are the three most important qualities?

Q25. When your colleagues or seniors challenge any decision of yours, how do you handle it?

Q26. Describe in brief the Pareto principle.

Q27. Integrity and ethics vs timely and effective delivery no matter what it takes – what would you prefer?

Q28. What do you do if a product is not to a customer’s liking?

Q29. As a project manager, how would you communicate failure to your team?

Q30. What have been some of the biggest challenges you have faced at work?

Q31. Do you find any people that are difficult to work with?

Q32. How do you keep your team members motivated?

Q33. If there’s a particular project whose domain you are not familiar with, how do you improve your knowledge?

Q34. Why do you want to work with this company?

Q35. How do you handle internal conflicts within the team?

Q36. What’s the difference between risk and issues? What kind of risks might arise in a project?

Q37. Explain the ‘RAID’ concept in project management.

Q38. How do you define the scope of a project?

Q39. What particular steps and best practices do you employ to nurture customer relationships?

Q40. How do you monitor and review the delegated responsibilities?

Q41. What are your short-term and long-term goals?

Q42. Give some examples of proactive decision-making by you that benefited the project.

Q43. What is Work Breakdown Structure (WBD) and how does it affect the work estimates of tasks/activities?

Q44. What’s your ideal job and ideal project?

Q45. What are some key challenges facing the industry today?

Q46. How would you adapt to a Coronavirus like situation in the midst of a project?

Q47. What is EVM (earned value management)?

Q48. Why do you need process improvement plans?

Q49. What is the role of Isikawa/ Fishbone diagrams in determining root causes of risks?

Q50. What is a risk register?

Q51. What are fixed type contracts in procurement processes?

Q52. What are time and material contracts?

Q53. Why do you need a procurement management plan?

Q54. How do you form a team before the start of a project?

Q55. Is there anything you want to ask us?

A project manager needs to be flexible enough to adapt and work across different domains. This might entail an understanding of programming languages like Java or digital marketing techniques like SEO. Learn how you can easily prepare for any hardballs thrown at you with these Java interview questions and SEO interview questions.