A COLLECTION OF INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR

Project Management Professionals

When interviewing a Project Manager, it’s important to set

up the discussion for the first couple of minutes in an open
dialogue. Talk about the project involved and how you plan
to measure and monitor performance. Be open and honest
about key performance indicators. Explain the work
environment and deliverables for the project. Describe any
special conditions that might be unique to the project.
Mention details such as travel requirements, unique risks,
whether it’s a high pressure job, etc.

This guide will assist with the second portion of the interview. It will help you understand the
candidate’s skills and experience as a Project Manager. Pick and choose the questions that
make the most sense based on your requirements.

INITIAL QUESTIONS to start the interview

 What type of projects have you managed? Were they product- or service-based projects?
 Describe the nature, scope, duration, and size of budget of the largest project you managed.
 Have you managed a product-based project and a service-based project? What were the
distinct challenges and complexities in each context?
 Highlight one of the projects you are most proud of.
 How did you celebrate accomplishing a milestone with your team?
 What was the last course taken or certification acquired pertaining to project management?

PRE-PROJECT DOCUMENT DEVELOPMENT

 Do you have experience on pre-project approval documentation? If so, what type of
documentation (statement of requirements, scope statement, business case, feasibility
study)?
 Have you been part of a project or managed a project, in which the statement of require-
ments was ineffective or incomplete? How did you handle this situation? What was the result?
 What steps have you taken to make requirements and scope more explicit to all concerned
from the outset?
 Were you involved in preparing the cost benefits analysis, total cost of ownership (TCO),
benefits realization and return-on-investments portions of the business case?
 Were you successful in garnering support and approval for the project?
 How do you work with your sponsors and senior-level executives?
 What is your engagement, communication and reporting style?
 Targeted Interview Questions
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS

ORGANIZATIONAL INFLUENCES GOVERNANCE

 What types of project organization have  What is your familiarity with governance?
you worked on (functional, weak, matrix,  How did you align your last project with
balanced matrix, strong matrix, project- the business strategy?
based, etc.)?
 Do you have experience developing a
 What were the challenges and how did project governance framework on any of
you overcome those challenges? your projects?
 What was the structure of the organization  Have you used Gating Methodology?
you worked for? How many departments Please explain the process and how
and / or management team members many gates were used?
were involved in the project you
managed?  How did you manage projects where the
governance role is shared by multiple
 What impact did corporate culture have stakeholders?
on the projects you managed?
 As a PM, please explain each of the
 What impact did the physical environment three integrated elements including
play (i.e. open concept vs. individual oversight, operational management, and
offices)? Please explain. operational control.
 Describe how accurate the following  Was a governance committee used to
statement is “People don’t like to be manage the change control process?
managed, they like to be led”.

STAKEHOLDERS PROJECT APPROVAL

 A project manager should DOCUMENT DEVELOPMENT
manage the influences of the  Have you been part of the
various stakeholders in relation to the project approval process prior to the
project requirements to ensure a kick-off of a project?
successful outcome. How do you manage
stakeholder expectations?  Have you developed a full project
charter? Were you part of the
 How have you handled competing
development?
expectations?
 What elements do you typically include
 Stakeholder identification is critical to the
within the project charter?
success of the project. How have you
successfully identified these stakeholders  What are some of the success metrics you
without having late recognition that can have detailed within the project charter?
lead to project issues?
 Have you developed or are you
 Has there been a time where a stakehold- familiar with Agreements, i.e. MOUs, SLAs,
er would not approve a deliverable? How Letters of Intent?
was that handled and resolved?

Interview Guide Page 2

Targeted Interview Questions
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
 Have you developed a project
management plan?
 Can you tell me about a project you
managed that consisted of multiple work
streams? Please describe the work
streams.
COST MANAGEMENT
 Please cite a project where the Project  Did your projects include baselines for
Management Plan consisted of multiple costs and schedules?
work streams, and please describe the
various work streams. (Note: Project  Please explain what critical path means
management in itself is a key work stream and why it’s important?
in a successful project)
 Do you have experience with the
 Did you use the PMBOK to guide the Critical Path Method or Chain? If so,
process for development of these plans? please explain how you designed and
interacted with it.
 Did your Project Management Plan in-
clude subsidiary plans? If so, which ones  Please explain resource levelling, and
did you develop? why it is important.
 Did you include Baseline Plans (Scope,  Did you utilize resource levelling? How
Schedule, Costs) as additional subsidiary did this impact the outcome of the
plans? project?

SCOPE MANAGEMENT  To your knowledge, how are critical

path and resource levelling linked?
 What type of tools and techniques do
you have experience using to collect the  Has lack of funding or lack of personnel
requirements and scope of a project had an impact on the critical path?
(focus groups, interviews, facilitated
workshops, etc.)?  What type of reports did you use to
provide status updates to project
 Did you utilize a Requirements Traceability stakeholders (bar charts, network
Matrix? Why or why not? If you didn’t, diagrams)?
how did you ensure requirements were
delivered at the end of the project?  Were you responsible for estimating
costs and determining the budget as
 How did you verify that the elements part of the cost management plan?
included in the Statement of Requirements
were successfully achieved? How did you  What are some of the tools and tech-
ensure that the scope of the project niques you used to control the costs?
delivered what was intended?
 Are you familiar with forecasting and
 Have you created a Work Breakdown utilizing the common methods and
Structure (WBS)? Did you also develop a formulas (i.e. Estimate at Completion or
WBS Dictionary? Budget at Completion)?

Interview Guide Page 3

Targeted Interview Questions
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN CONTINUED...

QUALITY MANAGEMENT
 As part of Quality Management, what are the quality PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
tools that you have experience using on projects  What are the elements of a
(e.g. cause-and-effect diagrams, flowcharts, Pareto successful Performance
diagrams, control charts, etc.)? Management Framework?
 What are some of the tools you have used in performing
 Using a project you have
quality assurance? (e.g. Affinity diagrams, tree
worked on, explain the
diagrams, activity network diagrams, etc.)
difference between
 Have quality audits been performed on any projects you performance targets,
have worked on? Were they conducted internally or measures and indicators.
externally? Were the findings favourable? If not, was
there a breakdown in a process? Was there an oversight  How do you see Quality
on your part? Management as different or
the same as Performance
 As part of quality management, did you implement a
Management?
formal change-control process on your project?

HUMAN RESOURCES
 What does the acronym RACI mean (responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed)?

 Are you familiar with the use and development of a RACI Matrix? Was it used on your project?

 What is a RACI chart and how have you relied on this in the past?

 How have you found RACI contributed to project oversight, management and control?

 What elements do you consider when building a team for a specific project? How do you
determine the number of resources required?

 Have you ever encountered a need to add additional resources mid-way through a project?
If so, how did you integrate them into the team and catch them up on the project’s status.

 Have you had to deal with conflict and how have you managed the
conflicts? What methods have you used with your team to reduce or
manage conflict?

 When managing a project, how have you had success transferring

your knowledge with regards to the methods and techniques used?
What projects required particular knowledge transfer, and what
methods or techniques did you rely on to make this happen?

Interview Guide Page 4

 Targeted Interview Questions
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS

ISSUE & RISK MANAGEMENT

 Do you have experience with issue and risk management on a project?
How would you differentiate the two?
 What was your role in identifying the issues / risks and performing the analysis?
 Describe a project that had high risks and how you offered a strategy to minimize those risks?
 Did you have a separate Risk Manager on your project? If so, how did you discuss issues / risks?
 Who was responsible for controlling the issues/risks?
 Issues and Risks are birds of the same feather, and yet not quite the same. What do you see as
the difference, and how did you manage each one separately?

Risks are things that could potentially/probably occur; so we need to put in place strategies/
plans to mitigate or eliminate the potential risks as they arise.

Issues are risks that we KNOW will occur (i.e. 100% probability); therefore, we need to deal with
them immediately and not wait for them to happen.

PROJECT LIFECYCLE
 Have you managed a project throughout its full lifecycle from beginning to the end?

 Enumerate the projects you managed from start to end? Which one was most successful? Which
one was least successful and in what regard?

 Did you bring samples of your work, templates or plans that you completed in your last assignment?
Have you written any publications or samples of templates for things that you have done?

PROCUREMENT MANAGEMENT STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT

 As the project manager, were  What are the tools and techniques you
you responsible for procure- have successfully used to manage your
ment? If so, what aspects? stakeholders expectations?
What role did you play in  What roles have stakeholders held when
procurement on your projects? developing a governance framework?
What was being procured?
 How have you overcome resistance?
 Have you prepared a Statement of Work
 What is your communication style with
for technical resources that were used in
stakeholders that is most effective?
procurement solicitations with the purpose
of utilizing contract resources to support  How do you perform effective
the project? stakeholder engagement?

Interview Guide Page 5

 Targeted Interview Questions
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS

IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT
INFRASTRUCTURE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
 Explain your experience in managing  Why is the Software Development Life
server consolidations? Cycle important?

 Explain your experience in planning and  Describe your background in AGILE or other
managing data center migrations or SDLC methodologies.
consolidations?
 Do you prefer the Agile or waterfall
 What were some of the challenges your methodology? Why?
project team encountered and how did  What does project velocity mean?
you work around them?
 What PM tools were used on your project?
 Explain your experience managing
projects involving server consolidation  What would you do if you found a major
where physical servers were converted glitch in the development cycle during the
to a virtual platform? testing phase?

 What virtualization platform was used  Describe how to modify a design that
and how were the hypervisor servers requires rewriting your initial thoughts on
configured for high availability? how a program would run.

 Are you responsible for delivery and

 What type of shared storage was used?
financials or just the administration of the
 Explain your experience handling the project? Tell me about your recent project’s
refresh of an applications stack from the goals and results.
application down to the infrastructure?
 How would you manage one element of a
For example: refreshing the hardware,
project being late and resulting in another
operating system, middleware and
element being delayed?
reinstalling and configuring the
application. How did you plan this?  Did you utilize a formal gating methodology
to move through the different phases of the
 What were some of the challenges? project? How many gates were used?
Explain your views on the gating process.

PMP VS PRINCE2
There are many different Project Management Certifications that can be attained. Two of the most
popular are the PMP and the Prince2 from the Project Management Institute. What are the differences?

The PMP certification is based on the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) Standard and
is not a methodology.

The Prince2 certification is a methodology with a detailed process model and templates. It uses
step-by-step guidance on how to organize and run a project.

Interview Guide Page 6

Targeted Interview Questions
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
 COMMUNICATION: Communication is identified as one of the
single biggest reasons for project success or failure. What tools /
strategies do you apply for effective communication with your
project team, other managers, stakeholders, etc.?

 LEADERSHIP: Effective leadership is critical in achieving a high

performing team. How do you effectively focus a team’s efforts
towards a common goal? What is your style of leadership? For
example: trust and respect vs fear and submission, etc.

 TEAM BUILDING: The result of good leadership and team building is teamwork. What type
of activities and/or how have you managed the team environment to obtain team
commitment and quality performance?

 MOTIVATION: A project team’s commitment is related to motivation. What type of

strategies have you used to keep motivation throughout a project? What did you do with a
team member or subordinate who was plainly not motivated? How have you been able to
get team members to cooperate towards common goals?

 DECISION MAKING: There are four basic styles: command, consultation, consensus and
random. How many of these styles have you had to use and what success have you had or
not?

 CONFLICT MANAGEMENT: Managing conflict is one of the biggest challenges a PM faces.

For example: competition for resources, breakdowns in communications, etc. How have
you managed conflict?

 COACHING: Coaching is used to aid team members in developing or enhancing their skills
or to build new skills required to enable project success. How have you, as a PM, been able
to help the team address poor performance, recognize their potential, etc.? How have you
mentored a junior team member with less experience working on a project? Please explain
your approach.

 NEGOTIATION: Negotiating is integral to PM and increases the chances of project success if

done well. What has worked for you in the past?

 POSITIONAL BARGAINING: Do you have experience with positional bargaining, and if so,
what strategies have you used? What do you see as the difference between “negotiation”
and “positional bargaining”?

 Positional bargaining is based on a ‘quantitative value’, it’s a number with no principal.

 Negotiation includes a set of qualitative principles including the best interest of the group.

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