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Tips: Project Manager Interview Questions

Published on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 - 11:35 AM

Questions That Examine Leadership Potential

1. How do you handle non-productive team members?
2. How do you motivate team members who are burned out, or bored?
3. How do you handle team members who come to you with their personal problems?
4. What are your career goals? How do you see this job affecting your goals?
5. Explain how you operate interdepartmentally.
6. Tell me how you would react to a situation where there was more than one way to accomplish the same task, and there were very strong feelings by others on each position.
7. Consider that you are in a diverse environment, out of your comfort zone. How would you rate your situational leadership style?
8. Give me an example of your leadership involvement where teamwork played an important role.

Questions That Examine Personal Strengths and Weaknesses

9. Why are you interested in this position?
10. Describe what you think it would be like to do this job every day.
11. What do you believe qualifies you for this position?
12. What have you learned from your failures?
13. Of your previous jobs, which one did you enjoy the most? What did you like the most/least? Why? What was your major accomplishment? What was your biggest frustration?
14. Tell me about special projects or training you have had that would be relevant to this job.
15. What are some things that you would not like your job to include?
16. What are your current work plans? Why are you thinking about leaving your present job?
17. Describe an ideal job for you.

Questions That Examine Judgment

18. What would you do if you found out that a contractor was in a conflict of interest situation?
19. If I were to contact your former employee, what would he say about your decision-making abilities?
20. Give me an example of a win-win situation you have negotiated.
21. Tell me about your verbal and written communication ability. How well do you represent yourself to others? What makes you think so?
22. Give me an example of a stressful situation you have been in. How well did you handle it? If you had to do it over again, would you do it differently? How do you deal with stress, pressure, and unreasonable demands?
23. Tell me about a tough decision you had to make?

Questions That Examine Experience

24. Describe what you did at your work place yesterday.
25. How would you solve the following technical problem? (Describe a typical scenario that could occur in the new position.)
26. What strengths did you bring to your last position?
27. Describe how those contributions impacted results?
Linda Zaval, PMP, is the author of "The Project Manager's Toolkit" and President of 20/20 Solutions, Inc. an Oregon based project management consulting company. Ms. Zaval can be reached at ljz2020@conceptcable.com

What area of organizational business objectives is most impacted by projects?