Project managers play an essential role in the workplace. They possess the unique combination of skills needed to help companies get as much out of their ongoing projects as possible.
But not all project managers are created equal. There could be a huge swing in your project efficiency depending on whether you hire the right project manager to lead your teams or a subpar candidate.
That’s why it’s so important to ask the right questions during the interview process.
If you’d like to learn more about the best project manager interview questions and answers, keep reading. We’ve put together a list of eight questions that you should be asking in every project management interview you conduct.
1. If you had to rate project management as a career, from 1-10, how would you rate it?
Across America, only 45% of workers say they are either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their jobs. But most companies would prefer to hire someone who loves what they do. This question is designed to help you figure out how your candidates feel about the career of project management.
Someone who answers high on the scale is more likely to be satisfied with the work they do for you. They’re also going to be more likely to stick around and work for you for a long time. If you don’t want to have to keep rehiring project managers, then make this question a part of your interview process.
2. What do you spend most of your time doing each day?
This question will give you a sense of the main tasks that a candidate focuses on each day. They might spend most of their time in front of a computer. Or maybe they’re out and about visiting clients most of the week.
The idea here is to see whether the candidate’s prior experience is similar to what they will be doing for your company if hired. If there’s no alignment here, that’s okay. You will just need to make sure that the applicant can adjust to your way of doing things if hired.
3. What criteria are you using to find your next job?
This question is designed to clue you into what a candidate values in the workplace. There’s no objectively correct or false answer to this question. Rather, you just want to see what their values are and whether those align with what your company offers.
Someone who has the same values as you is more likely to be a good fit than someone who doesn’t.
4. What types of projects do you like to avoid?
All of us like some aspects of our jobs more than others. That’s perfectly natural. But this question will give you a sense of whether or not your applicants’ preferences align with what they would be doing for your company.
Project managers also need to be able to adapt quickly. So, the best candidates should respond to this question in a way that indicates they’re willing to work on whatever’s required, even if some tasks might not be their favorite..
5. Tell me about a time you used a creative problem-solving technique
There are lots of project managers who can do well when traditional solutions are working. It takes a more experienced and unique candidate to get creative in order to help a project run more efficiently.
This question is designed to assess how often and how effectively your applicants use creative problem-solving techniques. You should just be looking for examples of how they’ve used their creativity to add value to projects in the past.
6. What did you do to improve the project management practices at your last company?
You want to hire an applicant who left their last situation better than they found it. This question is designed to help you make that assessment. You should be looking for answers that concretely show how the applicant improved the practices at their last workplace. Vague generalities are a sign that they might not have been as invested as you would want in the success of their previous company.
7. How do you track your team’s performance?
A key function of a project manager is to track their team’s performance. Before you hire someone for your available position, you need to make sure that they’re experienced at this.
There are many different ways to track performance. Most of them are effective enough, even if they’re not your favorite metric. The key here is to just make sure that performance tracking was part of a candidate’s last role, not necessarily that they were using the same metric that you would have used.
8. When and how do you know that a project is off-track?
The best project managers have a sixth sense for when a project is starting to go off the rails. The sooner this determination is made, the sooner it can be resolved.
That’s why it’s a good idea to ask your project management candidates which practices they use to figure out whether a project is getting off-track. A good response will be to provide specific examples of practices and how they’ve been used successfully in the past.
Hiring the right people is easier with Newman’s International Associates
Finding the right people can be tough to do on your own — even if you’ve found and used the best project manager interview questions and answers. One way to make the hiring process easier on yourself is to use a firm like NIA.
NIA was founded by project managers for project managers. We provide you access to a highly-skilled international pool of applicants that can help you get more out of your projects, regardless of where you’re located.
Getting started is as easy as contacting us today. We look forward to hearing from you.
