Welcome to Issue 18 of Project Management Tipoffs, the newsletter from Arras People which concentrates on project management and careers.

Hopefully you'll be feeling a little rested after the holiday season and getting down to some serious work with the new found energy??

In this issue - a bumper edition of interview questions, which of course is useful if you're looking for a new job at the moment but also useful if you're happy in your job and one of your remits is recruiting for additional project staff to join your organisation.

We'll be back early February with a new issue with some early results from the lastest project management benchmark survey. Contribute today if you would like to receive the full report.

As ever, feedback, comments and opinions are welcome, either via the telephone, email or blog us.

Project Management Interview Questions

A few years ago now we created an article in Project Management Tipoffs detailing project management interview questions, it's still a very popular article today - some years later!

In this edition there are generic questions that could apply to both project managers and project support people with more specific questions in the latter part of the article.

1. What kind of Methodologies and tools are you currently using or have you used?

2. How do you direct others to ensure delivery is occurring in accordance to the project plans?

3. Tell me about your experience in managing and developing a team

4. Tell me about your client facing experience

5. What experience of managing small projects have you had?

6. How would you communicate issues to appropriate people?

7. What problem solving tools have you used?

8. How would you monitor actions taken ensuring they are adhered to?

9. Have you had any experience in developing resource plans?

10. How would you go about tracking the resource requirements and ensure resources are in the right place at the right time?

11. How would you cope with complexity and ambiguity?

12. What would you do in order to get people on board with the new ways of working and to help them to manage their activities in a well managed Project Management way?

13. What tools/systems would be most useful for tracking project activities?

14. How do you envisage the majority of your time will be spent in this role?

15. What do you envisage as being the main challenges in this role and how would you propose to overcome these?

16. Describe your previous (or current) position. What percent of your time was spent on each function?

17. What experiences have you had that you would like to emphasise in your next position? What would you care to minimise?

18. How did you prepare yourself for the work that you do?

19. Explain the most complex business process you understand.

20. Has there been a time when you improved a process? What was it? How did you go about making the changes (step by step)?

21. Tell me a time when you were confronted with an unexpected problem? How did you deal with it? What happened?

22. Can you tell me a time when you dealt with a difficult person? How did you handle them? What happened?

23. Can you give an example of a deadline you have had to meet?

24. What has given you the greatest sense of achievement at work? Why?

25. All jobs have frustrations. Can you describe some examples of your job which frustrate you?

26. What standards have you set for yourself in your current position?

27. How have you gone about meeting these standards?

28. Can you provide me with three situations in which you did not succeed and why?

29. Describe a client conflict situation and how you resolved it.

30. Give me an example of a decision you made that impacted the morale of the project team negatively.

31. What are the most important aspects of managing a project?

32. Tell me about a situation where you had to give some particularly bad feedback

33. Describe your method of risk analysis and planning

34. What types of project documentation have you written/participated in writing?

35. Give some examples of when you would escalate an issue to your management instead of resolving it yourself?

Project Manager Interview Questions

1. Tell me about a project you were working on that had a significant change – how did you go about re-planning and which tools assisted you?

2. Tell me about your experience in 3rd party management?

3. What sort of manager would your team say you are? (Mentor/motivate and lead)

4. What kind of Project Manager are you?

5. How do you ensure actions are completed when multi-agencies and organisations are involved in a project?

6. Do you have any portfolio management experience?

7. Tell me more about what kind of projects you have worked on, what stages you were in charge of and what you did?

8. Any knowledge of work or organisational breakdown structuring to ensure effective cost performance measurement?

9. What makes a good project manager?

10. What are essential differences in managing a fixed time / fixed price project versus a Time and Materials project?

11. In what situations would you start a project without a signed contract?

12. What are some basic tools that a project manager needs?

13. How do you manage a team member on a project who is not meeting deadlines?

14. How do you integrate sub-contractors and third parties into a strongly knit team?

15. What are the essential parameters that a project manager can control?

16. What are the most effective ways to prevent / address Scope Creep?

17. Tell me about a situation where project deadlines were not being met due to deficiencies on your team.

18. Tell me about a project you managed that wasn’t quite as successful as you would have liked. What were some of the reasons it fell short of your expectations, and what are some of the things you would do differently now.

19. How do you go about estimating the size of a project?

20. What are some of the creative things you’ve done to reward people on your team for good work?

Project Support Interview Questions

1. What skills do you possess as a programme co-ordinator?

2. What was the last thing you improve upon in your role?

3. How could provide guidance and advice to project managers?

4. How would you demonstrate your knowledge of project management methodologies?

5. Tell me about your experience in scoping projects?

6. How would you track progress on bid activity?

7. How would you handle time management? (pressure/stress)

8. What experience have you had in designing and populating IT systems for the programme office?

9. Throughout a project lifecycle – what was your role?

10. What kind of budget management experience do you have?

11. Project planning – what kind of responsibilities did you have?

12. What kind of reporting have you had to carry out? What kind of tools used?

13. Have you ever written project plans and proposals? Tell me about the role/part you played

14. Tell me about your experience with project management tools? Which tools couldn't you perform your role without?

15. Tell me about your experience of multi-stream planning?

16. What kind of programme / project manager do you prefer to work with?

17. What, in your opinion, are the top three skills a good project co-ordinator needs?

18. Tell me about the last task/activity the project manager delegated to you?

19. Where do you see the concept of programme/project office going in the future?

20. What's the worst thing about working within a project support role?

Previous tipoffs articles with project management interview questions;

Issue 1 - Get Prepared for that PM Interview

Issue 2 - Get Prepared for that Project Support interview

Issue 3 - Project Management Soft Skills Interview Questions

Issue 8 - Project Management Interviews - Short and Sweet