If you’re a project manager or someone who recruits them, you deeply understand their value.
While project management methodologies drive efficiency and top-notch deliverables, these systems don’t get far without a skilled person to guide them.
These managers set goals, delegate tasks, and mentor teams. They’re motivators and strategic planners. And they have a knack for calculating risk and devising routes that avoid obstacles. That’s why it’s so important to ask and answer project management interview questions that reveal these organization and communication skills.
Whether you’re about to apply for a role in this niche or interview a candidate, these are skills worth discussing in project management, or PM, interview questions.
3 tips for nailing a project manager job interview
The Project Management Institute (PMI)’s 2023 “Pulse of the Profession” report says that soft, interpersonal skills are some of the most important in the modern workplace. And an interview is a candidate's first opportunity to demonstrate them.
Project managers need to answer tough questions on their feet, show confidence and knowledge, and adapt quickly to turns in the conversation. Here are a few more tips on how any interviewee can ace their meeting:
1. Prepare
Practicing your answers to common project manager interview questions is an excellent start, but don’t stop there. According to a report from screening service JDP, the average interviewee spends seven hours alone researching the company.
Research the organization you’re interviewing for and its current initiatives so you can provide tailored responses. Learn project management case studies and use real-world anecdotes to support any answer you give.
On top of your research, set yourself up for success by ironing your outfit the night before, mapping your transit route to an in-person interview, and making sure your video conferencing setup works well if meeting virtually.
2. Ask questions
Project managers must be strong problem-solvers and strategizers. As such, they need to know how to ask good questions to learn more about roadblocks or the scope of a project. Demonstrate your curiosity by asking the interviewer questions throughout the process — not just at the end.
Find out what they admire about the organization or glean more information on the demands of the project manager position. You’ll learn whether the job is a fit and gain an opportunity to demonstrate your active listening skills. During the conversation, maintain eye contact with the interviewer and revisit essential information they shared to show that you retain what you hear.
3. Know your methods
Whether or not an interviewer directly asks what your conflict resolution, problem-solving, or risk mitigation methods are, you should demonstrate coherent strategies in your conversation. This is especially relevant for “Tell me about a time” questions that ask you to reflect on past situations.
If describing a conflict you resolved, you should name the approach you used and how it worked. Structure the anecdote so the interviewer understands how you were assertive but willing to negotiate. And if the strategy you used didn’t work, be honest, instead focusing your answer on what you learned from the experience.
10 project management interview questions
Interviews help employers determine whether a candidate has the hard and soft skills for a job and would be a good fit for the company’s culture. And these meetings give candidates a chance to decide if they could succeed in the role.
With that in mind, interview questions should aim to communicate a company’s values and needs and give candidates a chance to show how they’d support the operation. Hiring managers have to prepare hard-hitting questions, and interviewees must be ready to provide in-depth answers.
Here are 10 project management questions that should surface in every interview, with guidance on why interviewers should ask them and how candidates can answer.
1. “Tell me about yourself.”
This open-ended question is an interview staple and a great icebreaker. It allows an interviewee to tell their story and demonstrate their personality. It’s also a notoriously tricky question because candidates have to structure a pointed answer that aligns their motives and strengths to a project manager role.
Why interviewers should ask this question
This question allows a well-prepared candidate to give you a high-level summary of their skills and professional experience. It might also demonstrate their knowledge of, and interest in, the organization. You’ll quickly infer if the person has researched the company and has the basic skills for the role. Plus, you’ll start learning if the applicant is a cultural fit.
How interviewees should answer
Start by briefly introducing yourself and stating your focus area, like Agile project management, and key career highlights.
Then, describe your professional experience, linking your skills wherever applicable to the role you’re applying to. Round out your answer by looking to the future, providing a few salient points on ways you wish to grow and help the organization do the same.
It’s also a good idea to take a minute and express your personal interests and hobbies. Hiring managers want to know your work experience, but you’re bringing your whole self to work — so show them who you are.
2. “Describe your last project and how it went.”
This situational prompt allows the interviewee to describe their project management style, the size of past teams, and potential successes. It offers a deeper look at their experience and offers a chance to explain growth points or successful moments of quick thinking under pressure.
Why interviewers should ask this question
Solid project manager interview questions and answers hone in on details. It’s one thing for a candidate to generalize their skills and experiences, and another for the person to show their abilities in action. This question allows you to assess how well the applicant explains concepts while understanding their ways of working.
How interviewees should answer
This question lets you show off a bit, so don’t hold back. Head up your answer with a clear description of past project scope, clients, and deliverables, along with any obstacles in your course.
Then, dive into your process. Explain how you created the timeline, assigned work, or reached milestones. If you’re applying for your first project manager role, you can explain how you helped your old team thrive and learned from past managers.
Regardless, reference challenging and rewarding moments and explain your role in resolving issues and motivating your team. Whenever possible, use metrics to back up your statements.
3. “Tell me about a time you resolved an issue in a project.”
This interview question for project managers addresses an inevitability: roadblocks. All teams face setbacks, and their leader must know how to shift the project schedule, prioritize tasks, and communicate changes to a client.
Why interviewers should ask this question
This question is a litmus test. A project manager who struggles to come up with an answer may not have enough experience for the role or isn’t willing to sound vulnerable. But citing and addressing mistakes honestly is essential to any management role — and you want to hire a problem-solver.
How interviewees should answer
If you’re an experienced project manager, you should answer this question using the STAR method. The acronym STAR stands for situation, task, action, and result, bringing structure to the story you’re telling and making it easier for the other person to follow.
Describe the problem, the actions you took to solve it, and the positive outcome you achieved. That way, you build a narrative from beginning to end, demonstrating both your communication skills and past learning experiences.
If you’re a new project manager, ask for a common problem your new team might face and propose a solution. You could also reflect on your role in past project roadblocks, regardless of whether you were the manager at the time.
4. “What does teamwork mean to you?”
Project managers are leaders, but they’re also part of a team. They should be experts in identifying members’ strengths, delegating work to the right people, and managing group conflicts. And as team players, they should be accountable and honest — which is what this question aims to discover.
Why interviewers should ask this question
This behavioral job interview question offers insight into a candidate’s management style and interpersonal skills. You’ll ideally hire someone who can motivate others and foster a healthy work environment, regardless of what their other strengths are. They must also be able to communicate and organize project goals, roles and responsibilities, and timelines.
Listen for responses that show how your interviewee saw someone struggling and reached out to help, or morphed their communication style to express themselves more clearly to colleagues. This gives you a better idea of how they’ll behave on the job and support their project teams.
How interviewees should answer
Use this question to draw on an anecdote of exceptional teamwork. Describe a time your group hit an obstacle and you supported them through it, or how you made a particularly complex project manageable for the team.
You could talk about when your team was burnt out due to increasing scope creep, and you navigated a difficult conversation with the client about sticking to the initial deliverables. Or you could discuss how someone quit a job without warning and you adjusted everyone’s schedule to fill the gap while maintaining morale.
5. “Describe how you prioritize tasks.”
Project management is largely an act of prioritization. Managers sift through a backlog of tasks to determine what the team can do with its current resources. When the team hits a setback, a good project manager jumps to reprioritize tasks and mitigate negative impacts like timeline delays or excessive workloads.
Why interviewers should ask this question
Project managers support their team, but they also answer to stakeholders. You want to hire someone who knows how to prioritize the critical path but avoid over-tasking those performing the work. The goal of this question is to determine whether the applicant understands this delicate balance.
This question also gives you a clearer idea of their methodology and project management tools. If they use Agile, they might describe their handle on backlog grooming, sprint planning, and prioritizing feature testing or rework.
How interviewees should answer
Start by stating your prioritization process before moving into a real-life example. Explain how you respect deadlines and streamline work for your team with accurate effort and time projections.
Perhaps you use story points, a technique for determining the weight of tasks, to decide how much your group can reasonably take on to better manage client expectations.
Use a recent project to demonstrate your methodology. Describe how you established a task hierarchy, delegated those activities, and input them into a schedule. If you’ve tackled multiple projects simultaneously, describe a past experience balancing work with various teams and dedicating sufficient focus to each piece of the puzzle.
6. “How do you deal with dissatisfied clients?”
Unhappy clients, stakeholders, or upper managers aren’t necessarily a reflection of unsatisfactory work. Sometimes, they have unrealistic expectations or haven’t expressed their needs clearly enough to receive the deliverables they want. A project manager should be able to detect when their feedback should shift the work and when to de-escalate a complaint.
Why interviewers should ask this question
Project managers must possess strong negotiation skills and be assertive when a client’s requests imply scope creep. The goal is to hire someone who protects the project, relationships with clients, and their team members at the same time.
This question should show you whether the interviewee can listen carefully to all sides, understand the root cause of the problem, and synthesize what the client wants — while developing a solution in the process.
How interviewees should answer
Conflicts often arise because of a lack of understanding, and that’s a solvable problem. In your answer to this question, you should highlight your dedication to hearing everyone’s concerns and confirming you understand them before seeking a solution.
Perhaps you reframe clients’ complaints using language like, “I’m hearing that you’re looking for…” The client then has a chance to clarify, and you walk away with salient feedback.
If you can, scaffold your answer to this interview question with an anecdote or hypothetical scenario.
Tell the story of a time a client was disappointed because they weren’t receiving the deliverables they expected, and you discovered a disconnect on project scope. You could describe how you met with them, determined more explicit deliverables, and negotiated what you could in the time left on the project.
7. What is your leadership style?
Project managers head up a team, so they should be clear on their leadership style. There’s no one way to lead, but whether the project manager is a hands-on empathetic leader or a visionary mentor, they need to be intentional about their actions and match the team’s needs.
Why interviewers should ask this question
This question reveals how the interviewee leverages their soft skills and unique personality to guide and inspire their team. Listen for anecdotes that demonstrate the project manager is confident about their leadership style, listens to concerns, and removes blockers as quickly as possible.
How interviewees should answer
Familiarize yourself with different leadership styles before your interview and categorize your traits in a clear description. For example, you could state that you’re a visionary leader, and provide anecdotes that support the traits associated with that leadership style. You might also identify with a combination of styles, and that’s okay, as long as you’re clear on each of them.
Once you explain your style, explore a time you motivated your team or how you intend to lead in the future. You might offer incentives for top-notch performance, collaborate with your group to resolve an issue in a brainstorming session, or push people to level up their skills by guiding them toward learning opportunities.
8. How do you manage a virtual or hybrid team?
According to McKinsey, 58% of people work remotely at least one day of the week. This means that many project managers will find themselves leading teams virtually, and they need to understand how to support them. Supporting functional teamwork from afar requires knowledge of collaboration tools and engagement strategies to keep teams productive.
Why interviewers should ask this question
Interviewers at remote or hybrid companies must ask this question to gather whether a project manager knows best practices for this type of work.
The candidate should know how to use virtual project-planning software and centralize information so everyone has what they need to work. They should also know how to run a great virtual meeting, whether that’s morning stand-ups or Friday afternoon social gatherings over Zoom.
How interviewees should answer
If possible, lean on anecdotal evidence when answering this question. Describe a successful project you completed with a hybrid or remote team and what you did to ensure an effective workflow. You could talk about how you taught a new team member to create tasks in an online project-planning tool or held regular 1:1s to engage team members despite the distance.
9. How do you motivate an underperforming team member?
A team member might burn out, lack confidence in their skills, or perform poorly because they don’t understand an assignment. And if a project manager intervenes with adequate support, that person can find the motivation to improve. This intervention could save a project and boost morale for the whole team, making it a vital skill to know.
Why interviewers should ask this question
All project managers deal with performance issues on their teams, and they should know how to address them appropriately and kindly. These aren’t comfortable conversations — no one wants to hear that they’re delivering poor work. But a project manager worth hiring will know how to give direct feedback and provide a clear route for improvement.
How interviewees should answer
Answer this question by describing how you give feedback and look for opportunities to improve performance. Demonstrate how you observe team members, reach out as soon as you see a problem, and establish a performance review cadence to help even your highest-performing colleagues get better. If you can, cite an example of how your tactics worked.
10. What do you do when a project’s off track?
No project runs exactly as planned. A team may need to delay a feature delivery because it presented an error, or they might discover that certain tasks take more effort than predicted. A project manager must know how to restructure the calendar, ensure quality outputs despite setbacks, and navigate potentially tense conversations about off-track work with stakeholders.
Why interviewers should ask this question
You want to hire a project manager who understands that setbacks are part of the work and has a plan for minimizing fallout and communicating changes. Listen for answers that cite real-life experiences and show how the interviewee behaved. The candidate should demonstrate a firm, rational, confident attitude.
How interviewees should answer
Clearly describe your methodology for pinpointing and resolving issues. Cite how you might perform a root cause analysis to get a firm grasp on the issue, or how you hold a meeting to gain insights from teammates about the setbacks they’re experiencing. Show that you’re proactive without losing sight of what’s realistic.
Get specific on project manager interview questions
Some interviews thrive on general prompts, like “Describe your strengths and weaknesses,” that open up the conversation. But manager or project coordinator interview questions should laser-focus on the essential skills and methodologies of the role.
After asking high-level project management interview questions, a recruiter should push deeper — quizzing candidates on relevant knowledge like fishbone diagrams, Gantt charts, and Scrum.
As an interviewer, research the particulars of the work before the meeting. Even if you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of project management, you’ll have to hire a candidate who does. And if you’re preparing for your next interview as an applicant, practice exhaustively and answer questions with confidence.
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