Project Management interview questions
PM interviews — planning, risk, stakeholders, and what you did when the plan stopped matching reality.
18 questions, and for 15 of them what a good answer has to cover. This is the bank Answers Ready practises you against — the same questions, marked on the same points.
introduction
Tell me about yourself.
What a good answer covers
- A shape, not a history: what they deliver now, the size and kind of work, why this role.
- Under two minutes.
- Ends pointed at the job.
delivery
Tell me about a project that went wrong.
What a good answer covers
- Picks a real one. A candidate with no failures has not run anything or is not saying.
- What they decided, not only what happened to them.
- What changed afterwards in how they work.
- Owns their part without theatrical self-blame.
How do you close a project properly?
What a good answer covers
- Handover to whoever runs it now, with them actually able to run it.
- Lessons learned that get recorded somewhere anyone will find.
- Contracts closed, budget reconciled, team released properly.
- Names why closure gets skipped: everyone has moved to the next thing.
planning
You are three weeks behind at the halfway point. What do you do?
What a good answer covers
- Finds out why before deciding what — scope, estimate, resource or dependency are different problems.
- Options with consequences attached: cut scope, add people and pay the ramp-up, move the date.
- Takes it to the sponsor with a recommendation rather than a problem.
- Does not answer 'work harder' or 'crash the schedule' without saying what that costs.
What is the critical path and what do you use it for?
What a good answer covers
- The longest chain of dependent tasks — slip any of them and the end date moves.
- Float on everything else, and what that buys.
- Uses it to decide where attention goes, not to produce a chart.
- Knows it shifts as the plan changes.
How do you estimate a piece of work?
What a good answer covers
- Asks the people doing it rather than deciding alone.
- More than one technique: analogous, three-point, bottom-up, planning poker.
- Estimates carry uncertainty and are communicated as a range.
- What they do when handed a fixed date and asked to make it fit.
risk
What is the difference between a risk and an issue?
What a good answer covers
- A risk might happen; an issue has.
- A risk register that is reviewed, not written once.
- Mitigation reduces likelihood or impact; contingency is what you do when it lands anyway.
- An example of one they actually saw coming.
scope
The sponsor keeps adding scope. How do you handle it?
What a good answer covers
- Does not refuse outright; makes the cost visible in time, money or what gets dropped.
- A change process agreed before it was needed.
- Distinguishes a genuine new need from something that should have been in scope.
- The sponsor decides, having seen the trade-off.
method
Agile or waterfall — which do you prefer?
What a good answer covers
- Reads what the interviewer's organisation actually runs before answering.
- Picks on the shape of the work: known requirements and a fixed date versus uncertainty and discovery.
- Has worked in both, or is honest about which.
- Avoids the answer that waterfall is obsolete — plenty of regulated and construction work is not.
suppliers
A supplier is missing dates. What do you do?
What a good answer covers
- Establishes facts before escalating — what was agreed, what was delivered.
- Talks to them first; contractual routes later.
- Protects their own project in parallel: replanning, contingency.
- Knows what the contract actually says about remedies.
governance
How do you report a project that is going badly?
What a good answer covers
- Early. The cost of bad news rises with delay and everyone in the room knows it.
- Facts, impact, options, recommendation — not a confession.
- No surprises at the steering committee: the sponsor hears first.
- Names the failure mode: a status report that stays green until the week before delivery.
What goes in a RAID log and who reads it?
What a good answer covers
- Risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies.
- Assumptions are the one people skip and the one that causes most trouble.
- It is a working tool, not a governance artefact — if nobody reads it, it is theatre.
- Reviewed on a cadence with owners and dates.
How do you know the project delivered what it was for?
Senior. Marked against your own answer in the app.
stakeholders
You do not line-manage your team. How do you get work out of them?
What a good answer covers
- Clarity about what is needed and by when — most non-delivery is ambiguity, not unwillingness.
- Negotiates with their line manager rather than going around them.
- Makes the work visible so competing demands are a conversation, not a silent loss.
- Escalates as a shortage of capacity, not as a complaint about a person.
Two projects need the same person next week. What do you do?
Senior. Marked against your own answer in the app.
Your sponsor has stopped attending. How do you handle it?
Senior. Marked against your own answer in the app.
budget
You are 15% over budget. Walk me through what happens next.
What a good answer covers
- Finds the cause: scope, rates, duration or an estimate that was wrong from the start.
- Forecast to completion, not just the position today.
- Options with consequences, taken to whoever holds the money.
- Knows the difference between overspend and a poor forecast.
certification
Do you hold a PRINCE2 or PMP, and how much does it matter?
What a good answer covers
- Honest about what they hold — checkable in minutes.
- Says what the method gave them in practice rather than reciting stages.
- Comfortable that a certificate is a vocabulary, not a substitute for having run something.