City Manager

As a manager, you will often find yourself having to make difficult or uncomfortable decisions, such as choosing between two products or deciding to fire an employee. This question will help an interviewer see whether you can be decisive when the time comes, however hard the decision is.

To answer this interview question, think of a time when you made a difficult decision and explain how you came to your conclusion. For example, did you weigh up all the consequences, or did you just go on your gut instinct? Did you also consider the needs of the business and its employees?

The ideal project is the one that you’re hiring for of course! But seriously, try to get them to answer honestly. It will let you know what sort of projects they prefer to work on. In doing so you’ll get a better feel for what kind of work excites them and maybe even what they excel at. This can help you place the project manager with the right project, or help them adapt to the project you’re hiring them to manage.

There are always two sides to every story, which is why it’s so important to me to remain as neutral and open-minded as possible whenever I hear of conflict between teammates. I was in a situation a few years ago where two members of my team were clearly unhappy with each other. Rather than let it fester or ignoring it with the hope that they would be able to work it out themselves, I sat down with them individually and asked them to explain what was going on. We discussed reasonable and professional solutions that worked for both parties and the matter was resolved.

Knowing that a project is not keeping to its schedule is only as important as being able to get the project back on track. Once a project manager is aware of the discrepancy between the actual progress and the planned progress, what steps do they take to get the project back on time without jeopardizing the enterprise? Any project manager worth hiring will be able to answer this with practical specifics.

While it’s important to have a good example on hand for all manager interview questions, it’s especially critical here to show your ability to take corrective measures on a personal level.

Interviewers ask this question to determine how you will work with a direct report to guide them back onto the path of success. They will look for methods, such as giving clear feedback to an employee and then jointly developing an action plan that supports meeting future performance goals.

Employers want to be able to trust how you’ll make decisions for them. While they may have internal processes to help with this, there will still be times when you’ll be on your own.

Begin with an outline of your process. You might start with a general statement, such as, “I gather all the available information to me, analyze the options, and prioritize outcomes based on the project and company goals and objectives.” Then, continue with a specific example of a business-critical, decision-making situation you navigated.

Where there are people, there are conflicts, and even the best projects have people problems. Good teams collaborate and trust one another. If there’s a problem between two or more team members, it must be resolved quickly. But this can also apply to stakeholders, vendors, etc. A project manager is a bit of a psychologist who must know how to resolve conflicts quickly.

Every project hits a snag along the way, but not every project manager is aware of that delay until it’s more pronounced or even beyond repair. The ability to monitor and track the progress of a project and tell immediately when it’s not meeting the benchmarks you set in the planning phase is perhaps the most important duty of a project manager.

This question is about discovering any lessons they learned from that project. Everything is a learning experience, and each project offers lessons from which a good project manager grows.

This is an telling project manager interview question. Some project managers are going to think you want a person who is wholly independent and pulls from an inner-reservoir. Fair enough. But more resourceful is the project manager who knows when they’re over their head and asks for help from a mentor or a network of professionals.

It’s easy to forget that project managers are people, too. They are hired to perform and lead a project to success, but they can suffer the same setbacks as anyone on the team. The difference between a good and great project manager is the ability to monitor oneself and respond proactively to any drop offs in performance.

Most people would say they would study the company's business. You must go beyond this answer to speak to specific job's key challenges or goals. You also want to assure your potential employer that current production will continue without interruption. Of course, you want to express that you would work with the team, your boss and any key influencers to get up to speed as quickly as possible.

Talk about not being prepared. Who is going into a job interview with this information in their head? You don’t really want an accurate answer to this question, but you do want to see how the project manager deals critically and seriously with the question. Because, during the project they will be sidelined with unexpected challenges and questions.

A project manager needs tools to plan, monitor and report on the project. There are many, from simple to more complex. This question reveals first how up-to-date the candidate is regarding software and project management tools. Additionally, it provides a picture of what tools and processes they use to manage a project.