Interview questions, a project manager's perspective

While my ex-coworker was looking for a new job, he asked one of the senior project manager on our team to prepare him some questions. Although we are an IT workshop in a financial company, I found these questions very useful even though it's not that technical. So hopefully it'll help someone's job hunting.


Interview questions, a project manager's perspective

Know what you want in terms of a job, a boss, company structure, etc-meaning know what works best for you, what are your critical requirements and what would you be willing to be flexible on.

Questions you may want to ask the interviewer:

1. Are there SLA's for each application; in terms of how long they can be down, how long to bring it back up?
2. What is the process used to prioritize break fixes? 
3. Who is involved in the prioritization? 
4. How many items are open on average and how long have they been open?
5. What application do you use to track "incidents", what are its strength and weakness?
6. How do you differentiate between projects, break fixes, nice to haves, business as usual?
7. Tell me about the process for keeping support documentation up to date? What tools are used, what are the expectations?
8. What are the major challenges facing the organization as a whole?
9. Is this is new position or did the incumbent leave; if the latter than why did that person leave?
10. What does sucess look like for this position? Are there established goals? 
11. Tell me about your management style?
12. Can you share something with me that is on your development plan?
13. What are the short term and long term goals of the organization?
14. Is anyone of your staff currently working on their Master's Degree? If so, what support do you or does the company provide?
15. How often will we meet to discuss my work?
16. Please describe your leadership style?
17. Describe the current make up of the team I would be joining?

Questions for You:

1. What are your career aspirations? What do you want to be doing in 5 years?
   
2. If you were faced with predicament of speed versus quality what would you choose and why?
3. What do you require from your direct supervisor?
4. What type of environment do you work best in?
5. Give me an example of when you had to create a business application and how you handled it? Did it succeed? (If it didn't what did you learn?)
6. How do you prioritize your daily work?
7. What are the five most important things to you when considering a job and prioritize them from most important to least.
8. Tell me a time when a critical system went down and what you did to bring it back up?
9. Tell me about how you would allocate your time between being a project team member on a critical business project versus supporting the daily business needs? What are the issues you would consider?
10. Give me an example of when you had to explain a technology issue to a business user in order to have them understand the criticality as well as their need to make a decision?
11. Describe for me the methodology/process you use when working on a development initiative? 
12. What are the pros and cons to SDLC?
13. What don't you like about your current position?
14. What are your weaknesses?
15. If I were to ask your boss about you what would he/she say?
16. How do you keep your manager informed about your work load and status?
17. How would you handle a situation where you were given unclear work direction and your boss works in a different location and its always available?
18. Tell me about a time when you couldn't make a deadline and what did you do?
19. What is your favorite book?
20. When you are not at work, what do you do? What are your hobbies?
21. Tell me about how you go about giving work direction to individuals who are your peers or do not have direct reporting relationship to you?
22. Tell me about a time when you had to influence others-whom you didn't have control over-to get work done because your work depended on their completion.
23. Tell me about how you work with the Business Analyst to understand the customer's requirements.
24. Why do you want to leave your old company?
25. Tell me how you keep your development skills sharp with the rapidly changing languages?
26. What is your knowledge of the Capital Markets?
27. What are the challenges a developer faces when dealing with multiple database platforms?
28. If you were to accept this position what would your first 30 days look like? What would you do and how would you do it?
29. Describe what is 'good' customer service?
30. What are your strengths?
31. Tell me about a time when you had to deliver results in a highly pressurized environment?
32. What do you do to relax and relieve stress?
33. How do you handle multiple tasks, keeping track of open tasks, issues, risks?
34. How would you handle the situation where there is a production issue and the current code is not written in the standard format/language but re-writing the code may take more time?
35. Tell me about a time when you had to review another developer's code and provide constructive feedback because it was written poorly. 
36. Tell me about your leadership style and experience.