Add the Scenario-Based Questions to your Hiring Interviews.
These questions give an idea about the candidate’s clarity of thoughts, listening skills, problem-solving skills, and focused approach.
Every week, I write an article to share my learning or discovery during my startup journey. Here is the link to my reasons for penning these articles for myself and for many others like me.
Today I gave an interview for a Project Management Consultancy assignment. Besides working on my product idea, I am also working on some part-time PM consultancy jobs. So it is like working on two side hustles until one becomes big enough to elevate its status from side hustle to the primary work.
It was my 2nd round of interviews with that company.
Round 1
The first interview happened two weeks back. In the first interview, they asked some general questions about my overall experience, compensation details, etc.
Round 2
Now they scheduled the 2nd interview. The email invite had the subject line: Technical Assessment. The duration of the meeting was 30 minutes.
In my opinion, the technical side of Project Management is nonexistent. However, there is a theoretical side of Project Management related to concepts and terminologies specified in PMBOK or PRINCE, or other PM Framework guides.
Project Management is more of a leadership role where you need to lead the team towards the goal of project completion along with the stakeholder’s management.
I don’t know how to prepare for a technical assessment for a PM interview. Anyways. I just brushed up some Agile concepts.
I can’t even think of being questioned on theoretical topics like process groups or input and outputs for different processes. These things were just meant to be crammed to clear the PMP (Project Management Professional) or the CSM (Certified Scrum Master) certificates, and they have no use after that.
The 30 minutes interview was extended for an hour. This itself shows that the organization needs to improve its planning and tracking skills.
It was an interesting interview, and I enjoyed it. So let me share it with you if you find it useful for your hiring or if you are also getting interviewed like me.
“In recruiting, there are no good or bad experiences — just learning experiences!!”
Interviewer #1
First person, the delivery manager, wanted me to create the task list for a feature. First, I gave them a high-level decomposition of the feature. Then, he asked me to share the tasks on a google doc.
It was a web app. So I segregated the tasks into four groups: UI Design, Frontend, Backend, and Database. It was getting difficult for me to type and speak simultaneously. I made so many spelling mistakes that it made me even more nervous.
After this, the Delivery manager asked me to write a user story with an acceptance criterion that we could share with the developer for coding.
Unfortunately, my internet became unstable at that moment, and I had to switch to my phone to continue the interview.
It came as a blessing in disguise as now I could no longer share my screen. I can concentrate on one task now, i.e., speaking, which is much easier than typing.
I gave an example of a user story. Now my interviewer wanted me to provide estimates for that task. I told him that I generally get the estimates from my dev team. But he insisted I share some high-level estimates.
We talked about a simple login page, so I gave the ballpark estimates of 4 hours for this task.
I would have wanted to look at the developer’s reaction to my response. He was also a part of this interview panel. Sadly, my phone screen was small, and I missed seeing the developer’s reaction. Hopefully, he would not have jumped off his seat with my estimates, but I am used to such reactions from the developers.
Then the delivery lead wanted me to break down this task further. At this point, I told him that I could not do it. The reason is that it is already a short-duration task. The further breakdown will not bring any value but would add to maintenance overhead.
He did not ask any further questions. So I am not sure whether my argument convinced him about the task decomposition. But this is my working style. If an activity has to be done solely as part of a standard process, and if it does not add any value, I will happily skip it.
Interviewer #2
After the Delivery Lead, now it was the turn of the founder to grind me next.
He asked situation based questions:
How will I get more details about the customer’s problem?
How will I sell the solution created by the company to the customer?
I replied that I would ask the customer about their problem area and patiently listen to him for the next couple of minutes. As my interviewer’s company is in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) space, the customer has reached out to us for a solution based on AI technologies.
It was a bit tough to understand the problem and then suggest an immediate solution without knowing too much about the company’s product.
I started with a solution of AI chatbot but could not add machine learning models to that specific problem. As the problem did not require a lot of trained data and it could be resolved by creating some rule-based solution
Then the discussion drifted to communication with the stakeholders and the team.
Overall, I was satisfied with my answers. But in these kinds of interviews, there are no wrong or right answers.
Every manager has a different working style, which is suitable in specific cases. And also we need to change our management style as per the situation.
I still don’t know the result of this interview. Hopefully, I will get to know in a few days.
But I really liked the interview questions.
I had also taken many PM interviews in the past. I guess my set of questions was not too challenging or interesting. I used to ask the cliché questions like :— “Tell me about your Strength and weaknesses” or
— “Share some challenging situation you faced at work.”
I should also add these scenario-based questions in my future hirings. I feel these questions give an idea about the candidate’s clarity of thoughts, listening skills, problem-solving skills, and focused approach.
I do not know how I fared in all the above parameters. But I thoroughly enjoyed this interview and learned a better way to ask interview questions.
“I learn something in the interview from time to time.”
Wishing you a great week. I hope you learn new things during your hiring and interviewing activities.
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