Junior PM Interview

[Peter Loew]

Ciao guys,

I've got my first interview for a junior PM contract tomorrow. I've never been to this kind of interview before, and am keen on the role.

What kind of things should I be expecting them to ask me and how can I fly by?

Cheers,

P

[malvolio]

How much do you know about Project Management - that's a question for now, not the interview! Then we might be able to offer some suggestions...

[Sockpuppet]

What kind of things should I be expecting them to ask me and how can I fly by?

What projects have you been involved in, what where the outcomes, what part did you take in this.
What was your best project
Are you a project manager or just someone that has been involved in a project
Do you have any ITIL / PRINCE quals

[Vito]

What experience do you have working in a matrix management environment?

What is the key to managing successful projects?

We follow Prince 2 methodology, what percentage of Prince 2 should be implemented on a project like this one?

Why do you want this role?

What do you know about our company?


Good luck fella...

[cab]

My advice is prepare a list of questions to ask in order to get an appreciation of the role and the organisation, e.g.:

Ask them to talk you through the role (or potential roles) available

Do they have a central PMO

What methodologies do they use (i.e. Prince and ITIL)

What Project Management Tools are used (Microsoft Project, Excel, reporting tools)

What project governance is in place (i.e. highlight reports, RAID, etc)

Where does the role fit into the organisation, who would you report to, and how large is the project team

Is there any budget responsibility


Generally the more time you spend questioning the interviewers the less time they will have to ask you questions. Also, it should provide the client with confidence in your potential PM skills.

Good Luck

[malvolio]

And you all missed the two key ones - how do you manage and minimise Risks and Issues, and how would approach running a project from inception?

BTW, wince when has ITIL been a PM methodology? Come to that, since when has ITIL been any kind of a methodology - it's a best practice framework, that's all.

[Peter Loew]

To answer some of your questions:

I did a transition manager role for about a year for a consultancy directly on a client site. The role involved transitioning a MID system being developed by a well known third-party for the client. This system had to weigh against my company's very strict transition acceptance criteria, and I was the PM managing both my company's and the client's expectations. This involved weekly progress meetings, drafting a governance document, producing transition plans and managing a training budget for the support team that I had to build and resource for different phases of the transition plan. I had to manage each phase of the transition plan/lifecycle and report back to my SDM / senior transition manager on a weekly basis. The actual system development teams was managed by the client's own PM, my central role was to make sure they delivered on time and to my company's acceptance criteria, and to build and prep a team to maintain and support this new system for the client. The outcome was a success and I received praise from my seniors with the words, "we would not hesitate to give you this kind of responsibility again.." which was very encouraging.

- Although all my company's docs, processes and procedures were Prince II oriented, I probably wouldn't realise if I was working in a non-Prince II environment because I never explicitly studied Prince II before.
- I never studied a PM methodology explicitly before
- I didn't know there were different types of governance plans
- I have worked in an ITIL environment before, but again, I have never explicitly studied it or have a certification in it or in a PM methodology.

The actual job spec doesn't mention ITIL or Prince II (only that a PM qualification is preferred but not essential), I will be reporting to the Programme Manager and Senior PM. The role is to, 'manage and work with different teams making sure they deliver, and escalating if there is a major issue. I should be pro-active in assessment of resource problems, issues that may impact the end delivery and escalation of those to management if required' I have to also understand the way their systems work with each other relatively quickly. It seems like I will already be following overall project plans, so I think that I am just the hands on PM making sure the expected outcomes materialise at a team level along the timeline of the plan[s].

Based on the above in info, is there anything else you guys can advise on?

P

[Sockpuppet]

To answer some of your questions:

Nice. Although we are not interviewing for the job

Most of the questions I get asked are:

- Your young for an interim (24) ..... [followed by]

... how do you get respect
* by ruling with an iron fist
* getting Lola and some "pictures" taken

... do your own accounting.
* Well jimmy, I search.

[Peter Loew]

I wrote all that schpiel for practice! I think I deserve a little credit here...

[oraclesmith]

Very good, well done. Could do with a few more paragraph breaks though.

Assuming you only have one year's experience (because you haven't said what else you've done), then if I were you I would gen up on a standard methodology like PRINCE2 which will give you the structure you may need as a junior PM working in a large project. It will cover areas such as risks, issues and quality etc, which you can relate to your current experience.

To be honest, if it was a permanent job and I was offering it, then I might risk taking you on and training you up. But for a contract you need to hit the ground running, so they will always go for someone who has done pretty much exactly the same as they want to do in terms of industry, technology etc - more so than for a permie job.

You may well be up against experienced (non-junior) contract PM's looking for an easy gig, so you need to find an edge. Just giving the 'right' answers to interview questions won't really help, in my opinion.