Interview Questions

What is a Product Manager?

A Product Manager (PM) is the person who thinks ‘big picture’. Within Product Development they are the person who is responsible for identifying customer needs and wants and creating a road-map for the development team to follow.

The role is often combined with the Product Owner (PO) position, but in organisations that have clearly defined and separate responsibilities it is important to not get them confused. The Product Owner is responsible for the sprints and the backlog whereas the Product Manager is responsible for understanding the user needs and creating the product road-map (The PM focuses on the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, the PO focuses on the ‘who’ and ‘how’ – both come together to discuss the ‘when’)

Product Manager salary – A PM is a challenging role that has the occupant mixing it with the C-suite level staff regularly. As such it commands a high salary. In the UK the average salary of a Product Manager in the UK is around £50,000. Our American readers can expect a much higher salary however, with the average salary of a Product Manager in the USA being $110,000.

Because of the highly sought after nature of the job you can expect fierce competition when applying for roles. To stand apart you need to have everything going for you, a great CV, a fantastic application and a nailed on performance in the interview.

It is this last point we are going to discuss today. Firstly we will look at some Product Manager specific interview tips. Then we will talk about how to answer interview questions (and importantly how NOT to answer interview questions). Then finally we will look at some of the more popular questions you can be asked in your Product Manager Interview.

Product Manager Interview Tips

Lean heavily on your experience. This applies even if you have never held a PM position before. A Product Manager is responsible for numerous things but primarily ensuring that the right activities are being worked on at the right time (i.e. managing the product strategy and road-map). You don’t need to have held a PM title previously to have participated in similar activities. Perhaps you have worked in a role before where you had to make strategic decisions for your organisation? Or maybe you have performed customer research where you needed to spot trends? When answering questions lean heavily into these experiences.

Talk about how important quality is to a firm. Working in a agile fashion is great for pushing out product updates quickly, but often it can result in quality taking a back-seat. Hiring managers will want to see how you balance the need for frequent and rapid deployments with the need to produce a high quality product.

Know your audience. You should always research the organisation you are interviewing for. But what people don’t think to do is also research the interviewer and the hiring manager (if these are different persons). You want to impress the person making the hiring decision so you should research them specifically trying to understand what makes them tick and what they are looking for in a new employee.

How Best To Answer Product Manager Interview Questions

Unless the question you are asked is a straight ‘up or down / yes or no’ style question then you are going to need to learn to describe, expand and elaborate on your answers. The best way of doing this is to follow the B-STAR technique for answering interview questions.

Answers using this method follow the below structure:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts and feelings with regard to the subject matter? – As a Product Manager you should have your own set of processes and management techniques that you tailor to each situation.

S – Situation – What was going on? Briefly explain the scenario that was taking place. – Try not to spend too much time describing the situation. The bulk of your answer needs to be about you and what you did so keep the situation simple to understand and even simpler to describe. Try to make sure the scenario directly relates to one of the responsibilities in the job you are applying for.

T – Task – What was your role in the action? Most of the time it is best that you are taking an active rather than passive role in the encounter – You are going for a Product Manager role (presumably if you are reading this) so the situation you describe should have you involved with setting the direction of your product.

A – Activity (or action) – What did you do? Detail the steps you took and why you took them. – This should take up the bulk of your time answering the question.

R – Result – How did everything end up? Try to use figures if possible (e.g. sales increased 50%, customer churn reduced from 30% to 10%, End user feedback scores went from 4.3 to 4.8, etc.).

Remember though that the B-STAR technique is descriptive not prescriptive. You do not need to follow this flow strictly, go with what is best for your answers and that will allow you to put your point across and show your experience the best.

What You Should Not Do When Product Manager Answering Questions

Do not avoid the question.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked).

Do not downplay the situation.

Do not overhype the situation.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter.

Do not reject the premise of the question.

Do not have a passive role in the situation.

Do not give a one-sentence answer.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action.

Product Manager Interview Question & Answers

How Did You Prepare For This Interview?

“I believe that it’s incredibly difficult to overcome a bad first impression. Because of this I always strive to never make one. That’s why for important meetings, or interviews like this, I make a clear plan of what I want to get from the meeting and outline the steps I need to take to achieve that goal.

So when I received the call about scheduling this interview the first thing I did was research your offices. As you are based in an area of town I am not familiar with I drove by here after work one evening just to make sure I knew the way. I also checked Google Maps to see what the traffic would be like at this time. Nothing worse than being late sitting in traffic after all.

I actually have a contact who works in your finance department, Claire, we were colleagues in the place I am currently working. I reached out to her to see if there was anything she could tell me about the interview process. We had spoken before about the company as a whole and how she talks about the company is one of the reasons I applied.

Following our chat I went through all of my work achievements and made sure they fully encompassed everything I have accomplished in my career.

I’m glad I took the time to prepare as I did because there was a lot of traffic so it was good I knew to expect that. Also talking with Claire helped jog my memory on a project we both worked on a few years back delivering a piece of financial software that I believe your company is in the process of deploying.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

How do you handle disagreements within your team?

“As Product Manager at X company it was my responsibility to prioritise the product roadmap. The way things worked in our organisation was that any stakeholder could raise an item to add to the backlog, then as a team we would discuss in which order it would be best that they were worked and deployed.

Ultimately however the final decision on priority lay with myself and even though items were added to the backlog I would have to inform the Product Owner of what was actually in scope and relevant to our goals..

As you can imagine with so many different areas of the business raises items, each with their own agendas and goals the backlog meetings would often end with a lot of disagreement

One such occasion we had two business areas both asking us to deploy a change to our product and both were asking for the change to be deployed in the next sprint. Unfortunately we only had the dev resource to implement the one change in this cycle.

The backlog call became heated between the two representing colleagues and I was forced to cut the meeting short to let cooler heads prevail.

After the meeting I sat with both colleagues to further understand the urgency behind both changes. Asking them to describe the benefits of the change and also the drawbacks of waiting until the next cycle.

Once I had this information in hand it was clear to me which change would be most beneficial to the business. I invited both colleagues into a meeting where I had compiled the information into a presentation deck with a few charts showing the resources available within the product team and the relative benefits of each change.

Explaining it this way allowed both colleagues to fully appreciate the restrictions that were on my team and also the comparative benefits of each change.

Both colleagues left the meeting happy with the outcome and both changes were pushed into production in the next 2 sprints”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time you were late delivering a piece of work

“I was given the task of producing a spec delivery report for a very important potential client. This was on top of my regular workload but I was happy to pick it up as the client would bring a lot of business to our firm if we were able to secure the contract.

During the week that I had to complete the report a number of unforeseen events happened; my work laptop died, the office I worked in flooded and someone stole my car. It really was one of those weeks!

I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to meet the deadline so I looked at the piece of work that I had been given and the reasons why the firm wanted it. From my conversation with the firm I knew they were more interested in the capacity my team could deliver within each sprint rather than the specifics of the product itself.

So I focused my efforts so that I was working only on the capacity portion of the report. I communicated this with the client and with my colleagues. Everyone seemed largely happy with this and I delivered the report in 2 stages, the first at the agreed upon date and the full report just 2 business days later.

Luckily this delay did not upset the clients and we did bring them onboard. After this fiasco I petitioned the firm to provision VPN access on personal devices (with the relevant security software added) so that if this confluence of events were to repeat I would suffer no downtime…except for the time spent wondering where my car was.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time when you needed to communicate bad news to a colleague or stakeholder?

“I believe that bad news is best delivered in person and discretely, where it is responsible to do so. I don’t particularly relish giving bad news (I suppose not many do) so I often try to resolve the situation in advance so the bad news never needs to be given.

Obviously though that isn’t possible all of the time. For example in a previous role I managed a team of developers working in a agile fashion when word came down from senior management that we were offshoring a large part of our process and this meant layoffs of nearly 40% of the department.

I tried to go to bat for my team and show how our quality and production scores were the highest around and unlikely to be replicated using our offshore colleagues, but the decision had been made and was purely cost driven.

It was my job to determine which members of my team would be let go and which would stay.

We had all joined the department together on the same contract so there was no element of seniority that needed to be accounted for. Instead I devised a balanced scorecard type of approach, ranking each team member against the department’s relevant KPIs (quality, production, skills).

Once I had my list I booked one-on-ones with all of my team members as close together as possible, starting with the colleagues who would be staying. With the colleagues who were being let go I got straight to the point and told them the company would be terminating their contract. I allowed them to ask any questions they wanted and informed them that I would be around for any help they needed in looking for a new role.

During the meetings 2 of the colleagues I wanted to keep informed me that they were planning to leave soon anyway and suggested that they would leave now instead freeing up room for other colleagues to stay.

In the end I had to tell 6 members of my team that they were being let go. They were all understanding of the situation and were grateful that I offered to help them look for new roles.

Going forward if I were to be in the same position I would have gone to the meetings with some open positions that I would recommend the colleagues apply for”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Have You Ever Needed To Change Someone’s Mind?

“We had two options for a supplier; supplier A who we had used before and supplier B who we had not used but who were cheaper. As my target was to reduce costs for our department I thought that we should go with supplier B.

I approached my other colleagues, informally over coffee, to understand more about their concerns with supplier B. Learning that the principal worry was that supplier B was an unknown quantity whereas with supplier A we knew the quality to expect. It was then that I came up with a solution to quell any worries.

I approached supplier B and negotiated for them to provide sample products and also to agree to a trial/probationary contract that could be ended fairly easily should the quality not be up to scratch. Once I had this proposal in hand I went back to my colleagues who were now in agreement that supplier B was the correct option for the company.

With all colleagues in agreement we pitched the idea to the director together, ultimately we went with supplier B and enjoyed a high quality product for a lower price”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a new skill or qualification you have learned over the last 6 months?

“In my current role I use Microsoft Projects extensively for scheduling tasks when working with certain clients. A few months ago I learned that one of our newer clients used Primavera as their preferred PM tool.

Even though the new firm were content that we continue to use Microsoft Projects I thought it would be best to upskill myself on Primavera so that I at least could understand what the client was used to versus what we would be providing.

I started by following some courses on LinkedIn and eventually I asked my employer if they would support me in attaining the certification – which they did.

I passed the qualification on the first go and was able to successfully amend our MS Project reports so that they more closely resembled what the client was used to”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What does a product manager do?

What do you see as a Product Manager’s main role within product development?

Pretend you’re talking to a stranger. How would you explain product management?

Please explain your approach to monitoring performance and success?

Explain the key to a good user interface

To be successful in a product management role, what do you need from your manager?

What’s your favourite product and why?

Tell me about a time you had to make a decision to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains?

Tell me about a time you made a mistake?

Tell me about a time when you dealt with a technical challenge?

Why do you want to work as a product manager?

Estimate the number of restaurants in San Francisco / estimate the number of traffic lights in New York city / Estimate the total internet bandwidth needed for a campus of 1000 graduate students etc

Tell me about a time you handled a difficult stakeholder

What was your biggest failure as a product manager?

Tell me about a decision you made based on your instincts

Tell me about a time you convinced someone to change their minds

Tell me about a time you handled a difficult stakeholder

What are the top 3 technology trends that will change the landscapes in the next decade?

How would you explain cloud computing to your grandmother?

How do you determine what customers want and need?

How do you communicate your product strategy?

What’s one of your favourite products, and what’s something you’d change about it?

Tell me about a time you had trouble building consensus and how you overcame it.

What’s your approach to prioritizing tasks?

Describe a scenario that required you to say no to an idea or project.

Please try to recall a situation in which you had to say no to an idea or project.

Have you ever had to make a difficult decision while considering the input from many different sources (customers, stakeholders, team members). How did you make your decision?

Have you ever made an unpopular decision on the job? What happened?

Tell me about a time you worked well as part of a team

Interview Question: Tell me about a time you worked well as part of a team – Answer Tips

How does your current job fit into the overall business?

Interview Question: How does your current (or previous) role fit into the organisation’s wider goals? – Answer Tips

Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without all the information you needed

Interview Question: Tell me about a time when you have had to make a decision using only limited information? – Answer Tips

Do you have any questions for us?

10 Questions To Ask At The End Of An Interview (And 6 That You Shouldn’t!)

What is a Product Owner?

A Product Owner (PO) is one of the key members of an Agile development team. The primary responsibilities of a PO is to define the stories, maintain the product backlog and define the length and workload within a sprint.

This role is often combined with that of the Product Manager (PM) but in organisations that clearly delineate between the two it is important to not get confused. The Product Owner is responsible for the sprints and the backlog whereas the Product Manager is responsible for understanding the user needs and creating the product road-map (The PM focuses on the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, the PO focuses on the ‘who’ and ‘how’ – both come together to discuss the ‘when’)

Product Owner salary – A Product Owner is a highly skilled and challenging role. As such it commands a high salary. Those in the UK can expect to pick-up an average of £60,000 working as a Product Owner. For our American readers you can expect to command a much higher salary, the average Product Owner in the USA picks up around $100,000.

With such [relatively] high wages the competition for each role can be fierce. That is why in this post we are going to look at applying for PO jobs, in particular how to handle the interview portion of the application.

Product Owner Interview Tips

Lean heavily on your experience. This applies even if you have never held a PO position before. A Product Owner is responsible for numerous things but primarily ensuring that the right activities are being worked on at the right time (managing the product backlog). You don’t need to have held a PO title previously to have participated in similar activities. Perhaps you have worked in a role before where you had to choose which features to deploy at which time? Or maybe you have instituted changes to processes when there were multiple options available? When answering questions lean heavily into these experiences.

Talk about how important quality is to a firm. Working in a agile fashion is great for pushing out product updates quickly, but often it can result in quality taking a back-seat. Hiring managers will want to see how you balance the need for frequent and rapid deployments with the need to product a high quality product.

Know your audience. You should always research the organisation you are interviewing for. But what people don’t think to do is also research the interviewer and the hiring manager (if these are different persons). You want to impress the person making the hiring decision so you should research them specifically trying to understand what makes them tick and what they are looking for in a new employee.

Pepper your answers with technical terms. Agile deployment has a number of technical terms, processes, systems, tools etc. For example when answering a question you can talk about how your team uses JIRA for defect tracking. Or you might talk about how you used Selenium for automated browser testing. These little things show the interviewer that you are well versed in the area and are not just full of fluff.

How Best To Answer Product Owner Interview Questions

Unless the question you are asked is a straight ‘up or down / yes or no’ style question then you are going to need to learn to describe, expand and elaborate on your answers. The best way of doing this is to follow the B-STAR technique for answering interview questions.

Answers using this method follow the below structure:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts and feelings with regard to the subject matter? – As a Product Owner you should have your own set of processes and management techniques that you tailor to each situation.

S – Situation – What was going on? Briefly explain the scenario that was taking place. – Try not to spend too much time describing the situation. The bulk of your answer needs to be about you and what you did so keep the situation simple to understand and even simpler to describe. Try to make sure the scenario directly relates to one of the responsibilities in the job you are applying for.

T – Task – What was your role in the action? Most of the time it is best that you are taking an active rather than passive role in the encounter – You are going for a Product Owner role (presumably if you are reading this) so the situation you describe should have you involved with overseeing and managing the delivery of a product going to launch.

A – Activity (or action) – What did you do? Detail the steps you took and why you took them. – This should take up the bulk of your time answering the question.

R – Result – How did everything end up? Try to use figures if possible (e.g. 99% of issues were resolved in first instance, End user feedback scores went from 4.3 to 4.8, etc.).

Remember though that the B-STAR technique is descriptive not prescriptive. You do not need to follow this flow strictly, go with what is best for your answers and that will allow you to put your point across and show your experience the best.

What You Should Not Do When Answering Product Owner Questions

Do not avoid the question.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked).

Do not downplay the situation.

Do not overhype the situation.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter.

Do not reject the premise of the question.

Do not have a passive role in the situation.

Do not give a one-sentence answer.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action.

Product Owner Interview Question & Answers

How Did You Prepare For This Interview?

“I believe that it’s incredibly difficult to overcome a bad first impression. Because of this I always strive to never make one. That’s why for important meetings, or interviews like this, I make a clear plan of what I want to get from the meeting and outline the steps I need to take to achieve that goal.

So when I received the call about scheduling this interview the first thing I did was research your offices. As you are based in an area of town I am not familiar with I drove by here after work one evening just to make sure I knew the way. I also checked Google Maps to see what the traffic would be like at this time. Nothing worse than being late sitting in traffic after all.

I actually have a contact who works in your finance department, Claire, we were colleagues in the place I am currently working. I reached out to her to see if there was anything she could tell me about the interview process. We had spoken before about the company as a whole and how she talks about the company is one of the reasons I applied.

Following our chat I went through all of my work achievements and made sure they fully encompassed everything I have accomplished in my career.

I’m glad I took the time to prepare as I did because there was a lot of traffic so it was good I knew to expect that. Also talking with Claire helped jog my memory on a project we both worked on a few years back delivering a piece of financial software that I believe your company is in the process of deploying.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

How do you handle disagreements within your team?

“As Product Owner at X company it was my responsibility to prioritise the backlog of tasks. The way things worked in our organisation was that any stakeholder could raise an item to add to the backlog, then as a team we would discuss in which order it would be best that they were worked and deployed.

Ultimately however the final decision on priority lay with myself.

As you can imagine with so many different areas of the business raises items, each with their own agendas and goals the backlog meetings would often end with a lot of disagreement

One such occasion we had two business areas both asking us to deploy a change to our product and both were asking for the change to be deployed in the next sprint. Unfortunately we only had the dev resource to implement the one change in this cycle.

The backlog call became heated between the two representing colleagues and I was forced to cut the meeting short to let cooler heads prevail.

After the meeting I sat with both colleagues to further understand the urgency behind both changes. Asking them to describe the benefits of the change and also the drawbacks of waiting until the next cycle.

Once I had this information in hand it was clear to me which change would be most beneficial to the business. I invited both colleagues into a meeting where I had compiled the information into a presentation deck with a few charts showing the resources available within the product team and the relative benefits of each change.

Explaining it this way allowed both colleagues to fully appreciate the restrictions that were on my team and also the comparative benefits of each change.

Both colleagues left the meeting happy with the outcome and both changes were pushed into production in the next 2 sprints”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time you were late delivering a piece of work

“I was given the task of producing a spec delivery report for a very important potential client. This was on top of my regular workload but I was happy to pick it up as the client would bring a lot of business to our firm if we were able to secure the contract.

During the week that I had to complete the report a number of unforeseen events happened; my work laptop died, the office I worked in flooded and someone stole my car. It really was one of those weeks!

I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to meet the deadline so I looked at the piece of work that I had been given and the reasons why the firm wanted it. From my conversation with the firm I knew they were more interested in the capacity my team could deliver within each sprint rather than the specifics of the product itself.

So I focused my efforts so that I was working only on the capacity portion of the report. I communicated this with the client and with my colleagues. Everyone seemed largely happy with this and I delivered the report in 2 stages, the first at the agreed upon date and the full report just 2 business days later.

Luckily this delay did not upset the clients and we did bring them onboard. After this fiasco I petitioned the firm to provision VPN access on personal devices (with the relevant security software added) so that if this confluence of events were to repeat I would suffer no downtime…except for the time spent wondering where my car was.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time when you needed to communicate bad news to a colleague or stakeholder?

“I believe that bad news is best delivered in person and discretely, where it is responsible to do so. I don’t particularly relish giving bad news (I suppose not many do) so I often try to resolve the situation in advance so the bad news never needs to be given.

Obviously though that isn’t possible all of the time. For example in a previous role I managed a team of developers working in a agile fashion when word came down from senior management that we were offshoring a large part of our process and this meant layoffs of nearly 40% of the department.

I tried to go to bat for my team and show how our quality and production scores were the highest around and unlikely to be replicated using our offshore colleagues, but the decision had been made and was purely cost driven.

It was my job to determine which members of my team would be let go and which would stay.

We had all joined the department together on the same contract so there was no element of seniority that needed to be accounted for. Instead I devised a balanced scorecard type of approach, ranking each team member against the department’s relevant KPIs (quality, production, skills).

Once I had my list I booked one-on-ones with all of my team members as close together as possible, starting with the colleagues who would be staying. With the colleagues who were being let go I got straight to the point and told them the company would be terminating their contract. I allowed them to ask any questions they wanted and informed them that I would be around for any help they needed in looking for a new role.

During the meetings 2 of the colleagues I wanted to keep informed me that they were planning to leave soon anyway and suggested that they would leave now instead freeing up room for other colleagues to stay.

In the end I had to tell 6 members of my team that they were being let go. They were all understanding of the situation and were grateful that I offered to help them look for new roles.

Going forward if I were to be in the same position I would have gone to the meetings with some open positions that I would recommend the colleagues apply for”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Have You Ever Needed To Change Someone’s Mind?

“We had two options for a supplier; supplier A who we had used before and supplier B who we had not used but who were cheaper. As my target was to reduce costs for our department I thought that we should go with supplier B.

I approached my other colleagues, informally over coffee, to understand more about their concerns with supplier B. Learning that the principal worry was that supplier B was an unknown quantity whereas with supplier A we knew the quality to expect. It was then that I came up with a solution to quell any worries.

I approached supplier B and negotiated for them to provide sample products and also to agree to a trial/probationary contract that could be ended fairly easily should the quality not be up to scratch. Once I had this proposal in hand I went back to my colleagues who were now in agreement that supplier B was the correct option for the company.

With all colleagues in agreement we pitched the idea to the director together, ultimately we went with supplier B and enjoyed a high quality product for a lower price”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a new skill or qualification you have learned over the last 6 months?

“In my current role I use Microsoft Projects extensively for scheduling tasks when working with certain clients. A few months ago I learned that one of our newer clients used Primavera as their preferred PM tool.

Even though the new firm were content that we continue to use Microsoft Projects I thought it would be best to upskill myself on Primavera so that I at least could understand what the client was used to versus what we would be providing.

I started by following some courses on LinkedIn and eventually I asked my employer if they would support me in attaining the certification – which they did.

I passed the qualification on the first go and was able to successfully amend our MS Project reports so that they more closely resembled what the client was used to”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

How would you characterize your role as Product Owner? Are you a facilitator, a coach, a manager, a visionary, a tactician, a coordinator, or a “driver?”

What is the purpose of being agile in the first place?

To what extent is the Product Owner a “product manager”?

When was the last time you told a stakeholder “No”? How did you approach this situation, and what was the reason for it?

What “labels” come to your mind when you think of your role as Product Owner?

How do you collaborate with the other Scrum Team members?

What roles would you deem necessary for a cross-functional Scrum Team delivering software?

In what Scrum events shall the Product Owner be participating?

How do you know that you are a good Product Owner?

How do you include user research in the product discovery process?

How would you design a process to handle product ideas from stakeholders and other members of the organization?

At what stage do you involve the Scrum Team in the product discovery process?

How do you determine whether an idea is a worthwhile investment?

How do you avoid misallocating resources on features or products that no one wants?

During which stages are Product Owners participating in planning activities?

Your organization has recently decided to become agile and product-driven. How do you educate your stakeholders about the implications?

How do you organize the collaboration with stakeholders and improve it over time?

How do you communicate with uncooperative stakeholders?

In your opinion, how often should product roadmaps be planned?

Who shall participate in the product roadmap planning?

How much of your time do you spend talking with customers and researching industry trends?

How much time should you spend on Product Backlog refinement?

How would you organize the “refining” process of Product Backlog items?

At what level do you include other team members in the refinement process?

How do you handle bugs and technical debt when many valuable new features are competing for resources?

What shall a good user story look like? What is it structure?

When would you remove a feature?

Do you recommend that a Product Owner shall assign work items to individual members of the Scrum Team?

Tell me about a time you worked well as part of a team

Interview Question: Tell me about a time you worked well as part of a team – Answer Tips

How does your current job fit into the overall business?

Interview Question: How does your current (or previous) role fit into the organisation’s wider goals? – Answer Tips

Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without all the information you needed

Interview Question: Tell me about a time when you have had to make a decision using only limited information? – Answer Tips

Do you have any questions for us?

10 Questions To Ask At The End Of An Interview (And 6 That You Shouldn’t!)

What is a Quality Assurance (QA) Analyst?

A QA analyst is responsible for completing the last step in production – testing the final product meets the requirements of the user/business. This role is usually found in software development projects but you can also find positions in any industry where the final output needs to be tested for quality.

The QA analyst is usually tasked with the actual testing aspect whereas the Test Manager will oversee the testing strategy and the Test Analyst will create the test cases.

Salary for a QA analyst varies quite drastically. It differs greatly depending on the industry and the level of technical, domain or analytical skills that are required in order to test the end-product. That said though the average salary for a Quality Assurance Analyst in the UK is around £30,000 to £40,000. For our American readers you can expect to earn slightly higher (even accounting for exchange rates), the average salary for a Quality Assurance Analyst in the USA is around $50,000 to $55,000.

It is common that QA analysts are trained on the job as the role requires technical knowledge of the firm’s product which is not usually publicly available. Therefore with just a rudimentary understanding of testing processes anyone is capable of landing an analyst role in QA. This is why some roles can be very challenging to land as the competition is fierce.

That is why in this post we are going to look at the QA Analyst interview. Firstly we will look at some tips for you in your next interview, then we will go through the best (and worst) way to answer interview questions. And finally we will round off by looking at the most common interview questions you can expect to receive when applying for a QA Analyst position.

Ready? Let’s get started then…

Quality Assurance Analyst Interview Tips

Lean heavily on your experience. As mentioned before QA analysts often do not hold any QA experience when they are hired. Firm’s regularly ‘promote from within’ colleagues who show excellent industry or product knowledge. If you hold any experience within the industry or with the product type then lean on this when answering questions. Ensure that the interviewer knows that you are aware of what makes a quality product in their industry.

Talk about how important quality is to a firm. This applies even if you have never held a QA position before. A QA Analyst is responsible for numerous things but primarily ensuring that products are not released when they do not meet the required standards. You don’t need to have held a QA title previously to have participated in similar activities. Perhaps you have worked in a role before where you stopped defective products from going out? Or maybe you have instituted changes to processes that increase overall quality? When answering questions lean heavily into these experiences.

Know your audience. You should always research the organisation you are interviewing for. But what people don’t think to do is also research the interviewer and the hiring manager (if these are different persons). You want to impress the person making the hiring decision so you should research them specifically trying to understand what makes them tick and what they are looking for in a new employee.

Pepper your answers with technical terms. Quality Assurance has a number of technical terms, processes, systems, tools etc. For example when answering a question you can talk about how your team uses JIRA for defect tracking. Or you might talk about how you used Selenium for automated browser testing. These little things show the interviewer that you are well versed in the area and are not just full of fluff.

How Best To Answer Quality Assurance Interview Questions

Unless the question you are asked is a straight ‘up or down / yes or no’ style question then you are going to need to learn to describe, expand and elaborate on your answers. The best way of doing this is to follow the B-STAR technique for answering interview questions.

Answers using this method follow the below structure:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts and feelings with regard to the subject matter? – As a Quality Assurance Analyst you should have your own set of processes and testing methodologies that you tailor to each situation.

S – Situation – What was going on? Briefly explain the scenario that was taking place. – Try not to spend too much time describing the situation. The bulk of your answer needs to be about you and what you did so keep the situation simple to understand and even simpler to describe. Try to make sure the scenario directly relates to one of the responsibilities in the job you are applying for.

T – Task – What was your role in the action? Most of the time it is best that you are taking an active rather than passive role in the encounter – You are going for a Quality Assurance Analyst role (presumably if you are reading this) so the situation you describe should have you involved with the testing of a product going to launch.

A – Activity (or action) – What did you do? Detail the steps you took and why you took them. – This should take up the bulk of your time answering the question.

R – Result – How did everything end up? Try to use figures if possible (e.g. 99% of issues were resolved in first instance, End user feedback scores went from 4.3 to 4.8, Project failures reduced 50% etc.).

Remember though that the B-STAR technique is descriptive not prescriptive. You do not need to follow this flow strictly, go with what is best for your answers and that will allow you to put your point across and show your experience the best.

What You Should Not Do When Answering QA Analyst Questions

Do not avoid the question.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked).

Do not downplay the situation.

Do not overhype the situation.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter.

Do not reject the premise of the question.

Do not have a passive role in the situation.

Do not give a one-sentence answer.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action.

Quality Assurance (QA) Analyst Interview Question & Answers

How Did You Prepare For This Interview?

“I believe that it’s incredibly difficult to overcome a bad first impression. Because of this I always strive to never make one. That’s why for important meetings, or interviews like this, I make a clear plan of what I want to get from the meeting and outline the steps I need to take to achieve that goal.

So when I received the call about scheduling this interview the first thing I did was research your offices. As you are based in an area of town I am not familiar with I drove by here after work one evening just to make sure I knew the way. I also checked Google Maps to see what the traffic would be like at this time. Nothing worse than being late sitting in traffic after all.

I actually have a contact who works in your finance department, Claire, we were colleagues in the place I am currently working. I reached out to her to see if there was anything she could tell me about the interview process. We had spoken before about the company as a whole and how she talks about the company is one of the reasons I applied.

Following our chat I went through all of my work achievements and made sure they fully encompassed everything I have accomplished in my career.

I’m glad I took the time to prepare as I did because there was a lot of traffic so it was good I knew to expect that. Also talking with Claire helped jog my memory on a project we both worked on a few years back delivering a piece of financial software that I believe your company is in the process of deploying.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell Me About A Time You Helped A Co-Worker Learn A New Skill

“I love working in a team. I truly believe that when a team is functioning correctly that it is greater than the sum of its parts. More work just seems to get done than would be if we were working independently. That’s why whenever I see a team member struggling I always reach out and try to help for the good of the team. I also adore the feeling when someone learns something as a result of my help. In a different walk of life I might have been a teacher!

There was one occasion when our company was adopting a more Agile approach to our projects. Moving away from waterfall and into a sprint based delivery approach.

I noticed rather early on that one of my colleagues, Jayne, was not grasping the fundamental idea behind the change and was still trying to operate in a waterfall approach.

I approached my manager to ask if we could support some additional training for the team on Agile so that we could all understand the philosophies. He agreed and we all began taking LinkedIn courses in the afternoons.

I reached out to Jayne during these sessions so that we could share notes and discuss what we had learned. I even offered that we should work together on a project so that we could bounce the ideas we had learned off each other.

That was all it took really. After we delivered a couple sprints in our project Jayne was a full Agile convert. She has actually moved out of the team now and has taken a SCRUM master position in a different department.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What do you like to do in your spare time?

“I am a big reader of both fiction and non-fiction. I always like to have at least 2 books on the go; one for entertainment – most often some kind of science fiction (I am currently reading the Expanse series) and one for learning. I always like to be learning new things, I find it fun and also incredibly rewarding to learn a new skill. I even find it rewarding when I fail miserably – as I do often – as I always learn something from the experience, I suppose this desire to learn new things and improve is why I was drawn to testing, as I am constantly learning new processes and new systems in order to learn how best to test them.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What motivates/energises you?

“Success is what energises me. This is why I prefer project testing roles. The ability to say that a project has been successfully deployed is what drives me during the more mundane run of the mill day-to-day activities. Recently I was able to close the book on a 30-month IT infrastructure deployment. This was a project that had been completely re-scoped 3 times just during the time I was attached to the project. But knowing that the project would eventually be deployed is what drove me throughout.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What are your weaknesses?

“I have never worked with <insert testing tool or software> before and I see that it plays an integral role in your organisation. I have worked with <insert other testing tool> before and from what I hear it lacks a number of features present in <testing tool>. I look forward to the opportunity to use this new tool as I hear great things about it, I have also found a crash course online that I would look to take to get up to speed as quickly as possible…should I be offered the job”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Describe a situation when you were responsible for other team members learning a new skill?

“I’m a big believer in learning new things. I’m the person on the team who is always first in line whenever new training sessions are available for the team. I just think that the more you know the better you can produce.

There was one occasion where a training seminar was held for a new software that had been introduced within our department. The core functionality of the software was the same as what we used already so we were told that the seminar was voluntary.

I of course went along. And while a lot of the features were the same – as was expected – there was some new advanced functions that I thought could be great for our team.

I spoke to the training lead after the seminar and he sent me across some documentation and guidance on the new functionality. I studied through all the documents and realised that if our team was trained on this new reporting methodology that we could save quite a bit of time each week.

I positioned this to my manager who was delighted with the idea. And the next week I trained all of my team in this new skill. Some were reluctant at first because there was an element of coding involved – we needed to use SQL queries for the reports, but once they got the hang of it they were amazed at how much could be done.

The results were immediate. Our team was getting work done in twice the time. Time spent manually pulling reports was no longer. Some of the team went even further and started to develop more and more complex reports that would never have been possible without knowing this new skill.“

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What QA process do you use in your project and why?

What will be your criteria for hiring team members?

What do you think is the best approach to start QA in a project?

What soft/people skills should a QA Manager have?

What is a bug?

What is bug leakage and bug release?

Explain the steps for Bug Cycle?

What is the difference between severity and priority?

What is the difference between Quality Assurance, Quality Control and testing?

When should QA start?

What is the QA testing life cycle?

What is a test plan?

What does a test plan include?

What would you include in an automation test plan?

What is a Test Strategy?

Are test strategies and test plans the same document?

What do you think are some advantages of manual testing?

What is the difference between functional and nonfunctional testing?

What did you do in your last project?

How do you prioritize when you have so many tasks?

Tell me about your most difficult project.

What are important characteristics for leaders in QA?

What do you think is the most important test metric, and why?

What is the difference between the QA and software testing?

What are the automation challenges that SQA(Software Quality Assurance) team faces while testing?

What is data driven testing?

What is Agile testing and what is the importance of Agile testing?

What is Ad Hoc testing?

Explain what should your QA documents include?

Tell me about a time when you have identified an opportunity for improvement within your processes?

Interview Question: Tell me about a time when you have identified an opportunity for improvement within your processes? – Answer Tips

Tell me about a time you worked well as part of a team

Interview Question: Tell me about a time you worked well as part of a team – Answer Tips

How does your current job fit into the overall business?

Interview Question: How does your current (or previous) role fit into the organisation’s wider goals? – Answer Tips

Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without all the information you needed

Interview Question: Tell me about a time when you have had to make a decision using only limited information? – Answer Tips

How do you handle disagreements within your team?

Interview Question: How do you handle disagreements within your team? – Answer Tips

Tell me about a time when you have challenged the usual way of doing things

Interview Question: Tell me about a time when you have challenged the usual way of doing things – Answer Tips

Tell me about a new skill or qualification you have learned over the last 6 months?

Interview Question: Learn Something New – Answer Tips

What new skills do you hope to learn over the next 6 months?

Interview Question: What new skills do you hope to learn over the next 6 months? – Answer Tips

Have you ever had to work to an extremely tight deadline? How did you navigate that?

Interview Question: Have you ever had to work to an extremely tight deadline? How did you navigate that? – Answer Tips

Tell Me About A Time You Improved A Process

Interview Question: Tell Me About A Time You Improved A Process – Answer Tips

Do you have any questions for us?

10 Questions To Ask At The End Of An Interview (And 6 That You Shouldn’t!)

What is a Test Analyst? A test analyst is the last line of defence against errors going live into production. Their job is to competently and rigorously test the product (system, software, process, files, hardware etc.) to ensure that the completed product matches the requirements set forth by the user and the project.

Manual test analysts can expect to receive a salary of around £40,000 however should the analyst be skilled in automation they can expect this salary to increase to an average of £55,000. For our American readers you can expect to receive in the range of $60,000 for manual testing or $80,000 if you specialise in automation.

Competition for testing jobs can be fierce. You should always ensure that your CV is up-to-date, that you keep on top of industry changes and that your interview skills never go rusty.

That is why in this article we are going to look at the Test Analyst interview and what you can do to prepare. Firstly we will look at some tips for the interview itself, then look at the best (and worst) ways to answer Test Analyst interview questions and finally we will round off with some interview questions you can expect to get in your interview.

Ready? Let’s get started…

Test Analyst Interview Tips

Lean heavily on your experience. This applies even if you have never held a Testing position before. A Test Analyst is responsible for numerous things but primarily ensuring that products are not released when they do not meet the required standards. You don’t need to have held a Test Analyst title previously to have participated in similar activities. Perhaps you have worked in a role before where you stopped defective products from going out? Or maybe you have instituted changes to processes that increase overall quality? When answering questions lean heavily into these experiences.

Know your audience. You should always research the organisation you are interviewing for. But what people don’t think to do is also research the interviewer and the hiring manager (if these are different persons). You want to impress the person making the hiring decision so you should research them specifically trying to understand what makes them tick and what they are looking for in a new employee.

Pepper your answers with technical terms. Testing has a number of technical terms, processes, systems, tools etc. For example when answering a question you can talk about how your team uses JIRA for defect tracking. Or you might talk about how you used Selenium for automated browser testing. These little things show the interviewer that you are well versed in the area and are not just full of fluff.

How Best To Answer Test Analyst Interview Questions

Unless the question you are asked is a straight ‘up or down / yes or no’ style question then you are going to need to learn to describe, expand and elaborate on your answers. The best way of doing this is to follow the B-STAR technique for answering interview questions.

Answers using this method follow the below structure:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts and feelings with regard to the subject matter? – As a Test Analyst you should have your own set of processes and testing methodologies that you tailor to each situation.

S – Situation – What was going on? Briefly explain the scenario that was taking place. – Try not to spend too much time describing the situation. The bulk of your answer needs to be about you and what you did so keep the situation simple to understand and even simpler to describe.

T – Task – What was your role in the action? Most of the time it is best that you are taking an active rather than passive role in the encounter – You are going for a Test Analyst role (presumably if you are reading this) so the situation you describe should have you involved with the testing of a product going to launch

A – Activity (or action) – What did you do? Detail the steps you took and why you took them. – This should take up the bulk of your time answering the question.

R – Result – How did everything end up? Try to use figures if possible (e.g. 99% of issues were resolved in first instance, Project failures reduced 50% etc.).

Remember though that the B-STAR technique is descriptive not prescriptive. You do not need to follow this flow strictly, go with what is best for your answers and that will allow you to put your point across and show your experience the best.

What You Should Not Do When Answering Test Analyst Questions

Do not avoid the question.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked).

Do not downplay the situation.

Do not over-hype the situation.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter.

Do not reject the premise of the question.

Do not have a passive role in the situation.

Do not give a one-sentence answer.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action.

Test Analyst Interview Question & Answers

What do you like to do in your spare time?

“I am a big reader of both fiction and non-fiction. I always like to have at least 2 books on the go; one for entertainment – most often some kind of science fiction (I am currently reading the Expanse series) and one for learning. I always like to be learning new things, I find it fun and also incredibly rewarding to learn a new skill. I even find it rewarding when I fail miserably – as I do often – as I always learn something from the experience, I suppose this desire to learn new things and improve is why I was drawn to testing, as I am constantly learning new processes and new systems in order to learn how best to test them.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What motivates/energises you?

“Success is what energises me. This is why I prefer project testing roles. The ability to say that a project has been successfully deployed is what drives me during the more mundane run of the mill day-to-day activities. Recently I was able to close the book on a 30-month IT infrastructure deployment. This was a project that had been completely re-scoped 3 times just during the time I was attached to the project. But knowing that the project would eventually be deployed is what drove me throughout.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What are you good at?

“I’m not usually one to toot my own horn but when in an interview I suppose it is a must. I have a few attributes that I am particularly skilled in. I am hardworking – but I guess everyone says that – I am also an extremely quick study as you can see from my qualifications. But my greatest strength that I bring to the table is my experience with this industry. I have been working in this industry for over 10 years and have worked in a multitude of departments across all areas of the supply chain. There is not much about the processes of this industry that I do not know. So you ask what am I good at, I am good at knowing where everything fits together, why certain processes are the way they are, where to look for errors in the software, etc. The knowledge that you can only gain from doing. I will be the person on the team that everyone comes to when they need more information about their work.“

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What are your weaknesses?

“I have never worked with <insert testing tool or software> before and I see that it plays an integral role in your organisation. I have worked with <insert other testing tool> before and from what I hear it lacks a number of features present in <testing tool>. I look forward to the opportunity to use this new tool as I hear great things about it, I have also found a crash course online that I would look to take to get up to speed as quickly as possible…should I be offered the job”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Describe a situation when you were responsible for other team members learning a new skill?

“I’m a big believer in learning new things. I’m the person on the team who is always first in line whenever new training sessions are available for the team. I just think that the more you know the better you can produce.

There was one occasion where a training seminar was held for a new software that had been introduced within our department. The core functionality of the software was the same as what we used already so we were told that the seminar was voluntary.

I of course went along. And while a lot of the features were the same – as was expected – there was some new advanced functions that I thought could be great for our team.

I spoke to the training lead after the seminar and he sent me across some documentation and guidance on the new functionality. I studied through all the documents and realised that if our team was trained on this new reporting methodology that we could save quite a bit of time each week.

I positioned this to my manager who was delighted with the idea. And the next week I trained all of my team in this new skill. Some were reluctant at first because there was an element of coding involved – we needed to use SQL queries for the reports, but once they got the hang of it they were amazed at how much could be done.

The results were immediate. Our team was getting work done in twice the time. Time spent manually pulling reports was no longer. Some of the team went even further and started to develop more and more complex reports that would never have been possible without knowing this new skill.“

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

In your role as Test Analyst, what do you see as your key responsibilities and deliverables?

As part of your role as Test Analyst on this project, how would you gather appropriate information required to allow you to perform your testing?

What documentation and deliverables would you produce in your role as a Test Analyst?

How do you keep up to date with technological advancements in your field and in general?

Can you briefly outline one of the software diagnostic processes you use from start to finish?

What is your approach to working with a large amount of data?

Can you tell me about two types of software testing applications you use and rate the performance of each?

How do you deal with conflict that arises between members of your team?

What are the different types of software testing?

How do you determine the best approach to testing a new product or feature?

What is your experience with using automation tools for testing?

Provide an example of a time when you identified a critical issue with a product or feature and your solution.

What would you do if you identified a bug but couldn’t determine the cause?

If you were given access to confidential information about a product or feature, what would be your ethical approach to testing it?

Do you have any experience working with open source software?

When performing regression testing, what is the maximum number of previous versions of a product or feature you would test?

What makes you an ideal candidate for this test analyst position?

Which software testing method do you prefer and why?

What do you think is the most important skill for a test analyst to have?

How often do you perform quality assurance testing?

How do you feel about deadlines? – Example answer

“Obviously having a future date that something is due looming over you can be daunting, especially when it is a hard deadline. It is quite easy for people to get overwhelmed and get stressed. But I feel differently. I hold a begrudging respect for deadlines. I appreciate their importance as they force you to provide more structure to your work and can act as a motivator. Without deadlines I feel like a lot of work would just not get done.

To give you an example, last year I was brought in as Project Manager on an infrastructure upgrade project. This project had been ongoing for 3 years with no end in sight. There was no urgency within the team to get their work completed as there was no deadline to meet. Instead the team would prioritise other pieces of work over this project.

Eventually this pushed on long enough that a hard deadline did appear. This infrastructure upgrade became a dependency for another project of mine and it needed to be completed before I could go-live with my project.

Immediately on taking ownership of the project I created a project plan using the new deadline to create a work breakdown structure. Then I spoke with all project team members and stakeholders to advise them of the new deadline and the new plan that everyone was to adhere to.

In the end the infrastructure upgrade was deployed successfully. As a result I was able to deploy my other project on time also. So to circle back to the question I truly believe that deadlines are important as otherwise I do not believe a lot of work would get completed.“

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Do you have any questions for us?

10 Questions To Ask At The End Of An Interview (And 6 That You Shouldn’t!)

What is a Change Manager

A Change Manager is someone who manages change (duh) in an organisation. This means different things in different organisations but most commonly a Change Manager will be responsible for the creation of change processes and overseeing their correct usage within the organisation.

The salary for a Change Manager is hard to pin down as it varies greatly on the responsibilities that are given to the role by the organisation. The average salary for a Change Manager is around £55,000. If you are reading this from the US (or you are planning on relocating there) you can expect to fetch a higher wage, the average in the US is around $90,000.

As you can see from this the role doesn’t pay as well as, let’s say, a Project Manager role. But it is still a highly sought after position and you need to really shine in your application in order to be considered.

That’s why in this article we are going to look at how to best nail the Change Manager (CM) interview. We will start by giving some tips on the interview itself, then we will look at the best way to answer CM questions – including what NOT to do. Then finally we will look at some of the more common questions you may be asked in your CM interview.

Ready? Let’s get started…

Change Manager Interview Tips

Lean heavily on your experience. This applies even if you have never held a Change Manager position before. A Change Manager is responsible for numerous things but primarily the management of the day-to-day change items and overseeing the organisation’s change policies. You don’t need to have held a Change Manager title previously to have participated in similar activities. When answering questions lean heavily into these experiences.

Know your audience. You should always research the organisation you are interviewing for. But what people don’t think to do is also research the interviewer and the hiring manager (if these are different persons). You want to impress the person making the hiring decision so you should research them specifically trying to understand what makes them tick and what they are looking for in a new employee.

Pepper your answers with technical terms. Change management has a number of technical terms, processes, systems, tools etc. For example when answering a question you can talk about how your team uses JIRA for defect tracking. Or you might talk about how you maintain a RACI matrix as part of your stakeholder management. These little things show the interviewer that you are well versed in the area and are not just full of fluff.

How Best To Answer Change Manager Interview Questions

Unless the question you are asked is a straight ‘up or down / yes or no’ style question then you are going to need to learn to describe, expand and elaborate on your answers. The best way of doing this is to follow the B-STAR technique for answering interview questions.

Answers using this method follow the below structure:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts and feelings with regard to the subject matter? – As a Change Manager you should have your own set of philosophies and change methodologies that you tailor to each situation.

S – Situation – What was going on? Briefly explain the scenario that was taking place. – Try not to spend too much time describing the situation. The bulk of your answer needs to be about you and what you did so keep the situation simple to understand and even simpler to describe.

T – Task – What was your role in the action? Most of the time it is best that you are taking an active rather than passive role in the encounter – You are going for a Change Manager role (presumably if you are reading this) so the situation you describe should have you involved with the management of change within an organisation.

A – Activity (or action) – What did you do? Detail the steps you took and why you took them. – This should take up the bulk of your time answering the question.

R – Result – How did everything end up? Try to use figures if possible (e.g. 99% of issues were resolved in first instance, Project failures reduced 50% etc.).

Remember though that the B-STAR technique is descriptive not prescriptive. You do not need to follow this flow strictly, go with what is best for your answers and that will allow you to put your point across and show your experience the best.

What You Should Not Do When Answering Change Manager Questions

Do not avoid the question.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked).

Do not downplay the situation.

Do not overhype the situation.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter.

Do not reject the premise of the question.

Do not have a passive role in the situation.

Do not give a one-sentence answer.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action.

Change Manager Interview Question & Answers

How Did You Prepare For This Interview?

“I believe that it’s incredibly difficult to overcome a bad first impression. Because of this I always strive to never make one. That’s why for important meetings, or interviews like this, I make a clear plan of what I want to get from the meeting and outline the steps I need to take to achieve that goal.

So when I received the call about scheduling this interview the first thing I did was research your offices. As you are based in an area of town I am not familiar with I drove by here after work one evening just to make sure I knew the way. I also checked Google Maps to see what the traffic would be like at this time. Nothing worse than being late sitting in traffic after all.

I actually have a contact who works in your finance department, Claire, we were colleagues in the place I am currently working. I reached out to her to see if there was anything she could tell me about the interview process. We had spoken before about the company as a whole and how she talks about the company is one of the reasons I applied.

Following our chat I went through all of my work achievements and made sure they fully encompassed everything I have accomplished in my career.

I’m glad I took the time to prepare as I did because there was a lot of traffic so it was good I knew to expect that. Also talking with Claire helped jog my memory on a project we both worked on a few years back delivering a piece of financial software that I believe your company is in the process of deploying.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Describe a time when you communicated effectively in a difficult situation

“I believe that proper planning and training is the most effective way to get out of most difficult situations. Sure you cannot plan for everything but if you prepare as best you can you will be happy to fall back on that preparedness when difficult situations arise.

Recently while working on a major software deployment at my current employer I was tasked with being the ‘Go-live Day Coordinator’. This meant that I had to communicate with the IT team, the business team and senior stakeholders all throughout the deployment. We took the servers down for 4 hours to deploy and 2 hours to test before release.

During these 6 hours it was my job to receive status updates from the IT teams and to facilitate the communication between IT areas. I also needed to communicate with the business team doing the testing so that any issues were raised through the IT team for fixing and then back for retesting. All of this had to be done without delay otherwise we would not meet our 6 hour target. On top of this it was expected I provide hourly updates to senior management.

In order to prepare for this I needed to establish a communication strategy. We use Teams within the organisation so I created a number of new Team groups so that information could flow through. I also established a backup WhatsApp group for the IT team and the Testing team – this came in handy when all of our systems went down partway through the activity!

Even though the whole 6 hours felt like one long continuous hectic process we were never hindered by a lack of communication. All information was provided as and when it was needed thanks to the effective planning that took place earlier. At the end the deployment was completed successfully and on time.

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Have you ever had to work to an extremely tight deadline? How did you navigate that?

“I don’t think anyone likes deadlines, I know I don’t. But I do appreciate their importance in the workplace in how having a deadline provides structure to how we work.

As a Project Manager deadlines are kind of my thing. Deadlines, Cost and Quality are my primary motivators. I like to ensure that all my projects are properly planned so that there is no stress about the deadlines.

However that is obviously not always possible. There was a recent project that I was handed very last minute. The previous project manager had abruptly left the business and had seemingly let the project run without direction for a number of months prior to this.

I was given control of the project and told the deadline was just 2 months from now. I immediately knew this was not possible given the current status. But I persevered.

First thing I did was re-validate all of the assumptions. I found out that the deadline was not a fixed deadline of 2 months but was told under no uncertain terms could it extend past 3 months. That bought us some respite but not enough.

Next steps was to re-examine the requirements. This was a new product launch and the initial project design was to go live with the full product spec on Day 1. I took this back to the project sponsor and drilled down to which requirements were critical for Day 1 launch and which requirements could be delayed to a subsequent ‘Phase 2’ launch.

With all of this done I had a plan that would get us there. I just needed a motivated project team. I again linked in with the project sponsor for his support in both bringing in new team members (who I had a close working relationship with) and to re-affirm to the remaining project members and all stakeholders the importance of this project and it’s deadline

This seemed to be the spur that everyone needed as we were off to the races so to speak. The project was delivered on time and to the required quality with the remaining non-critical features being added to a month after. I also raised with the PMO team that this situation could have been avoided had there been a requirement on the previous project manager to provide status updated into the project sponsor in a more formal setting.“

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time when you have identified an opportunity for improvement within your processes?

“I am always looking for ways to improve my processes both in work and out of it. I feel that if we are not looking to improve, to optimise then we will stall and eventually get surpassed. Better to be ahead of the pack than overtaken by the pack.

Recently in my current role I was tasked with reviewing and documenting the process for one of our business areas. These teams worked in customer complaints and were primarily responsible for gathering information about our customer to input into the complaint file.

This was a purely manual process and involved the team going into various systems and pulling the relevant data to input into a spreadsheet.

In order to perform my task I shadowed a few colleagues over the course of a week to better learn how they perform their function. From here I noticed a number of things that could be improved.

Firstly the team had to manually check a folder to see if any new complaints had arrived. I suggested that an automated solution could ping an email to the Team Leader to advise when a complaint had arrived and could – if it was wanted by the business – automatically allocate to a team member.

Secondly I noticed that the systems the team would gather data from all had various data feeds coming in and out. My suggestions were to interact with this feed for the complaint so that the data required for the complaint files were automatically shared with the team meaning that they did not need to go into each system. I had a further suggestion that would compile the data into the complaint file but after further analysis I deemed this to not be feasible with the current resources available.

Once I was complete I delivered the documented process maps to the business area and filed my suggestions with the relevant programme manager, who took my suggestions and formed a project that delivered on all of my suggestions and took an action to look at further resource to implement my compilation idea. The successful delivery of the project reduced the time it took to complete a complaint file by 50%.

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time you have had to manage a difficult stakeholder

“Difficult stakeholders are unavoidable when you have been in the industry for any amount of time. It is just one of those things that you need to be aware of, not everyone is going to be on the same page or have the same goals as you and you will need to handle these people appropriately in order to deliver on your goals.

Whenever I find someone being difficult or not giving me the level of support I require in my projects I tend to do 2 things. Firstly I make sure that I fully understand the issue and therefore my colleague’s concerns and secondly I approach my colleague to discuss potential remedies to get things back on track.

For example, recently I was working on a project that would automate a key data gathering task within the process. This task was performed by 2 teams within the organisation and the lead SME of the teams was assigned to my project.

After some time I found that the SME was not participating in project meetings and any actions they would pick up would go incomplete or be delivered very late.

I spoke to the rest of my team individually as well as some contacts I had in the wider department. I learned that there was a rumour going through the two teams that once the project was delivered that the organisation was going to fire the 2 teams as they would no longer be needed with the new automation process going live.

This was not true however. Our actual plan once we delivered the project was to train these colleagues on a different process where more resources were required. I approached my senior manager to discuss a change to our communication strategy so that a notice could be sent to all impacted parties.

Once the communication was confirmed I approached the SME to explain the situation and remind them that the project still required their 100% focus. Thereafter the SME was much more involved in meetings and all actions were delivered on time. The project ending up a success and the teams were successfully trained on the new project with no colleagues being let go.“

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What are your weaknesses?

“I have never worked with <insert tool or software> before and I see that it plays an integral role in your organisation. I have worked with <insert other tool> before and from what I hear it lacks a number of features present in <tool>. I look forward to the opportunity to use this new tool as I hear great things about it, I have also found a crash course online that I would look to take to get up to speed as quickly as possible…should I be offered the job”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time when you have made a mistake in a project

“I hate making mistakes – I suppose everybody does – that is why I always advocate for proper planning. I am a ‘measure twice cut once’ type of girl. When a project is planned correctly the risk of mistakes by any one person are greatly reduced. However on the occasions that a mistake of mine does ‘slip the net’ I always immediately highlight it to the project/workstream and take steps to remediate the fallout.For example, back when I was Change Manager at [REDACTED] my project team were in charge of delivering an important piece of work to the business every Tuesday morning. This piece of work took my team 1 day to produce. One such week – after a bank holiday – the report was going to be delayed until Wednesday (as my team needed the Tuesday for production since Monday was a non-working day).The mistake that I had made was that I had not communicated this delay to the business area expecting the report and as such there were a team of people without any work to do.Upon learning of my error I immediately contacted the team lead of the business area and explained the situation, taking full blame for the error and apologising for the inconvenience caused. I listened to the lead talk about how their team used the report and between the two of us we devised a temporary solution. My team would deliver the report in 4 stages, so as opposed to receiving one full report the business would now receive 4. This would allow them to start work on the first stage while my team continued to produce the remaining stages.Had I not took responsibility and sought out how to rectify the situation then the entire team would have lost a full day’s production, in the end they only lost 1.5 hours, of which the Team Lead advised me they used to complete mandatory learnings anyway.Once the situation was resolved I went back plugged the gaps in my RACI matrix and communication strategy so that this issue would not present itself going forward. I also took the time to take a couple refresher courses on LinkedIn with regard to stakeholder management. I can safely say failure to communicate will not be an issue for me again!”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What You Do Understand By Change Management?

Briefly Outline The Roles Of Change Managers?

What Is Meant By Change Failure?

Describe a time when you struggled to persuade your team to modify your goals or delegate tasks differently. What happened?

How do you measure the results of a modification you made? Give an example of a time you successfully modified a regular procedure.

How do you react to the standard “this is how we do things” response to a request for change?

How would you announce an unpopular decision?

How do you explain to team members that they need to immediately alter a process?

What are the 7 R’s of change management?

What are the 5 key elements of change management?

Describe A Change Manager’s Daily Routine?

What Qualities Should A Change Manager Possess?

Share A Major Challenge That You Faced In Your Last Role And How You Handled It?

As A Change Manager, Tell Us An Area Of The Job That You Find Extremely Challenging?

As A Change Manager, How Do You Analyse Change Impact?

What Techniques Have You Utilized When Prioritizing Changes?

How Can Change Managers Analyse Existing Gaps Between The Current State And The Business Goal?

What Activities Can Facilitate Smooth Implementation Of Change Across The Organization?

Outline The Objective Of Change Management

Briefly Explain How You Would Perform Planning, Implementation, And Management Of Change For A Project.

Briefly Explain The Strategic, Tactical, And Operational Levels Of Change.

What are some of the most important skills for a change manager to have?

How well do you handle stress while managing multiple changes at once?

Do you have experience working with large budgets as a change manager?

What makes you an ideal candidate for this change manager position?

What do you think is the most important thing to remember when managing a large-scale change?

Do you have any questions for us?

https://careerbuildingjobs.com/10-questions-to-ask-at-the-end-of-an-interview-and-6-that-you-shouldnt/

A quick google search tells me that the average salary for a Risk Manager in the UK is somewhere between £55,000 and £65,000. This jumps up massively for our friends from the US who can expect to pick up somewhere around $120,000 on average in the Risk Manager position.

Risk management skills are highly sought after, hence the relatively high salaries paid.

These high salaries though mean that there is lots of competition for each role. If you have the skills, experience and qualification you should be able to garner some interest from organisations looking to hire Risk Managers.

But just having the skills, the experience and the requisite qualifications isn’t all that’s necessary to actually land the job. You also need to be able to correctly communicate these to the hiring manager.

That is why in this article we are going to be looking at how you can nail the Risk Manager interview and get that highly sought after role. Firstly we will be looking at some tips for the interview itself, then we will look at the best approach to take when answering Risk Manager questions (and also what not to do!). Then finally we will look at some of the most common interview questions you can expect to get.

Ready? let’s get cracking…

Risk Manager Interview Tips

Lean heavily on your experience. This applies even if you have never held a Risk Manager position before. A Risk Manager is responsible for numerous things but primarily the management of the day-to-day risk and overseeing the organisation’s risk policies. You don’t need to have held a Risk Manager title previously to have participated in similar activities. When answering questions lean heavily into these.

Know your audience. You should always research the organisation you are interviewing for. But what people don’t think to do is also research the interviewer and the hiring manager (if these are different persons). You want to impress the person making the hiring decision so you should research them specifically trying to understand what makes them tick and what they are looking for in a new employee.

How Best To Answer Risk Manager Interview Questions

Unless the question you are asked is a straight ‘up or down / yes or no’ style question then you are going to need to learn to describe, expand and elaborate on your answers. The best way of doing this is to follow the B-STAR technique for answering interview questions.

Answers using this method follow the below structure:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts and feelings with regard to the subject matter? – As a Risk Manager you should have your own set of philosophies and risk-appetite approaches that you tailor to each situation.

S – Situation – What was going on? Briefly explain the scenario that was taking place. – Try not to spend too much time describing the situation. The bulk of your answer needs to be about you and what you did so keep the situation simple to understand and even simpler to describe.

T – Task – What was your role in the action? Most of the time it is best that you are taking an active rather than passive role in the encounter – You are going for a Risk Manager role (presumably if you are reading this) so the situation you describe should have you involved with the management of risk within an organisation.

A – Activity (or action) – What did you do? Detail the steps you took and why you took them. – This should take up the bulk of your time answering the question.

R – Result – How did everything end up? Try to use figures if possible (e.g. 99% of issues were resolved in first instance, Project failures reduced 50% etc.).

Remember though that the B-STAR technique is descriptive not prescriptive. You do not need to follow this flow strictly, go with what is best for your answers and that will allow you to put your point across and show your experience the best.

What You Should Not Do When Answering Risk Manager Questions

Do not avoid the question.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked).

Do not downplay the situation.

Do not over hype the situation.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter.

Do not reject the premise of the question.

Do not have a passive role in the situation.

Do not give a one-sentence answer.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action.

Risk Manager Interview Question & Answers

What are your weaknesses?

“I have never worked with <insert tool or software> before and I see that it plays an integral role in your organisation. I have worked with <insert other tool> before and from what I hear it lacks a number of features present in <tool>. I look forward to the opportunity to use this new tool as I hear great things about it, I have also found a crash course online that I would look to take to get up to speed as quickly as possible…should I be offered the job”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

How Do You Assess And Monitor Risk Within A Project?

“Managing risk is one of the most important tasks that is undertaken by a Project Manager (with assistance from a good Risk Manager). It is crucial to success that risks are appropriately identified, assessed and monitored throughout the project lifecycle.

In order to achieve this one of the first project artefacts that I advise PMs to create when forming a new project is the RAID log. Within this log they should record all potential risks to the project (as identified by the project team and stakeholders).

Within the log, risks are assessed as to the likelihood and severity and an appropriate plan is put in place, usually looking to reduce or eliminate the risk or to mitigate the impacts should the risk crystallise.

Within the log should be a date for review. When this date comes around the item is re-examined to determine if all the underlying logic still holds true.

I have found that the on-going monitoring of the risks is the most difficult to get people engaged with. It is easy to explain the need for the initial session but slightly more persuading is needed to get people involved in continually updating the risks.“

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Can you provide an example that demonstrates your attention to detail?

How do you deal with employees who prove difficult to work with?

How do you stay up-to-date on the best practices of risk management?

Can you describe the most problematic situation you have dealt with?

What experience do you have writing and presenting risk assessment reports?

Discuss you experience in presenting risk assessments and reports

What is the role of risk management in an organisation? How do you go about advocating for risk management?

How do you operate under pressure? Describe your most stressful project and how you managed it.

Have risk recommendations ever brought you into conflict with a stakeholder or department’s goals?

How Do You Mitigate Risk?

How Can You Perform Risk Identification?

Briefly Explain The Process Of Risk Management

How Can You Communicate Risks Effectively To Stakeholders?

Explain The Meaning Of Risk Breakdown Structure?

What Are The Types Of Project Risks?

What Is Risk Probability And Risk Impact?

Who Performs A Risk Assessment?

Describe The Daily Routine Of Risk Managers?

How do you convince people to take risk management more seriously? Can you share an example of where you have done so?

Tell me about a time when you had to source information from multiple people or locations. How did you make a determination about what information was relevant?

Tell me about the risk process you use in your current/previous role. What have you learned and how would you improve the process?

Can you share an example of a situation you have been in where you have had to recommend implementing contingency plans or risk management measures that you knew would be unpopular?

What experience do you have with risk modelling?

Give me an example of a time where you had to make a decision alone. What was the outcome?

Tell me about a recent experience where you were under pressure. How did you manage the stress you were under to ensure an effective result?

What do you think are the top risks affecting our business/industry at the moment? What will they be in five years?

Do you have any questions for us?

10 Questions To Ask At The End Of An Interview (And 6 That You Shouldn’t!)

There are many types of Team Leader (TL). Different styles for different personalities.

We have:

• The Autocratic “Take it or Leave it” Leader.
• The Democratic “What does everyone think about this” Leader.
• The Laissez-faire “Do whatever you think is best” Leader.
• The Coach “Let me teach you the way” Leader.
• The Charismatic “Come to Jesus” Leader.
• The Bureaucratic “Them’s the rules” Leader.
• The Visionary “To the moon!” Leader.
• The Pacesetting “Catch me if you can” Leader.
• The Servant “What can I do for you” Leader.

The type of leader you are will be very important in an interview setting. That is why in this article we are going to look at the Team Leader interview and see what steps we can take to nail it.

Firstly we will go over some TL specific interview tips, then we will discuss how to (and how not to) answer TL interview questions. Finally we will look at some example interview questions you might see in your next Team Leader interview.

Ready? Let’s get cracking…

Team Leader Interview Tips

Lean heavily on your experience. This applies even if you have never held a Team Leader position before. A Team Leader is responsible for numerous things but primarily the management of the day-to-day activities and overseeing the team’s development and progress. You don’t need to have held a Team Leader title previously to have participated in similar activities. When answering questions lean heavily into these.

Know your audience. You should always research the organisation you are interviewing for. But what people don’t think to do is also research the interviewer and the hiring manager (if these are different persons). You want to impress the person making the hiring decision so you should research them specifically trying to understand what makes them tick and what they are looking for in a new employee.

Give at least one answer where you had to make a tough decision. As a Team Leader this usually means firing someone or similar. Sure it would be great if this never had to happen but that is just not realistic in the world we live in. You need to ensure you can show the interviewer that not only are you a good role model for your team that will be there to support them in completing their work BUT also that you are capable of making the tough choices for the good of the organisation.

How Best To Answer Team Leader Interview Questions

Unless the question you are asked is a straight ‘up or down / yes or no’ style question then you are going to need to learn to describe, expand and elaborate on your answers. The best way of doing this is to follow the B-STAR technique for answering interview questions.

Answers using this method follow the below structure:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts and feelings with regard to the subject matter? – As a Team Leader you should have your own set of philosophies and leadership style that you tailor to each situation.

S – Situation – What was going on? Briefly explain the scenario that was taking place. – Try not to spend too much time describing the situation. The bulk of your answer needs to be about you and what you did so keep the situation simple to understand and even simpler to describe.

T – Task – What was your role in the action? Most of the time it is best that you are taking an active rather than passive role in the encounter – You are going for a Team Leader role (presumably if you are reading this) so the situation you describe should have you in a leadership role.

A – Activity (or action) – What did you do? Detail the steps you took and why you took them. – This should take up the bulk of your time answering the question.

R – Result – How did everything end up? Try to use figures if possible (e.g. the team made the deadline, management scores went up, colleague satisfaction was great, nobody cried in the breakroom! etc.).

Remember though that the B-STAR technique is descriptive not prescriptive. You do not need to follow this flow strictly, go with what is best for your answers and that will allow you to put your point across and show your experience the best.

What You Should Not Do When Answering Team Leader Questions

Do not avoid the question.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked).

Do not downplay the situation.

Do not overhype the situation.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter.

Do not reject the premise of the question.

Do not have a passive role in the situation.

Do not give a one-sentence answer.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action.

Team Leader Interview Question & Answers

How Did You Prepare For This Interview?

“I believe that it’s incredibly difficult to overcome a bad first impression. Because of this I always strive to never make one. That’s why for important meetings, or interviews like this, I make a clear plan of what I want to get from the meeting and outline the steps I need to take to achieve that goal.

So when I received the call about scheduling this interview the first thing I did was research your offices. As you are based in an area of town I am not familiar with I drove by here after work one evening just to make sure I knew the way. I also checked Google Maps to see what the traffic would be like at this time. Nothing worse than being late sitting in traffic after all.

I actually have a contact who works in your finance department, Claire, we were colleagues in the place I am currently working. I reached out to her to see if there was anything she could tell me about the interview process. We had spoken before about the company as a whole and how she talks about the company is one of the reasons I applied.

Following our chat I went through all of my work achievements and made sure they fully encompassed everything I have accomplished in my career.

I’m glad I took the time to prepare as I did because there was a lot of traffic so it was good I knew to expect that. Also talking with Claire helped jog my memory on a project we both worked on a few years back delivering a piece of financial software that I believe your company is in the process of deploying.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time when you needed to communicate bad news to a colleague or stakeholder?

“I believe that bad news is best delivered in person and discretely, where it is responsible to do so. I don’t particularly relish giving bad news (I suppose not many do) so I often try to resolve the situation in advance so the bad news never needs to be given.

Obviously though that isn’t possible all of the time. For example in a previous role I managed a team of complaint handlers when word came down from senior management that we were offshoring a large part of our process and this meant layoffs of nearly 40% of the department.

I tried to go to bat for my team and show how our quality and production scores were the highest around and unlikely to be replicated using our offshore colleagues, but the decision had been made and was purely cost driven.

It was my job to determine which members of my team would be let go and which would stay.

We had all joined the department together on the same contract so there was no element of seniority that needed to be accounted for. Instead I devised a balanced scorecard type of approach, ranking each team member against the department’s relevant KPIs (quality, production, skills).

Once I had my list I booked one-on-ones with all of my team members as close together as possible, starting with the colleagues who would be staying. With the colleagues who were being let go I got straight to the point and told them the company would be terminating their contract. I allowed them to ask any questions they wanted and informed them that I would be around for any help they needed in looking for a new role.

During the meetings 2 of the colleagues I wanted to keep informed me that they were planning to leave soon anyway and suggested that they would leave now instead freeing up room for other colleagues to stay.

In the end I had to tell 6 members of my team that they were being let go. They were all understanding of the situation and were grateful that I offered to help them look for new roles.

Going forward if I were to be in the same position I would have gone to the meetings with some open positions that I would recommend the colleagues apply for”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Have You Ever Had To Manage A Difficult Employee? – Example answer

“Yes on a number of occasions. My style of management is such that I believe that if you ensure your employees have all of the required training and all the necessary resources at their disposal that you can take a step back and they will flourish on their own. I do not believe in overly micromanaging my team. I have an open door policy and I have regular catchups with my team members and I trust that they will get the job done.

By and large this works pretty well in my current role. However you do sometimes get the occasional team member who requires more supervision than others.

One such person was new to my team and soon after their training and introductory period finished their productivity dropped week by week. At the start the colleague seemed to be at the same level as some of the more experienced members of the team but over time his output dropped until he was comfortably the worst performer all around.

I spent the next week or so monitoring this colleague more closely to understand where any issues were arising. I noticed that he was spending large amounts of time being unproductive and not completing tasks.

I raised this with him during our weekly one-on-one and he admitted how he didn’t feel much motivation to complete more work and found it difficult stay focused when there seemed to just be more work to come.

I took a few actions on the back of this meeting, all of which I cleared with my management team ahead of time.

I put the colleague on an action plan that monitored his output on a daily and weekly basis. This would be reviewed by myself along with the colleague and with our director. It was stressed to the colleague that if there were no changes after a month that we would be terminating his position with the company.

Also as a show of transparency and in an attempt at motivation by target setting we started releasing productivity reports for the whole team so they know how each team member is performing.

The action plan proved to be the motivator that was required for the ‘difficult employee’ as soon after we started the action plans his output was nearing the top of the team charts. The team productivity reports also became a big success and saw improvements across the whole team. Senior management were pleased and have taken the action to talk about a bonus structure to go along with the performance reports which is still in the pipeline.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

How do you handle disagreements within your team?

“As Product Manager at X company it was my responsibility to prioritise the backlog of tasks. The way things worked in our organisation was that any stakeholder could raise an item to add to the backlog, then as a team we would discuss in which order it would be best that they were worked and deployed.

Ultimately however the final decision on priority lay with myself.

As you can imagine with so many different areas of the business raises items, each with their own agendas and goals the backlog meetings would often end with a lot of disagreement

One such occasion we had two business areas both asking us to deploy a change to our product and both were asking for the change to be deployed in the next sprint. Unfortunately we only had the dev resource to implement the one change in this cycle.

The backlog call became heated between the two representing colleagues and I was forced to cut the meeting short to let cooler heads prevail.

After the meeting I sat with both colleagues to further understand the urgency behind both changes. Asking them to describe the benefits of the change and also the drawbacks of waiting until the next cycle.

Once I had this information in hand it was clear to me which change would be most beneficial to the business. I invited both colleagues into a meeting where I had compiled the information into a presentation deck with a few charts showing the resources available within the product team and the relative benefits of each change.

Explaining it this way allowed both colleagues to fully appreciate the restrictions that were on my team and also the comparative benefits of each change.

Both colleagues left the meeting happy with the outcome and both changes were pushed into production in the next 2 sprints”

Check out our post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time when you had to convince others to put in ‘the hard work’

“I always feel that when you have a good team working for you that often you don’t need to convince anyone to get the job done, that’s why I believe in a strong recruitment policy of only employing the best and maintaining high standards within the organisation.

Of course there will always be times when a little more motivation is needed. One such occasion happened recently. One of our most valued customers asked if we could provide delivery on one of our products a month earlier than originally scoped.

The organisation agreed to ‘try our best’ when it came to this request but made the customer aware of the challenges of this new date.

The challenge was given to me and my team to try and achieve this new date. Ensuring open communication with the team is important to me so the first thing I did was meet with my team to ensure that they all knew of the new challenge.

We looked at the obstacles that lay in the team’s way and I removed them where practical.

To show the team that we really appreciated the effort they were putting in we made each Friday pizza day paid for by the organisation and told each team member that they would each receive a paid day off once the product was delivered (regardless of whether the new deadline was met or not).

The team were extremely motivated by this and with nothing stopping them we managed to deliver the customer their product within the new timeframes. The customer was thrilled with the service we provided and actually sent across a week’s supply of office fruit as thanks for helping them turn things around under short notice.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

What is your biggest weakness?

“My memory is my biggest weakness. Quite frankly it sucks. I will be told something in the morning and will have completely forgotten having had the conversation by the afternoon. It held me back a lot in school were it seemed like a lot of exam preparation was just cramming as much info into your head as possible prior to an exam. I have found a good system though that works for me. I write lots of notes and set myself lots of reminders. I am not sure if you can see since we’re on video but I have been taking notes throughout this meeting as well!”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Describe your leadership experiences.

What are the most important values you demonstrate as a team leader?

How do you think your team members and colleagues would describe you?

What qualities should a team leader have?

How do you gain commitment from your team?

How would you resolve a dispute between two team members?

How can a team leader fail?

What is your greatest strength?

How do you motivate your team?

What do you consider success for you as a leader?

What motivates you to be a team leader?

What is the most difficult part of being a leader?

What are your preferred methods of communication with your team?

Do you use any tools to support you in leading the team?

How do you determine if a team deadline is at risk?

What are the 4 basic leadership styles?

Are there similarities between being a team leader and a coach?

What metrics do you use to evaluate team performance?

How do you interview prospective team members?

Describe your leadership style.

What techniques have you used to motivate a team?

How would you deliver bad news to your team members?

How do you manage your time and prioritize tasks?

How would you go about delegating/assigning tasks of a project among your team?

As a Team Leader, how do you lead through change?

What are the roles of a team leader?

Do you have any questions for us?

10 Questions To Ask At The End Of An Interview (And 6 That You Shouldn’t!)

What is Test Management?

Test managers are generally responsible for all testing activities within their area of control. This could be for a project, a department or for the whole organisation. The Test Manager will oversee the creation of test cases, they will be responsible for forecasting resource requirements and ultimately will be the one to certify that testing has been completed in line with the plan.

The most common path to test manager is by being a Tester (or ‘Test Analyst’) in a prior role, however it is not uncommon to see people with experience in Business Analysis or Project Management pick up these roles in an organisation.

Regardless of what path you take you are going to need to interview to get the role. That is why in this post we are going to look at the Test Manager interview process and how to nail it.

Firstly we will look at some Test Manager specific tips, then we will talk about the right way (and the wrong way) to answer interview questions, and finally we will run through some of the most common questions that you will be asked in your TM interview.

Ready? Let’s get started…

Test Manager Interview Tips

Lean heavily on your experience – Follow the B-STAR process (discussed further below) and refer back to your previous role regularly. Show the interviewer that you are very well acquainted with how testing works and can apply good testing principles in your work.

Name drop the processes, systems and tools you have used – If you are telling a story about a sprint or a project you worked on name drop the software you used (MS Projects, JIRA, etc.). If you are explaining how you have experience in test automation then discuss the tool you used (e.g. Selenium). Actually naming tools or techniques makes you more credible and makes your answers more relatable in the eyes of the interviewer.

Tailor your answers to the organisation – Learn all you can about the organisation that is interviewing you. You particularly want to know:

• What are their current, past and future projects?
• What are their current testing capabilities, what processes/methodologies do they use, what are they looking to use going forward?
• What software and tools do they use day-to-day?

When answering your questions try to showcase your experience that you have in the above areas. For example if you learn that they are looking to move into an Agile delivery then you talk about how you have experience with Agile and in coordinating with Agile project teams to deliver testing.

How Best To Answer Test Manager Interview Questions

Unless the question you are asked is a straight ‘up or down / yes or no’ style question then you are going to need to learn to describe, expand and elaborate on your answers. The best way of doing this is to follow the B-STAR technique for answering interview questions.

Let’s see how this technique breaks down:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts and feelings with regard to the subject matter? As a Test Manager you should have enough experience to have formed your own processes/philosophies/ways of working

S – Situation – What was going on? Briefly explain the scenario that was taking place. Try to keep your ‘world building’ short and to the point. Always try to choose situations where you are able to showcase some experience or skills that are mentioned within the job description.

T – Task – What was your role in the action? Most of the time it is best that you are taking an active rather than passive role in the encounter. You are going for a Test Manager position (I assume since you are reading this post) so your task should form part of your role as manager.

A – Activity (or action) – What did you do? Detail the steps you took and why you took them.

R – Results – How did everything end up? Try to use figures if possible (e.g. we cut costs by $3m, customer satisfaction scores increased 25%, failures reduced to zero, ice cream parties increased ten-fold)

What You Should Not Do When Answering Test Manager Questions

Do not avoid the question.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked).

Do not downplay the situation.

Do not overhype the situation.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter.

Do not reject the premise of the question.

Do not have a passive role in the situation.

Do not give a one-sentence answer.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action.

Test Manager Interview Question & Answers

Tell me about a time you dealt with conflict

“Honestly, I hate conflict. I suppose everyone does really now I think about it. But because I hate conflict I always try to keep one step ahead of it by being aware of those around me and what they are working on and what their targets are, this way I have been able to resolve many issues before they even come up.

Obviously that is not possible all of the time, one such occasion was when all of our departmental budgets were cut at the very last minute causing quite the stir with all of the management.

I was tasked with revising our testing costs based on the new allocation we would receive. This meant that certain areas would need to reduce (or eliminate) their level of testing. The conflict started almost immediately as each manager wanted to keep his or her own allocation and were convinced that their area was special and needed the full allocation as previously sought.

The first thing I did was meet with each manager individually to understand exactly what the impacts of cutting their budget would be, and ask them if they knew of any area that could be cut without impacting our operational effectiveness.

Once I collated all of the feedback I found that there were a number of items that could be cut that a majority of the management team were in agreement on.

My final budget proposal was to remove these non-essential items and for each area to absorb the remaining cuts equally according to size.

Obviously no-one was happy with receiving less funding but everyone was content with how the decision process had played out and there was no more inter-departmental squabbling about who should get what, so overall a positive result out of a negative situation.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time you were late delivering a piece of work

“I was given the task of producing a Testing scope report for a very important potential client. This was on top of my regular workload but I was happy to pick it up as the client would bring a lot of business to our firm if we were able to secure the contract.

During the week that I had to complete the report a number of unforeseen events happened; my work laptop died, the office I worked in flooded and someone stole my car. It really was one of those weeks! I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to meet the deadline so I looked at the piece of work that I had been given and the reasons why the firm wanted it. From my conversation with the firm I knew they were more interested in the automated testing capabilities above all else. So I focused my efforts so that I was working only on the automation portion of the report. I communicated this with the client and with my colleagues. Everyone seemed largely happy with this and I delivered the report in 2 stages, the first at the agreed upon date and the full report just 2 business days later. Luckily this delay did not upset the clients and we did bring them onboard. After this fiasco I petitioned the firm to provision VPN access on personal devices (with the relevant security software added) so that if this confluence of events were to repeat I would suffer no downtime…except for the time spent wondering where my car was.”

Check out our full post on how to answer this question

Tell me about a time you helped a Team Member learn a new skill

“I love working in a team. I truly believe that when a team is functioning correctly that it is greater than the sum of its parts. More work just seems to get done than would be if we were working independently. That’s why whenever I see a team member struggling I always reach out and try to help for the good of the team. I also adore the feeling when someone learns something as a result of my help. In a different walk of life I might have been a teacher!

There was one occasion when our company was adopting a more Agile approach to our projects. Moving away from waterfall and into a sprint based delivery approach.

I noticed rather early on that one of my colleagues, Jayne, was not grasping the fundamental idea behind the change and was still trying to operate in a waterfall approach.

I approached my manager to ask if we could support some additional training for the team on Agile so that we could all understand the philosophies. He agreed and we all began taking LinkedIn courses in the afternoons.

I reached out to Jayne during these sessions so that we could share notes and discuss what we had learned. I even offered that we should work together on a project so that we could bounce the ideas we had learned off each other.

That was all it took really. After we delivered a couple sprints in our project Jayne was a full Agile convert. She has actually moved out of the team now and has taken a SCRUM master position in a different department.”

What are some key challenges in a Testing Project?

How would you select a Testing tool for your project?

What is a Test Plan?

What people skills should a Test Manager have?

What are informal reviews?

What are the types of Risk in a Test Project?

What are the countermeasures that a test manager should take against risks?

Explain how a test manager can estimate the project and what to estimate?

What does a good test report include?

How do you manage Team Conflicts?

By what factors can you determine the quality of test execution?

What are some of the best practices for test estimation?

What will be your criteria for hiring team members?

Which testing tools are you familiar with?

Are you familiar with automation and what do you think of it?

What is a three-point estimation?

What are the key challenges of software testing?

What steps are followed to create a test script?

Why is testing necessary?

What are the key elements in a Bug Report?

What is the difference between Retesting And Regression Testing?

What is Exploratory Testing?

How would you choose a Testing tool for your project?

What soft/people skills should a Test Lead have?

How can you determine the quality of the test execution?

What is the difference between functional and non-functional testing?

What is the difference between Beta and Pilot Testing?

What is Bug triage?

What is the difference between Verification and Validation?