Behavioral Project Manager Mock Interview

Remember to include a description of how you address the emotions of you and your team during failure scenarios. While it is imperative to assess the facts of the situation and develop an appropriate plan of action, interviewers value candidates that are able to demonstrate poise and leadership during times of failure.

"I was the PM for a solution that sent batch purchase transactional data to Peoplesoft for billing. We deployed the solution overnight and excused the team after the initial tests were successful. My tech lead called me an hour later in a panic after he noticed that the process was running continuously instead of making a one time monthly update as designed. This meant that our process was essentially flooding Peoplesoft with a bunch of erroneous transactions that would cause huge problems if they remained.

My initial reaction was a sick feeling in my stomach when I realized the impact of the situation if we did not resolve it quickly. PeopleSoft had a monthly billing process that was set to run the next day and we only had a few hours to fix whatever was broken. I took a few breaths and then began working on a plan of action. I reminded our tech lead that we would be able to think better if we calmed ourselves, so we took a moment and then dug in. We made a list of who to call and wake up and gathered a team to help us figure out the cause of the problem.

We quickly identified the cause as a setting issue with the job we were running. We made that adjustment and then worked on a series of data scripts to fix the incorrect data we sent over. Our analysts helped us to define the parameters for the fix and our testers made sure the numbers were correct. I called our customer to apprise them of the situation and let them know we were working hard to resolve the issue. We were able to get the last minute changes out in the morning just prior to the PeopleSoft service running.

I thanked everyone for their quick action and willingness to jump in and do whatever was necessary to address the issue. Our customer was complimentary of our commitment to fixing the issue instead of just pursuing a rollback as that would have put the project a month behind. I made sure the entire team was allowed to rest the next day and I stayed awake to make sure things looked good in both systems for the rest of the day. I was fried by the time it was over, but I was very proud of my team for our quick action and the calm we showed under pressure."