Top 5 Interview Questions for a BI Project Manager

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A good project manager is even more important than the actual business information tools available to most companies. He or she should know which interview question to ask discreetly. Asking the correct question is very important to get the best answers from the respondents.

Yet finding the right one is tricky, and not many people invest a lot of time and effort into finding someone who can steer their data analytics ship.

Hence, it is essential to know which questions an interviewer should ask in a job interview. Why? The answer is simple.

If we ask them the best questions, the interviewee will give the answer you have been looking for, giving the interviewer a clear picture of the applicant pool and eventually picking the best candidate for the job.

Before we get into the top interview questions a hiring manager should ask a prospective project manager. Let’s quickly define the role.

A project manager is more than just someone in charge of making sure people do their work. While delegation is a big part of the role, they require an intimate knowledge of business intelligence systems to delegate to the right people.

Managers rarely call on them to handle the grunt work of data analytics, but they need to know it well enough to make sure they’re giving it to people with the right expertise.

He or she will stem out fires before they spark, and if one gets a bit too hot, a knowledgeable manager with a calm, problem-solving-driven disposition is who you want handling it. He should do the job calmly and collected manner, treating every obstacle like an analyst he is.

This is the person who helps build a BI project from scratch and then keeps their hands on the wheel to keep it on course once it’s up in action. It’s arguable the most crucial role in the system, and so the interviewer should not take the interviewing process lightly.

These are the top 5 interview questions for a BI project manager.

Q1: What experience do you have in business intelligence?

This question seems like a straightforward question, but interviewees should pay close attention to the answer they receive during the interview and be prepared with follow-up questions to help them get to the heart of what experience means.

It’s not just enough to rattle off years in the industry or the number of companies a prospective project manager has worked at; what you want to learn is how many roles within the BI system have they been involved in, and how long? This question gives the interviewer a picture on how relevant the applicant’s experiences as a BI project manager is for their company.

Were they able to hold a job position, even an internship, in their respective IT departments? In doing so, what have they learned? Understanding the roles goes beyond having basic competency in the moving parts of a project as intricate as BI. It goes to understanding the mindset of the people who will be working under them.

Man management is a huge part of project management across the board, and in the tech industry, it’s something that most people can often neglect in the face of shiny new tools.

Although tools are concerned, asking about the experience is a great way to learn which interviewee is familiar with.

Q2: What are common pitfalls you’ve noticed in your other roles as a project manager?

This one can be tricky because it tries to accomplish two things at once, but the point isn’t to try and catch the interviewee in a mistake.

Getting them talking about common failures and how they addressed them will give you a good idea of their problem-solving skills as well as an insight into their ability to be diplomatic of critique constructively.

Part of a project manager’s tenure will involve calling out human error and pointing out system failures. There can be egos involved in both.

Having a manager who can critique while maintaining the workforce’s trust under him and the supervisory board above him will keep the focus on the problem that needs to be solved and not small-time office politics is crucial in every business.

Q3: What interests you about business intelligence?

Project management is ultimately a people’s business. Still, there will be a time in the interview where the interviewee will need to account for their investment in BI itself.

This one isn’t just an opportunity to gain some insight into their path to data analytics. Psychologically speaking, putting the focus on their passions and expertise can put them at ease, so this is a question that works well early in the process to break the ice or to set up heavier questions.

This question provides the applicants a chance to tell the interviewer why being a BI project manager fascinates them as employees.

Q4: How do you maintain open and efficient communication with your team?

There’s a reason behind the specificity of this question. If an interviewer asks a manager about their communication style, they might tell you something off base, or worse, tell you what they think you want to hear.

Focusing on how they maintain communication emphasizes the problem they’ll have to solve daily: check-ins, reporting, work-life boundaries, motivating a team and organization is also something to check. An ideal manager who can do these things well is on their way to running a well-oiled machine.

Q5: Is there anything you’d like to ask us?

This question is always a great closing question because it de-escalates the pressure of the interview and it also gives the interviewee a chance to show how they take control of a conversation. This provides a simulation to the prospective BI project manager on how he or she is going to address the situation.

The kinds of questions someone asks in this situation can tell you a lot about them, from which areas of the BI process they naturally focus on how they handle being given power in a conversation and confidence.

Confidence isn’t about showmanship, however, but an indicator of competence. For an interviewer, this is the time to put themselves in the applicant’s shoes and gauge how a new manager’s team might react to them in real-time.

Get the Best BI Project Manager On Board Today

Finding the best BI project manager on board in a sea of applicants can be a bit of a struggle, but it is perfectly doable. The interviewer should ask the right interview question to get the best answer from them because this makes the interview process serve its purpose — to get the best person for the job.

It is also of high importance to remember that the right BI software can help any project team score that much-awaited project success. This is where we enter the picture.

DashboardFox is a self-serve business intelligence tool that can provide you with the BI platform you need for your manager and your business to ensure project success in whatever you do. Check us out to learn more.

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