Test Before Hiring

If you are looking to hire a new project manager, it’s not enough just to do the interview & that’s it. You need to test them to make sure they are a good fit. But you have to find the sweet spot of when to do the testing & what to test exactly…

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First of all you want to do the first interview to make sure they get to know more about the position & get them excited about it, otherwise why would they spend their precious time to complete your test? I learned this the hard way at the beginning when I would try to test them before even meeting them, & that was a big fail because none of them bothered to do it.

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So or the test you want to give them scenarios - if possible real situations that happened in your business. For example in my previous agency we sometimes had clients that were unhappy with the mockups design that we delivered. Or they would want to have multiple feedback rounds, even though we agreed there would only be 2. 

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In the test, I would ask the project manger why they think this issue happened & how they would handle this situation. I like to ask these open ended questions to allow them to speak freely. Now here you want to see, how would they handle this scenario, would they handle the situation how you yourself would do it? Also we need to see how aware they are of the overall scope & budget, not just about people-pleasing the client. Does the project manager take into consideration that there is an internal budget & we cannot do endless revisions?

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Then I ask the project manager to write an email to respond to that angry client, based on the solution they would propose. This is also an excellent way to see their written communication. Again this depends a bit on your preference for client management. For example I myself, being from Canada, want my PMs to be very polite to the client even if delivering bad news. But some prefer more directness, so this is also a matter of preference.

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Then you may also want to give them some challenges such as giving them a video that talks about UX best practices, & then showing them a site to see if they can apply what they just learned & give feedback on that website. 

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Or if you need the PM to be more technical, you may give them a design or a user flow diagram & ask them to write user stories for that, to analyze their ability there. 

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At the end of the day it’s also about whether or not you are a fit for each other, just like a marriage.

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