Program Management: Project Deep Dive

Question

Tell me about a project you’re most proud of and why.

Background

Similar to some behavioral questions, this next question is quite open-ended and can seem like a slam dunk. Don’t be fooled though. These types of resume probes are key to determining how senior you are and can affect leveling decisions. This question in particular is useful to see how complex and difficult your past projects were and what challenges you overcame. After all, you’re usually going to be proud of a large, successful project.

Solution approach

The most critical thing with these open-ended questions is providing a detailed and coherent structure. A good structure for these resume-type questions are:

• Provide project context.
• State your personal contributions to the project with specific examples.
• State the impact of your contributions on the project.
• State the impact of the project on the overall business.

By following a structured approach, a logical story that the interviewer can easily follow along with will unfold. You want to leave your interviewer with the impression that you can handle problems in a rigorous and logical manner and aren’t afraid to go into the weeds to get things done, two very critical traits in a TPM!

Sample answer

Project context

I am most proud of project FooBar, which I completed when I was at AlphaBeta. This was a multi-quarter project that spanned across four different teams consisting of more than 30 engineers. It was a top priority for my org.

The goal of this project was to develop a new system that would save the company tens of thousands of hours a year, and I was the sole TPM for this project.