“We’re installing XYZ software and we need to hire a project manager. Go hire me.”
How many times have you been handed a job requirement that looked like this? How often have you seen job requirements that have left you scratching your head wondering what you should look for when hiring a project manager? Or worse yet, one that feels you searching for the impossible dream.
There is a lot of confusion with this position and what is expected of it. And that leads to overloading the wrong type of applicant. Or worse yet, hire the wrong person for the job.
In this article, I am going to address the question “What is a project manager?” I’m also going to give you some instructions on how to select the right person.
So the first question is, “What is a project manager?”
In a simplistic answer, a project manager is simply a person who leads a temporary effort or project through to completion. Of course, that doesn’t explain why there is such a difficulty in identifying abilities. We need to examine the question a little more closely.
So let’s start by asking another question, “What is a project?”
The Project Management Institute (PMI) has a good long answer that involves duration, business, and effort. But a more understandable answer begins by looking at normal business operations.
Most efforts in a typical business are focused on repetition and continuation. You are constantly looking for new clients. You are repeatedly taking orders and shipping products. You are looking for new candidates, reading resumes and hiring people. Over and over, in an endless cycle. Each process can terminate, but it just leads to the next cycle. Change is the enemy, the great disrupter of cycles. Beginnings and endings must be avoided at all costs.
A project, on the other hand, has a distinct beginning and end. And it has a unique process (and product) that will never be repeated in exactly the same way. Change is part of their nature. Change is built into the process. And change is often the focus of their efforts.
So a project manager is a manager who focuses on time and change. Most managers focus on the heart of the life cycle: keeping things in balance and slowly improving. However, this manager focuses on the entire life cycle with special emphasis on the edges: building the team, identifying its processes, and disbanding the team.
So what should you look for in a project manager?
There are some basic characteristics and skills that every project manager should have. The ability to plan a project, build a team and focus it on the task at hand. And, of course, the ability to break up the project team seamlessly while keeping what you’ve learned.
But that is where the similarity ends and the source of the difficulty begins.
Project managers are often hired based on their knowledge of the specific topic. In essence, they are being mistaken for experts in the field.
It is easy for people to identify positions by the topic of the project. So look for an IT project manager with XYZ software implementation experience. Unfortunately, that requirement is based on a basic misunderstanding of the nature of the skills needed.
Project managers, by their nature, deal across organizational silos. They represent a senior manager (often a director or vice president) called a sponsor. They function as an extension of (or assistant to) that person doing detailed work that could quickly overwhelm the sponsor. Project managers bring people from different silos together to accomplish the project. Expecting them to be subject matter experts is unrealistic. After all, no one expects the CEO to be an expert in all aspects of company operations.
Instead, the key is to identify the number, extent, and nature of the silos involved. Effectively, you will hire a senior manager who is expected to lead a small division made up of one person from each of the silos. It is not a practical manager that you are expected to code in JAVA or HTML.