How to Hire Great Project Managers for Your Shared Services

Shared Services are taking on more scope, transforming operations, and supporting businesses in meeting their target outputs. Every such change initiative requires a robust project management infrastructure. This is a follow up article to a previous posting – Five Ways to be a More Effective Project Manager – which dealt with how to improve your capabilities. This article helps you to find the best Project Managers for your initiatives. 1. Stop Using Generic Job Descriptions Every Project Manager position advertised seems to be copied out of text books for training Project Managers. "Must have good communication skills," "Be a self-starter,"and "Work well with teams" are all examples. Job descriptions like this will quickly get you overrun with responses. Instead of these trite and generic requirements, spend some time describing details of the actual project. While good Project Managers can work on pretty much any type of project, there are types of projects we enjoy doing versus those we can do, but prefer not to. By putting the specific needs for that position into the job description, you are far more likely to get responses from Project Managers that really want to do that type of project versus those that would rather not. After all wouldn't you rather have someone leading the team that enjoyed that type of project versus someone that treats it like a dentist appointment? 2. Decide Exactly What You Really Need Remember this: "A good PM's knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep." If a project involves computer networking, do you need someone that has an in-depth understanding of the differences between Cisco IOS versions or someone that understands the difference between a router and a switch? The first would require a Cisco Network Engineer, not a Project Manager, while the second could be any PM regardless of expertise in networking as that type of knowledge is easily learned. By requiring specialized knowledge of Project Managers for projects you are dramatically reducing the pool of people that will apply. This means that an outstanding PM who could do amazing things for your company may be left out. Deciding on what is truly needed can help save time and attract the right people. Which leads us to …. 3. Critical Projects Need Dedicated Project Managers With cost-cutting measures in place at a lot of firms, hiring managers are trying to do more with less people. This unfortunately has been expanded into Project Manager roles, as well. So a Project Manager in many cases is expected not to just lead the project but also "get their hands dirty" with whatever the team needs doing. For small projects this is not an issue – as long as the Project Manager is not expected to be leading dozens of these "small" projects. Anything much larger, and especially critical projects, need dedicated Project Managers. Does this add cost to the company? Of course. But if the project is that important to the business that it is funded and ready to start being planned out, why would you want to cut corners on cost with the person you want to lead the project? Would you expect a Project Manager to build computer racks (– and yes this really happened)? Could a Project Manager do this? Sure. Does it make sense? No. 4. If You Need a Specific Methodology Used, Say So A common question asked of Project Managers is, "What Project Management methodologies do you use?" The correct answer from the applicant should always be: "Whatever one you want me to use." So why is this question even asked? If you need a PMBOK Project Manager, say you are a Project Management Institute shop in the job description. Again, this will help you reduce the number of applicants. If you need Just in Time, Six Sigma, etc., just say so. If you aren't sure or have a variety of processes, then say you need a Project Manager that has experience in a variety of Project Management methods and can adjust as needed. 5. Eliminate the Essay Questions When doing research for this article, I found a question that AT&T asked as part of their online application for a Project Manager position (and this is an exact quote): "Please explain your experience with managing the full life cycle of multiple implementation projects, including project planning, execution and training." How many pages would it take to fully answer this question? And as a hiring manager, how many answers would you actually read before you started ignoring them entirely? To make things worse, imagine the the applicant who, after spending the time to answer questions in the application process, thinks they are almost done – only to be asked this kind of question. There were multiple questions like this in the application for AT&T. Needless to say, you are not going to find the best people for the task by taking this approach. Unfortunately, AT&T is not the only one with this practice. Other companies were found to be asking similar types of questions, like this one from United Health Group: "What makes you a good leader?" How about this as a response: "Not answering questions like this in an online application." If the point is to see their writing skills, just ask for writing samples, or see if they have published things online. The point is not to do research papers, but to apply for jobs. So don't ask open ended questions that require more than 2-3 sentences. If nothing else, you will have a lot less to read and can see how concise an applicant can be. This is a much better combination than the types of questions listed above. [eventpdf] As this article has shown, many of the common practices to hire good, or even great, Project Managers can have just the opposite effect. They can also prevent the very people you are looking for from applying. As a hiring manager, this is not what you want. By following some of the suggestions in this article, you can reduce the inflow to a more manageable level. At the same time you will get applicants that are a much better match for what you need. Russell Harley, PMO Russell Harley is a veteran project manager and PMO director, passionate about helping organizations embrace world-class project management practices and "climb out of the quicksand" in terms of gaining control over complex, ever-changing project portfolios. The best practices he advocates stem from key learnings acquired from his MS Degree in Project Management, combined with over 20 years of hands-on PM experience in the high technology, telecommunications, and clean energy sectors. [eventpdf]

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