PMO Leader | What to Consider When Hiring a Project Manager?

project manager is a leadership role requiring exceptional people skills and project management expertise. When hiring a new project manager, we can focus on five areas of assessment: project management expertise, stakeholder communication, detail-oriented, organizing and planning skills, and teamwork. 

Project Management Expertise refers to the essential skills for project management. Typically, the experience on the resume should speak for itself. Therefore, the question is to validate the content. Example questions are: 

• What's your understanding of the project lifecycle? (key: phases in D2P and benefits. )
• When did you choose to use agile vs. Waterfall? (key: dynamic requirement, complex technology, and quick delivery time. The topic can add to six sigma etc.) 
• If the candidate has any certification, you can ask related questions. 
• What does it mean for resource management in a project? 

Stakeholder Communications requires maintaining the transparency of the project plan and status updates and negotiating commitment plans. Example assessment questions include: 

• What's your understanding of stakeholder management? (key: RACI matrix, transparency with status meetings, listening to others' perspectives) 
• What are the most important aspects of maintaining good stakeholder communication? (key: clarity, building trust, honesty) 
• What would you do when customers keep adding new requirements? (key: agile, say no, finding a creative solution)

The answer needs to show empathy for others' perspectives, manage diverse stakeholder engagement levels, have open communication, and ability to stay firm on the ground. Talking about communication, pay attention basic interpersonal communications like giving others space, making eye contact, show sincere interests, and being true present.

A detail-oriented personality requires keeping track of all the requests and requirements with no misses, creating well-reviewed documents and meeting minutes, and controlling deliverable quality with high standards. 
We can use the example meeting minutes to ask the following questions: 

• What would you include in a meeting minute? 
• What are the critical elements in the meeting minutes? (key: the summary should be brief but clearly outline the discussion points and action items. Each action should include what, who, and when. 
• How do you create the meeting minutes? What are the considerations when you send out meeting minutes?
• How do you control the quality of deliverables? (key: pay attention to details and follow-up with high standard. 

While asking these questions, we can check if there are any typos or spelling errors.

Organizing/Planning Skills means the ability to schedule activities, assign resources, start work, stay on task, and maintain focus to get things done. The best approach is to look at the example project plan and understand the thought process. Pay attention to see if contingency plan is considered and clearly outline the assumptions. Some example questions are:

• What are the critical elements in a project plan? (key: task status, time, ownership, timeline, resource, dependency, and critical path) 
• What are the ultimate goals of the project plan? (key: deliver the result, adjust schedule resources) 
• How do you organize your work and ensure you don't miss any requests flowing in? (key: todo list and prioritized) 
• What would you do when you receive a request? (key: write down, understand the scope, prioritize and schedule the work. ) 
• If one task on the critical path got delayed and impacted the overall schedule? What would you do to address this? 
• What are your approaches to ensure the deliverables meet the customer's expectations? 

Teamwork means the ability to build a collaborative and supportive relationship within the project team. Teamwork also includes the motivation to get things done and can be accountable for the deliverables. A bonus trait is a willingness to take the initiative and proactively deal with issues. 

The best approach is take one project as an example and walk through the details. ​