How you can use project managers in the workplace
There are multiple areas in your organization where you can use project managers:
• Sales: A project manager really helps when it comes to sales initiatives and sprints. Salespeople can be great at selling, but they sometimes lack the organizational skills to keep everything streamlined and on deadline. That’s why a sales team can always use a good project manager.
• Marketing: A project manager can work wonders in a marketing team. First of all, they can create project plans for marketing and ensure that the team executes them. There are many creative people in marketing who are great at their craft and a good project manager can uplift those skills by aligning people with a single goal.
• Product development: Project management is essential in product-management teams. There needs to be a single person who organizes, follows a schedule, keeps everyone focused on their tasks, and ensures that the company’s resources are used in the most efficient and effective way.
Project-management competencies for candidates
A project manager should have the following strengths:
Execution: This needs to be a person who walks the talk and focuses on execution. All of your plans are in vain if they’re poorly implemented. That’s why project managers focus on making sure that the execution phase is performed as efficiently as possible.
Decision-making: Project managers need to make decisions when leading the project. Most of the time, they don’t have all the necessary information, but they need to be decisive and come to a conclusion, because any decision is better than no decision.
Communication: Good project managers need excellent verbal and written communication skills. They need to talk with their team members, align everyone to ensure that the company’s goals will be accomplished, and write reports and emails to stakeholders and customers to keep them satisfied.
Strategy development: Project managers create project plans, so they need to have a strategic mindset. They need to realize what is possible and realistic, and create a clear strategy on how they will execute the plan with the resources they have.
Team management: A project manager leads the team that executes the project, so they need to be well-versed in managing a team.
Business acumen: Project managers need to understand business principles and make sure that, when creating project plans, they keep the company’s business goals in mind.
Critical thinking: Project managers need to deal with challenges on a daily basis, with limited information and a short time frame. So they will need to apply critical-thinking skills if they want to succeed in project management.
Leadership: Project management requires a project manager who won’t just act as a manager, but as a leader. They will need to inspire and organize their people, especially when it comes to tight deadlines and sprints. Good project managers will not only lead their people, but also handle all external communications with various stakeholders and assure everyone that the project will be handled well.