Good Project Managers are indeed a Rare Breed.
Project Management can be like ‘Herding Cats’…
And hey, I’m not one of them!
But I know a good one when I see one and our consulting businesses rely heavily on having very capable Project Managers.
Someone once told me that project management was rather like trying to herd cats. A good analogy I think.
After almost 20 years of running Supply Chain consulting businesses and hence being responsible for the delivery of client projects I now take a very robust approach to hiring new project managers.
What do you look for in a new project manager?
These are the qualities that I look for:
- Absolute attention to detail.
- Great communication and management skills (to herd those cats)
- A solid understanding of Supply Chain and Business (our speciality)
- Humility. Allowing others to be heard and not wanting to take the centre stage all the time.
- Toughness. Being able to take the hard knocks, set backs and bounce back.
- Determination. Whatever gets thrown at them, they stay ‘on task’ and deliver the project.
- Love a Challenge. The harder the project, the more they rise to the challenge.
As well as those characteristics I also focus on:
- Good references, from someone that I know and trust.
- Personality profiling, that we use to test the suitability for all our roles. (This is quite fun as well as practical, because we all know each others profiles and hence strengths and weaknesses)
I’m always looking for good project managers. So if you think you have what it takes, feel free to contact me.
Ideally you’ll have experience of working:
- On Supply Chain implementations.
- With systems projects.
- Across multiple business functions.
- Perhaps in a ‘freelance’ environment.
