How to Select a Project Manager

Choosing a project manager for your project is like putting the fate of your company and your customer into another person’s hands. Although a project manager interview and hiring process seem simple enough, project manager selection significantly impacts your organization and those your organization serves. The project manager you select must be evaluated from various multiple angles to ensure that the selected project manager is truly reliable and capable of motivating all parties managed on the project to perform equal to or greater than your expectations. A good rule of thumb is to hire a project manager that is “smarter” than you so you can depend on that project manager to handle every project management situation that comes up so you don’t have to.

Although this may not seem entirely realistic, reaching for such a goal will only help ensure you wind up with a project manager that is likely to leave your project and company in a far better position than it was when you originally selected that project manager. Hiring anyone involves not only industry skills and background checks but psychology and communication are of equal importance. Sometimes, psychology and communication are more important than resume line items pertaining to the project industry.

How do you evaluate these types of skills?
Expose the selected project manager candidates to life-like situations you yourself struggled with in a project
Have the selected project manager candidates document their historical handling of such situations
Conduct role plays with other people in your project to gauge how the project manager handles various attitudes from each person
Have the project manager conduct mock interviews with candidate resources hired for the project
Have a language expert evaluate a written Q & A interview test where project manager candidates answer situational narratives
Request a biography of books read by the selected project manager candidates over the past 3 years
Measure how bold the selected project manager candidates are willing to be throughout the interview process