When your company hires a project manager, you need someone with excellent organizational skills, strong attention to detail, and the ability to keep staff motivated while meeting deadlines and keeping the whole project moving forward.
You know what soft skills your project manager needs: a high emotional IQ, managerial skills, and time-management skills. But what about technical skills? How important is it for you to make sure your project manager has a technical background?
Here are some of the key considerations to think about when you decide what skills to emphasize and how important a technical background is to doing the job right:
You want to find the right balance
If you become overly focused on finding someone with technical skills, you could end up settling for a candidate who is weaker in other important areas. You don’t want someone without the soft skills to relate to clients or novice staff members. Finding that perfect balance of a project manager with the soft skills to explain all parts of the project – technical or not technical – in a way that anyone can understand it should be the goal of your hiring process.
The project manager you hire has to be the right fit for your specific needs
Think about exactly what the project manager for that particular project is going to be doing. Will they be handling websites or will they be handling retail projects? Some types of projects require a manager with much stronger technical skills. If your project doesn’t, then finding a manager with a technical background may not be as important.
The project manager must know how to talk with laypeople
Sometimes, people with a technical background lose sight of the fact that not everyone knows as much as they do or is as familiar as they are with industry jargon. If your project manager has strong technical skills but isn’t good at communicating with those who don’t, you’ll be in a much worse position than if you hired someone who is weaker on the technical issues but who is great at getting all other stakeholders to understand the project goals, scope, and action steps. When a person works in an industry or field every day, they think it’s easy to understand. The challenge comes in being a teacher to others and explaining technical concepts or details that are important to the project’s success.
Work with a Top Creative Staffing Agency in Stamford
Vanguard Staffing will help you to find project managers with technical knowledge, managerial talent, and the hard and soft skills necessary to excel in your organization. Give us a call to find out how our creative staffing services in Stamford can help you to hire a project manager that has every skill you’re looking for.
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