How Project Managers Get Hired.

By: DM de Guzman

An incites to understand the role played by Project Managers in keeping the economy moving
after Covid19, as the demand for PM increases and experts projects the demand for PM will triple in
2023. As many of the world governments tried to control the spread of the deadly virus implemented
quarantine measures along its border, as a social animal, people and industries all over the world
accepted that this will not end anytime soon. Digital transformations of business is no longer an option
but a necessity to maintain its competitive advantages.

The selection and hiring process for PM’s, how resumes selected and shortlisted as candidates
in the eyes of the HIRING MANAGER, who they are in the organization and what are the things they
want to hear from you when answering all seemingly mundane and common questions during
interview. I hope that this article will bring new understanding to experienced PMs and inspire those
who want to be a PM. Project Management is not an easy job, it never is or ever will be, It a GREAT Job
and very much in demand and high paying in any job market. Today, that demand reaches an all time
high making the role as one of the most sort after by headhunters and recruiters alike.

The World needs more PMs.

All businesses, large or small embarks on projects all the time, whether to increase revenue or
improve efficiency. All projects always need to have some form of ROI or add value to the organization
to be judged as successful. The person who is most likely to deliver success is the Project Manager. This
is true across all industries, from Construction, Manufacturing, IT, Supply chain, Financials, Health care,
etc.

Project Managers in my opinion is the most least understood, most underrated and the hardest
position to fill in, yet demand for the role keep on increasing, thanks to Covid19, the need for projects
managers quadrupled in the last 2 years, making an annual growth of 200% today compared to figures
recorded in the past 10 years. As the world tries to recover from the pandemic. COVID 19, changed the
business landscape overnight, bringing fort an era of true digital economy, forever changing our way of
life called as the “New Normal”

Access to IT today is more open compared 10 years ago, development in IT becomes more and
more opensource, driving advancement in technology even faster than ever before. Prices of
smartphones also continues to go down as manufacturers continue to improve efficiency and
production further reducing the cost and internet access services becoming more and more reliable,
with 5G promised to make high speed internet access available even in remote areas, It’s now common
for people all over the world to do form of interaction with IT in their day-to-day activity. Further
increasing the demand for digital communication technology.

Tech giants like Amazon, Google, Alibaba and Facebook realized that the trend in digital
transformations will continue to peak, pro-actively investing in building new IT infrastructures, making
technology like cloud readily available, today it’s not just software and databases are available as a
service (SaaS) the use of Infrusture as a service (Iaas)(or cloud) is now becoming popular among SME’s,
totally eliminating the cost of procuring, installation, operation and security of building their own
network and data server system. The truth, cloud technology is now available and used by all
smartphone’s users, yet most of them doesn’t really understand that what is cloud technology,

Machine learning and AI is not a new concept, predicting Human Behavior and market
demands is now processed and analyzed by algorithms using mass statistics databases collected by
social media. Security and risk reduction projects are also become common, especially in the Finance
and banking, It is now even use for National security like the Face recognition program of China that
successfully mapped the facial features of its entire population.

The Pandemic proves that the need for Digital connection will only continue of increase as
proven by 2 years of limited Human physical activities greatly reduced by Covid19, Human Beings are
social animals, our spices survived for millions of years by living together as a community, the need to
interact can never be suppressed by any government or even extinction level event, because social
interaction is written in our DNA, it’s in our nature that makes us HUMAN. 2 years of quarantine forced
us to adapt to living conditions that reduced social interaction but the basic needs of every human being
in the planet to interact remains the same. Digital technology reduced the impact of Covid19 in
maintaining the integrity of our core values, that holds our society together, keeping our ways of living
and preventing us suffer social insanity.

The “e-Economy SEA 2020” report from Google, (Temasek and Bain & Company, 2021) revealed
that 40 million NEW USERS came online for the first time these 12 months, bringing the full quantity of
Internet users within the place to 400 million.

Statistics shows that more than 1 out of 3 digital service consumers started using a new online
service due to Covid-19, and of these, 94% intend to continue using the service beyond the pandemic.
Largest number of these new users came from non-urban areas that used e-commerce boosting the
digital business industry despite challenging economic environment, hitting $100 billion in 2020, and
forecasted to reach beyond $300 billion by 2025.

Covid19 will forever change our lives and the world’s economy. Giving birth to new industries,
new profession, and new flexible working condition like hybrid or WFH. This sudden shift in the business
environment and the availability of technology to sustain the digital economy.

All business that survived the pandemic and for start-ups now must create some form digital
engagement to reach their customers, automated customer service like chatbots can be used to collect
consumer feedbacks can also be used to keep their competitive advantage.

New business initiatives such as Business Continuity and Service Resilience projects of many
types are now being started by big corporation as part of their risk management program. And hundreds
of IT related projects from process improvements, system upgrades, cloud migration and so much more.
 Experts also agreed the Next Best Thing, or the next disruptive product may not be coming from
large corporation with its own RnD, it may come from anybody with New disruptive ideas can be
transformed to products by pitching in crowd sourcing platforms, promote the idea by creating blogs
and posts to hundreds of social media sites. “Spreading the Word” has never been easy.

Survey forms to collect market feedback like form site and google form can be used for free.
Even necessary fundings can also be raised online. Investment firms that always looking for startups’
worth investing. All these market activities will generate many more projects, as with the demand for
Project managers. Maybe even more that the industry of project management can handle.

The JOB: Project Manager?

“Everybody can be a project manager”, as the saying goes, that’s probably true, since everybody
do some form of project in their life, whether it’s personal, for your school or even at work. However,
not everybody can be a good project manager, specially as a professional PM. The job requires a certain
amount of soft and hard skills that you can only master by experience. If you want to learn project
management, Sad to say to course in college that you can take for project management alone. Instead, it
is a part of the curriculum as a subject, especially in the field of engineering at architecture. There are
also aa number of training sites that offers trainings for PM and all of its different branches or the best
way to do it is to learn it internally taking part in a project team, or you can join a local chapter of Project
Management Association where they take interns, and they usually have a mentorship program that
experienced project managers volunteer to take in a few members they trained to be PMs.

But why? Because Project managers differs in their knowledge, Expertise and methodologies
depending on the industry they belong. Amongst the diversity of skills and knowledge there is only one
thing in common. Its Personality because Project managers requires certain unique personality traits
that only a few has. And the role of a PM needs to be chosen by the person who wants it. That’s why PM
usually comes from different backgrounds that get tired doing whatever it’s that their chosen industry is
typically doing. For instance, I have colleges or fellow PMs that used to be a nurse, got tired of it, have
some background in computer, now implementing projects like Health care platforms, I have a friend
which is an accounting grad now implementing financial systems, I started out in retail merchandising, I
chose a different career path and I’ve implementing, ERP and CRM projects for 20 years. Later, I will be
telling my story as I answer the most common interview question. “Tell me more about yourself?” for
now let us focus on the Role of a Project Manager and why only a select few can do it well.

One reason why on a few decides to take this path, because Project according to Oxford. Project
is temporary endeavor to create a solution to specific problem or demand. If job security is one of your
criteria in choosing a career. Project management is not for you. As a project manager you know that
whatever you are doing needs to end, you can see when that will happen in the project timeline or
Gannt chart. If you are looking for long term employment this is not for you.
 Another reason is Project Management is not an easy job, but a great job. The paygrade is one
of the highest in the industry, you will learn new and exciting things and you can meet all sorts of
people, being a good project manager is a never-ending learning experience,

There are a few but very specific personality traits a PM should have, Soft and Hard skills, you
may find these characteristics as contradictory sometimes opposing attributes, like being soft but firm,
encourage openness but practice vigilance, allow chaos to set order thru self-organization, all of these
characteristics of total contradiction may sound unrealistic but in the PM world, success is often
determine how you set the direction of the game rather than controlling each player to do as you
command.

What do you need to be a successful PM?

1. You are genuinely interested in People, as a project manager specially for IT, you may
spend a few weeks getting to know every one directly or indirectly involve in your project,
the first few days involves lot and lots of research, many coffee meetings, making small
talks with your team, you need to be able to sit down with your anyone of you team and
listen, listen to they have to say to the project, listen for issues and challenges they are
facing, or relationships with the other team members at the same time learn as much a you
can about the business, how it operates, who are the direct beneficiaries to make sense
about the “user stories” or “feature”, traditionally it is called “business requirements”
which determine how you will design your plan , how the organization envision your project,
you need to study your environment, identify political backwaters before you can decide
what to do next, moving forward and presented as business case to leadership. Because at
the end of the day, Project is people plain and simple, the success of any project depends on
the motivation of the team, highly motivated teams deliver high quality results.

2. You are strong leader with many hats, it is true you are not a leader if people do not follow
you, however, leading a team of highly specialized intelligent individuals to develop
complex solutions or create new products that have exact features the customer need and
wants that will generate revenue or manage projects that supports corporate initiative to
streamline operation, improve business process and efficiency will cut cost, increase
volume of production and improve customer service will also increase profit margin.
Whatever type of projects businesses are funding have only one absolute goal, to make the
business more profitable. As PM, there are no single, but many leaderships style is required
to ensure effectiveness, and PM might be the only person in the organization has the
superpower to instantly change leadership style instantly. In conclusion, PM are shape
shifting superhero with MPD.

3. You naturally enjoy office politics, PM have no problem navigating thru political backwaters,
identify areas in the organization ??? , manage overwhelming expectations, motivating your
team constantly, monitoring changes in user stories , that may impact project
requirements that may cause delay,
Looking back to the kind of leaders PM ‘s is, seems to be Idealistic, someone you see
yourself be doing after a year or so. However, you need to understand the truth about what
PM’s really be diving into, because ugly as it may sounds, your job interview is the least of
your worries, you need to figure out that if you manage to impress your hiring manager
working environment, some situations can be uglymanaging expectations

Traditional leaders use command, monitor and control to stablish order. Minimizing risk by
controlling the team’s actions, distributing individual tasks and monitor progress while
measuring performance score based predetermine key-performance indicators or KPI matrix
well practiced by the BPO industry to measure productivity. Projects managers need to have
strong and adaptive leadership skills, to the kind of leader as demanded by the situation.

For instance, a team member currently has issues that prevents her to perform her job as
expected, to help your team stay motivated, to need to be an empathetic leader, the kind of
leader that listens and offers his shoulder to cry on.

Or the east wing of your office building is on fire, as part of leadership, you initiated
emergency evacuation, but people start panic, this time the situation demand a different
kind of leader, to maintain order a military general to keep the in line to safety.

You are about to initiate a new project and you organized ceremony to present the plan and
introduce the team to management, highlighting their role and expertise as part of your
effort to motivate the announce level details, leaving enough room for innovation. Of
course, to express sense of security and optimism to management that your project will a
success. You let management express the organization’s vision and support they can extend
to your team. This time you need to another type of leader, The visionary and charismatic
type of leader.

My 2 cents about what will the best kind of leader should the PM be? PM’s should be able
to morph into the kind of leader the situation calls for. PM should be able to embrace
change and deliver a trending product or stay in control and deliver a product without value
because the customer rejects it and your organization loose business. you will soon
understand why as you read along the rest of the paper.
 the type of projects requires a very specialized combination of formal and informal skills as
well in dept knowledge of the business

The Hiring Manager: who is he?

In a matter of speaking, let’s find out who and what they are the business. The Hiring Manager
of Project Managers,

Whatever the size of the organization, the Hiring manager will always be someone in the
leadership role or director position. For large companies, the Portfolio Manager, that manages
several projects at a time and many PM in his team. In small business, that would be president
or even the business owner. In any case, you need to understand what typical day in the office
for these people.

The Head Hunter: How recruitment agencies and Job Market Platforms Choose you, the
selection and qualification process

It all starts with your CV

What is a resume? or a CV? or a BIO? If you see your resume is just records of your
personal and professional history, for the recruiters to qualify if you are fit for the role
and just a list of things to talk about if they will invite you for interview. You probably
just sending it to every job listing you can find and hope they will call, eventually. But, if
you see your resume as a marketing tool to sell yourself to companies you want, for a
job that you love, because you value yourself and you can go to any interview full of
confidence and positivity. Take for example, you see an ad for a new product for the
first time and the first 5 sec., you stopped doing whatever you are doing and you
wanted to the rest, or you are in Youtube and you want to check a video, before
Youtube plays the video, a short commercial will comes first, there is the skip add
button that you can press to stop the ad and go straight to the content, This time, the
little arrow on the screen is over the skip button but you end up watching the whole
commercial because you got interested. The same effect happens if a hiring manager is
scanning thru stacks of resume on fill, they will only select a few that captures the
attention without reading the whole thing, maybe just 5 applicants out of 500. To better
understand why, lets try to see it from the other side. As the hiring manager looking for
PM they to manage a project.
 the your resume is than just a collections of personal information, work experiences and
skill sets needed by the role you are applying for, but to the hiring manager it is more
than that, It’s your own flyer, a marketing tool used to get the attention of its very
specific target audience, The hiring manage, the person that will help you help you land
that dream job you’ve always wanted. Unless you design your resume in the eyes of
those hiring managers, your resume has very little of being shortlisted as possible
candidate for the position. To see it more clearly, Let’s look at your hiring managers day
job and try to understand why?

Once you’re invited for an interview, this means that you are shortlisted by the hiring
manager as possible candidate to fit the role they required. If the role is for a project
manager, the most likely person hiring you are the Portfolio or Project portfolio
manager or business lead. It’s a high-end position that manages the company portfolio
with many project managers under his wing, they spent most of the day having back to
back meetings, with very little time to go thru hundreds of resumes on file to select
candidates for interview, and the way select who will be invited for interview will be
based on how well your resume in getting attention in a glance, usually, the take a
resume, scan it for specific keywords related to the job, then decide if they will read the
rest or toss it aside. Unless you understand that your resume is more than just a record
of your personal and professional information but a marketing tool, designed to get
attention in a glance, It doesn’t matter if you send out hundreds of resumes but not
getting any invitation for interview, You might need reevaluate your resume and
redesign it as your own professional advertisement and make it more appealing.

And now, Comes your 1st interview!

Okay, your resume is getting the attention it deserves, your invited for an interview by your
dream company for a possible new hire. So, what now? Do you need to memorize all details of
your resume so your answers will be consistent with what you written? Again, let’s see the
situation in the hiring manager’s perspective. As a hiring manager for PM’s, you are not really
interested the things you already know based on the resume, what they are looking for, are
other information about you, your experiences, your struggles, your personality traits, and
character. They will assess how well you communicate and most importantly they need to find
out if you are the one, they are looking for fit the role. They need to find out if your objectives
aligned with the company’s long-term goals and if you have that spark and the grit to be
successful in your job. But most of all, it also your opportunity to check if the company you’re
applying for is also fit for you. You can test the water before diving into it. To find out their
issues and why they need someone like you to get on board. Details about their problems
because they need you as much as you need them. To be honest, there are only 2 reasons why
 they are hiring, first, they may be starting a new project and they need someone with a specific
set of skills and have experience in similar projects to bring in new knowledge and insights to
the organization. Secondly, the project that be assigned to you already begun, and you are there
to replace the existing PM because management just decided to try to save the project from
becoming a total wreck, maybe they believed in the potential of the project and the investment
is worth saving. So, you need to find out what are you getting your self into. It is not uncommon
for a PM to be replaced during execution and it’s not a secret among PMs that they are hired
not because they need to help the organization to find a solution. They are the solution; they
are hired because they can solve their problems and keep things moving. For those that are new
in the business of project management, be very careful what you wish for, you might want to
want to try if PM works for you in small organization first, as a PA or project coordinator. That
way, project cost may just be in a few million or maybe as little as 500K. eventually, move up to
more demanding projects later.

PM is not just a career but a way of life, it’s true that everybody can be a PM because in some
point everybody will complete a project or two of some kind, but it’s also true that only just a
few can be good at it, because to be a successful PM. You need to have very specific set of traits
to be able to do it, and during your interview the hiring manager needs to find out if you
possess these traits naturally because if they hire you, there are no manuals or training they can
give to help on how to start let alone be successful in the endeavor that you are about to take,
here are some very effective tips on how to ace that interview based on my personal
experience as a PM for almost 20 years now, I’ve been hiring team members and PM alike for
more than 10 years so I’m sure the following will help you land a job as a PM on your first
interview.

Here are 8 most common questions in PM interviews, what are they really asking and my answers to
those questions that worked for me and many others over the years.

1. Tell me about yourself? If you applying for a PM role specially as a Technical PM, what they
really asking is,” tell me why you think you are the right person they are looking for? That you
are special, and the ability to lead a team to success, personally, if I’m the hiring manager what
always hoping to get out the initial interview, especially if the project is technical in nature. They
want to know more about your soft skills rather than the hard skills which are already written in
your resume. Its also the type of question that will validate if you are what you say you are in
your resume. I also need to find out where to dig deeper and continue with the interview in the
next 45 mins or so or cut it short and move the next person in line, so instead of just repeating
your written down of your resume, you might want to answer this question by telling a story
about phases in your career that led to this moment. Events and past experiences that enable
you to be what you are right now, another version of the same question would be like this, “can
you tell me more about yourself that is not written in your resume?” here is how I would answer
the question.
Q1: Tell me about yourself?

A: to answer that question, I would like to tell you about me and the events in my career as a
PM that led to this very moment. Why I decided to be a project manager and what made me
think that I can do this this well as a person, Why I continue to do this job as a career and
eventually led us to this very moment. I consider myself as an accidental PM. Why? Because I
started my career not as PM or anything remotely related to project management. I started as a
merchandising assistant in a retail store right after graduated from college. I do not have any
formal training in IT nor have a slightest Idea that a project manager is a job title. However,
events happened during the time I worked there made realized that I want to be a project
manager, I strongly believed that I can be good at this. Early on I realized that PM is not a easy
job, but it is a great job. This is how it started, I was hired by that same retail company to assist
the merchandising manager in a new program that will change the way they do business, they
wanted to shift from manual operation to fully automated. That was 1997, back then we call it
“computerization” today is digitize. My main task was, I was assigned to assist the head of
merchandising and be his representative to the project. I never new that what I’m doing or
what I was exposed then was already project management in a sense, during the project kick-off
meeting, which what we call today as Project initiation, I was introduced to the vendors that
provided our POS and Inventory or front end and back office by todays terms, another that
provided all computers, IBM sure-one, our POS machines, AS400 servers as well as other service
provider that installed our local area network as well as account manager of PLDT for our leased
line for remote connection since the internet was a not really an option so we used telephone
lines instead. Since I was the one tasked to manage all documentation as well as monitor the
project progress, I received, validate, and checked all deliverables in time, or the vendor will not
be paid their billing arrangement was progressive billing. At the same time processed
modification request, today we call it “change request” after which I build high level report for
my boss and detailed report for our weekly update meetings in Lotus, the original spreadsheet
application. So those are the important bits, later I was promoted as the merchandising
manager and my boss as the new director of operations, after setting up and opening new
stores, including Radioshack and RJ guitars as part of the company’s expansion program. When I
left save-lot, I do not want anything else to do but manage IT projects so took different path,
one of our vendor, Universal Tech or Unitech made me an offer to handle their operations later
joined Interprise Solutions were I learned how to use JIRA, implemented AGILE, scrum of scrum,
used other essential tools needed in PM. MS Visio for my design, MS project and MS excel for
my reports and PowerPoint for my presentation, I was also one of the early adoptors of Go-to-
meeting for remote meetings and I had the best phone in the house, and I’m proud that my
number starts with 1-800. My last formal company was with Telstra, I joined because I wanted
to see how call centers work but later assigned another project this time I was task to lead a
service delivery project that will be an upgraded version of the current, with a few additional
requirements like Building a Knowledge based Library for customer service, tech-support and
customer portal for account information, request and feed backs, It also collects fault reports,
outage schedule and service interruptions due to natural events. Then I decided to work as
retainer for my old clients and those endorsed by friends in the industry, today we call it as
freelancing or sub-contractor. So, I dedicated my life in helping super small business that in their
tech requirements, the last couple of years are setting up their storefronts in amazon, eBay,
Facebook, carousel, my desire to share what I know landed me gig in universities as consultant
in their digital business subjects. Providing couching, course design, research analysis and panel
for thesis defense. Then, there was COVID, turning again the world on its head, but also the
become the 2nd biggest driver of technology advancement after World War 2, Covid almost
overnight, reshaped the digital landscape in so many levels that it practically changes how we
work and live today. And I want to be a part of it, I want to know more about machine learning,
AI, large data analytics and many more. I was there in the beginning, when Agile was first
introduced, when ITIL became the standard in service delivery, and I want to learn more about
this new digital, crypto, blackwater revolution or whatever you call it, that’s why I’m bringing
myself back in the game again, I believed that your organization would help do that. Right?
And now we are here, doing this interview, now its up to you how the rest of the story will be
written.