How to Hire a Program Manager and Streamline Your Projects

Are you struggling to stay organized, meet deadlines, and accomplish project goals? Well, it might be time to consider hiring a program manager. A program manager can greatly improve the efficiency of your projects by providing strategic oversight and ensuring coordination across multiple initiatives.

But how do you find the right program manager for your business? Here are some tips to help you through the hiring process and streamline your projects:

Define your goals and expectations

Before starting the hiring process, clearly define your goals and expectations for the program manager position. Determine which specific skills and experience are essential for successfully managing your projects.

Look for relevant industry experience

Consider candidates with previous experience in similar industries or projects. This will allow them to better understand the nuances of your work and hit the ground running.

Assess their project management skills

A strong program manager should have impeccable organizational, communication, and problem-solving skills. Look into their past experiences and evaluate how they managed complex projects on time and within budget.

Seek leadership abilities

Program managers should possess excellent leadership qualities such as delegation, motivation, and conflict resolution skills. Make sure to probe their leadership prowess during interviews or reference checks.

Focus on adaptability

Projects often undergo unexpected changes or challenges, so it is critical that your program manager is flexible enough to adapt to such situations swiftly. Look for candidates who demonstrate adaptability in their career history or during assessment exercises.

Communication is key

Effective communication is crucial for any program manager’s success in keeping all stakeholders informed about project progress, challenges, and milestones. Assess whether candidates excel in concise verbal and written communication during interviews or request writing samples.

Collaborative mindset

Program management involves coordinating with various teams and stakeholders across different departments or even organizations. Ensure that potential hires have experience working collaboratively with diverse groups of people.

Don’t overlook technical knowledge

While program managers are focused on strategic oversight, they should also have a solid understanding of the technical aspects involved in the projects. Look for candidates who possess relevant technical knowledge to ensure seamless integration between strategy and execution.

Conduct thorough interviews

Conduct in-depth interviews to evaluate cultural fit and assess their problem-solving abilities. Ask scenario-based questions to understand how they would handle challenging situations that may arise during project management.

Check references carefully

Lastly, don’t skip reference checks. Reach out to their previous employers or colleagues to get insights into their working style, strengths, and areas of improvement.

Even if the business is developing well, you can make a decision to hire another to hire a program manager to solve some problems. Here is the plan you can save to remember what you can do better in this case. Before starting looking for this person, use three important tips.

Answer the question, why do you need a new program manager.

• Understand the basics: what he will have to work with and what programming skills need to be applied.
• Find out the average salaries offered for this position.

This is an obvious fact — any good specialist costs money. Start with the average market salary in programming. Program managers in AdvertaLine are well-paid specialists.

Engage your connections

You may already know companies where good programmers work, but for some reason, they want to leave their place of work. Offer this position to some of these persons.

Create a candidate profile in Digital Agency

To understand what the optimal candidate for the position looks like, study the best sellers in your team. What features unite them? What industries did they come from? What is their sales style? What motivates them?

Specialists when scaling the sales team are guided by five characteristics of successful sellers:

• Good learning: the ability to perceive feedback.
• Curiosity: interest in the subject; desire to ask questions about work.
• Intellect: the ability to deeply study the subject.
• Working capacity
• Previous successes: sales, sports, training, etc.

There will be several ideal profiles of candidates, for each function in sales. So, for example, the profile of a specialist in attracting clients will differ from the profile of a specialist in working with clients. The former can have experience from 0 to 2 years, and the latter can have 3-5 years.

Determine the salary level for a job. It will depend on the budget, offers on the market, functionality and other factors that you determine. Salary information can be included in the text of the vacancy. This will filter out candidates who want more than you can pay, but at the same time increase the number of applications for a vacancy.

Make a list of questions for the candidate

Decide on a strategy: how you will conduct an interview, what methods you will use. In any case, it is worth starting with the evaluation of the resume, to determine the signs of a candidate’s success in the previous places. Ask the applicant for a job to give specific examples of the manifestation of the competencies required by the sales manager.

Questions to ask:

• What skills and competencies do you think are necessary for success in this position?
• Imagine that I am a sales manager, and for three months in a row I have not fulfilled a sales plan. What would you say to me?
• What motivates sales managers the most?
• How would you handle X?

If you cannot find a dream specialist through your connections, go to the special sites. Be ready that on large resources like Craigslist there will be a lot of people willing to get this place. This is not always good, since absolutely everybody will work for any good job with a decent salary, and it’s simply unrealistic to define an intelligent specialist by resume. What can you do then?

Create a vacancy

• First, make good ads. You will create the first positive impression of our company. A great option here is to see how other well-known digital marketing agencies do it. Take your favorite ads as a template and edit it for yourself.
• Secondly, honestly and as thoroughly as possible write down what your employee will do, what skills he should have, for whom he will develop programs. This will show you the responsibility of this position.

Sorting

You have compiled a vacancy, sorted out part of the candidates by resume and selected specialists for the interview.

Of course, it is best not to take into account the most inappropriate candidates at the stage of a telephone conversation, but this is not always an affordable option.

However, you can always find out whether the person used to solve such problems before and what experience he has. Als,o find a simple task on the Internet, send it to a candidate via email. This simple test will help you to get rid of very lazy individuals.

Interviewing

You know already what you need, so ask the candidate to perform a specific task right in the office and note the time. Before his arrival, warn about the check, but do not name the task itself.

Talk about the candidate’s experience.

Find out what experience the applicant has, check everything. Even if a newcomer can impress you with his technical knowledge, focus on successful projects. Ask about his past jobs as much as possible.

Ask to show his portfolio

Let the applicant show what he has already done and told how much time he spent on it. Some portfolios can be fake, so be very attentive here. Talk to the candidate personally.

Find out the reason for his job change

It is important to know. The main thing is that the job change should not be a consequence of the person’s failure to fulfill the tasks assigned to him.

Offer a trial period

Only your ability to persuade and a properly formed contract are important here. If the hired employee copes with his tasks, give him 100% of the salary, if not, cut it. Naturally, discuss the conditions of his work at the very beginning, as soon as the person should know everything beforehand.

By following these tips, you can efficiently hire a competent program manager who will bring value to your business by achieving project timelines and objectives. Streamline your projects with a program manager who possesses the right skills and adapts fluidly to changes in your industry.