Need a Project Manager? Look for these Characteristics

Are you a project management office (PMO) director looking to add project management staff to the group?  Are you a hiring manager looking to add some PM expertise to your department?  Whether you have an established PM infrastructure already such as a group of project managers or even a formal PMO, or are just looking to hire someone to lead projects on an ongoing basis in your department or organization, the qualities you should be looking for are going to be the same.  And whether your are big or small or somewhere in between on the organizational size scale, you still want to focus on some key qualities or characteristics in the individual or individuals you hire to lead your important internal projects and/or projects for your external clients.  What are these qualities?  In my opinion, there are five key characteristics you should be looking for…
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Leadership.  It’s a given that every project manager should have leadership qualities.  If you aren’t there and you are a PM…or want to be one…then you better “fake it till you make it.”  When hiring a PM, you need to be looking for someone who can display a propensitiy for leadership through the interview and on paper in his resume and cover letter.  Ask questions designed to pull out those specific times when the candidate may have shown excellent leadership skills, like drawing a team together to pull a project out of certain failure and turn things around to success or when a difficult decision needed to be made with very little outside input or information...

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