Selecting a project manager who can do the job can be quite stressful. After all, there’s a lot riding on the success or failure of the project. Your company’s future could be dependent on the project.But what do you ask when you don’t know what a project manager does?In this article, I’m going to give you seven things to ask when interviewing a project manager. But before we start I want to clarify two things.First off, you need to define exactly what you are hoping the project manager will do for you. You also need to realistically define what skills you really need. No I’m not being redundant. You see there are two distinct groups of project managers. One is a real project manager and the other is simply a lead technician. This latter is often called a project leader in order to avoid the management label. Don’t get the two mixed up. Asking for the skills of one when you need the skills of the other is a sure way to be disappointed in your search. In a previous article in this series, I described some of the questions you need to ask before the interview is scheduled or the ad even placed in order to clarify exactly which you need.Second, a project manager is a specialist manager. He has focused on creating a team from the ground up, aiming that team at a specific problem and then directing that team to achieve that objective despite the distractions along the way. His or her focus is on the implementation of change and dealing with people under the stress of change. This is different from a resource or operational manager whose focus is on maintaining the status quo. And it requires a different set of management skills.In addition, it also requires a set of specific skills associated with the governance of a project. Finally, it requires the ability to deal with a number of different specialists in their terminology. That involves the ability to gain respect and communicate across specialties. This is different from a project leader who is expected to communicate primarily with a single discipline.Here are seven questions you should always ask a potential candidate.1. What types of project have you worked on? What size in money? What size in team? How long were they? How many stakeholders? There are a number of questions but they’re all really the same one. Do you have ten years of experience or one year repeated ten times? The more types of projects, the more varied the experience, the more likely it is that the individual will know how to react when the inevitable hits the rotary air handler.2. Would you say you’ve specialized in any particular aspect of project management? Even project management has its technicians. In very large projects some people specialize in specific parts of project management. If the answer is any particular part that may mean they are a technician. Which is fine if you’ve got a very large project. But not so fine if you’re looking for someone to run the whole project. Further questions will be needed to clarify.3. Project Management is often described as both an art and a science. What elements of Project Management would you use to illustrate each? The science of project management is most of the elements covered in the PMBoK — risk, work breakdown structure, time management, cost management, reporting and so on. The art is working with people and getting things done and understanding the balance between the various elements.4. Art or Science of Project Management. Which is more important? And why? The art is definitely more difficult and more important. After all, everything is being done by the people for the people. So being able to get the people to form a team and work towards the desired goal is more important that being able to fill out a report.5. What would you say is the most difficult part of Project Management? And why? The answer to this will give you a very clear indication of the type of manager they are. The answer should focus on people (including politics).6. What would you say is the most important part of Project Management? And why? Everything project management does is intended to get people who don’t want to work together to work together as a team. So people should be the answer. Anything else will give you an indication of the type of manager they are. One exception is risk. This answer tends to indicate the type of organization they last worked in. In that case you should explore their people skills a little deeper.7. Why do most projects fail? And what would you do to prevent it? You may get any number of responses all of which will help you to identify the type of manager you have. There are really two correct answers. The first is that the project should never have been approved in the first place. The solution proposed will give you some insight in to how the candidate deals with upper management. The second (and less correct answer from a statistical point of view) is that scope changes. The solution will give you an insight into how open the candidate is to change or how they deal with people.
Monthly Archives: May 2022
Content Marketing: The Path to Choose or Not?
What Is Content Marketing?Content Marketing means creating and sharing content of high standards and shareable values to attract an audience for your digital empire. The main objective of content marketing is to convert the prospects into customers and the customers into repeated buyers. Moreover, the type of content we create and share tells about our niche.Therefore, it can be termed as a strategic approach for creating and share content in such a manner which will create and retain a clearly defined audience which will ultimately drive traffic and profitable customers.Present and Future of Digital Marketing:
The game of digital marketing is ever changing. To display yourself you need to advertise yourself in a very attractive way. Now if we talk about the marketing of our services, the most traditional ways are TV commercial, images or hoardings. But one thing which is present all over the traditional ways is the content. Yes, everything we look, we see or we read have content in it.Nowadays the smart marketers are using “Content Marketing” as the next big thing. There is no doubt about the fact that content marketing is an awesome medium to present yourself in the market and reach out to the audiences. Moreover, these days customers have given a set back to the traditional ways, this change in the mindset of customers has enhanced the role of content in marketing even more.Remember this while creating content for marketing
The whole internet is filled up with unique content but not everything holds the same value. So, while creating content, you need to take care that whatever you have created is really relevant and valuable. This is what separates the garbage present on the internet and the good relevant content.The best thing about content marketing is that it is non-interrupting marketing. It is not direct selling of products and services, instead of pitching them directly, you deliver information about your products and services that make our prospect more intelligent. The main essence of this whole strategy lies in one simple fact that if as businesses and service providers, we deliver consistent and ongoing valuable information to buyers. This strategy is being used by some of the big companies like P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and John Deere.Content Marketing: Ain’t no Cake Walk!However, doing content marketing is not an easy task. The marketers present all over the net are finding it difficult to create content because the competition has become very tough. Everybody else is looking for creating unique content every day. So, it becomes very important to make sure that you are able to create such content to be in the game.It is the obvious fact that great content is a must for your content marketing. Content forms the base to drive inbound traffic and leads. Moreover, you need good and unique content for your PPC to work. But still there are few present day problems related to content marketing which has made it difficult for the content marketers to make worthy content for marketingLet’s have a look at the problem:
The attention spans have become critically short
The competitors in the digital market are now creating a very high volume of content with higher production value. Moreover, higher cost to create competitive content people will deem worthy of their attention.What can be done about it?Competition in the market has raised the bar in digital market and you can fight the above two problems in the following ways:
Start creating content at equal production value as that of your competitor, but make sure that you do it on more prestigious and trusted brand platforms. The advantage of such platform is that they have built-in audiences. This will bring trust and prestige to you and your content surely.The second thing, which can be done is increasing the production value close to what your competitor has. Now, while doing this make sure that the usefulness and relevancy of your content should be much more than your competitors.Both of the ways have the potential to solve the problems related to content marketing, but the second one should be more feasible as it does not take more investments in terms of money. Either way, you choose they key to good content marketing is the way you promote your content. It simply follows the 80-20 rule, 20% of the work is writing good content and the remaining 80% is your promotion.So, it must be now clear to you that content marketing has become the next big thing but at the same time, it is not just a cake walk. Therefore, whether to choose it or not is totally your call.
Scope of Digital Marketing and Its Career Opportunities in India
Organizations in India are changing their marketing strategies. From the time of traditional ways of marketing, today, every organization’s key marketing strategy is digital marketing. The scope of digital marketing is so vast in India, it has created an array of career opportunities.With almost a fourth of the country’s population holding a smart phone in their hands with unlimited internet access, marketing agencies are finally realizing how important it is to concentrate their budget and resources on digital marketing in India, especially its mobile marketing aspect. Long gone are the days when companies with their sky high marketing budgets used to think about just billboards and hoardings, print media ads, TV and radio ads, etc. To stay ahead of the competition and survive such competitive times, a lot of startups are not even thinking about traditional marketing.Companies, whose sole purpose is to promote their brand name, are trying to push their product or service, especially through advertising on social media platforms. On the other hand, companies who’re trying to sell their product or service are doing it through, “Pull marketing”, i.e., advertising on search engines, where the users or the consumers know their requirements. This example may not always be true.Now, talking about the career opportunities in digital marketing in India, there are a lot of fields in online marketing you can choose from. Some of them are, search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), social media marketing and optimization (SMM & SMO), email marketing, content marketing, digital analytics and many more. The scope of internet marketing in India is so vast, it has spread from metropolitan cities to tier 2 cities in India. You don’t really need a degree to start your career in internet marketing, but to expertise in any aspect of digital marketing, from your journey as a digital marketing intern to digital marketing manager, you need professional guidance.Let’s discuss job roles once you have decided on your specialization.Search Engine Optimization Manager: As an SEO manager, you’re responsible for optimizing the website for ranking higher in the search engine results through on page as well as off page techniques.Pay Per Click Manager: A PPC manager manages the marketing of the desired website pages on a search engine or even social media, trying to get a lower cost per click (CPC).Digital Analytics Manager: As a digital analytics manager, you’ll be expected to analyze data from all possible relevant sources and bring necessary changes to the digital campaigns.Read more about the scope of digital marketing in India.