What makes a successful project manager ?

First of all : why is a project failing? It appears that the top 10 reasons are as follows:

#1. Lack of sufficient charter
#2. Lack of mutual accountability
#3. Unsure of what requires team effort
#4. Lack of resources
#5. Lack of communication
#6. Lack of leadership
#7. Lack of planning
#8. Lack of management support
#9. Inability to deal with conflict
#10. Lack of focus on creativity and excellence

Obviously, as highlighted by this list, hard skills are critical to project success. Thus, an individual would not be a good project manager without such competencies as: planning and scheduling, ability to budget the project, optimizing the critical paths, assessing and responding risks.

But, given 85% of a project manager’s time is dedicated to communication, we cannot envisage the position of project manager without talking about the importance of soft skills. Those are key to ensure that a project does not fail. A projet manager must be performing at: communicating, negotiating, influencing, managing expectations.

As a consequence, a top project manager must be a balanced mix of soft skills and hard skills.

Hard skills can be learned, even if it sometimes requires a substantial investment of time and money. But, if soft skills can be improved, they are mostly inherent traits of an individual. That is why, as a recruiter for a position of project manager, you must be able to identify whether or not an applicant has got this set of skills you are looking for.

While you are screening applications you received, one-way video interviewing your applicants can be a quick and efficient way of assessing their soft skills. If correctly used, it will provide you with a deep insight into their personality, cultural fit and ability to behave with team members.