If you’re about to start a new job as a project manager and you’ve never held a position like this in the past, there are a few things that you’ll want to make sure that you’re ready for so that you can make a great first impression and get this part of your career off to a successful start. So, if you know you have the skills to do this work but don’t quite have the experience yet, here are three tips for your first job as a project manager.
Come With A Plan For Organization
As a project manager, one of your main jobs is to keep things organized. So before you get too far into the project, you’ll want to make sure that you have an organization system and method in place for you. This will prove useful in all areas of project management, from working with your team members to acquiring the tools you need like industrial air compressors or digital software.
Ideally, you should try to choose a way to organize things that will work for both yourself as the project manager and the team members that will be fulfilling the bulk of the work. This way, if they need anything from you in order to get their work done, you can know about it quickly, know how to give them what they need, and make sure you’ve done all the necessary paperwork. And finally, when they have completed a part of the project, you can then easily know what to do next and how to progress the project along.
Prioritize Clear Directions And Guidance
For most of your team members, you as the project manager are going to be the go-between person for them and your boss, the suppliers, and other people important to the project’s success. Because of this, you need to know how to communicate clearly and give great directions to your team members.
Especially if the project that your team is working on is particularly complicated, it’s going to be on you to learn all of the important information and then synthesize it so that you can give the relevant information to each member of your team. This way, you can allow them to focus only on what’s applicable to them and not bog them down with unnecessary details.
Allow Your Team To Do Their Jobs
In your capacity as a project manager, it’s up to you to make sure that your projects get done and that everyone on your team is able to complete their part of the project on time and under budget. What you don’t need to do is micro-manage every person.
Trusting your staff to do the jobs that they’ve been hired to do and allowing them to work in the way that best suits them is going to be a superpower as a project manager. So the quicker you’re able to learn how to do this and support your staff, the better project manager you’ll turn out to be.
If you’ve been hired for your first project management job, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you find success here.