Senior Project Manager (Contract)

This role is in the organization to support the delivery discipline in managing multiple deliverables for various small to complex projects.

The core expectation of this role is to define and scope projects of all sizes and complexities, lead the work and team with strong relationships across disciplines and engagement with clients.

Career Development is typically provided by Project Director [or above] but can be modified to suit an account and/or office location. This role may provide career development to emerging talent.

Nature of this role of role is that of a ‘manager’, ‘emerging leader’, and ‘contributor’.

Skills Developed 

• Proficient to mastery level skillset, with the ability to:
• Thoroughly understand client goals and objectives as it applies to each project
• Understand interagency relationships and manage integrated projects with OMC
• Lead by example, bring solutions forward as issues arise
• Provide work direction and mentor emerging talent
• Communicate and present scope, timelines, and project health in an effective, easy-to understand manner for small-complex projects
• Structure and lead status meetings, client reviews, and other stakeholder meetings
• Contribute to scoping, approach, team, and budget in pitch documents and RFPs
• Seamlessly transition among projects and competing priorities
• Operate with an objective perspective that keeps focus on business goals
• Maintain comfort in decision making, making changes, challenges, seeking a better solution and not accepting ‘can’t be done’
• Identify team needed, properly secure, and staff projects at project and portfolio level
• Deeply understand the main forms of digital and traditional marketing and how they differ • Understand the ways technology lives in projects, with a mastery level understanding of technology types (app, tech stack, platform, VR, automation, etc.), and able to manage medium to large sized projects with a technology component and mitigate risks
• Understand the ways media lives in projects, with a mastery level understanding of media types (paid, owned, earned + audio, video, social, etc.) and the ability to manage medium to large sized projects with a media component
• Collaborate to identify activities and deliverables, translate them to a high-level staff plan and estimate, and author a statement of work outlining activities, deliverables, assumptions, dependencies, and budget at project and portfolio level
• Identify investment/write off needs proactively and submit in proper templates and forums
• Track and report on budget burn and budget health at project and portfolio level

Notable Soft Skills

• Superb verbal and written communicator
• Excellent presentation and storytelling skills
• Excellent organization and time management skills
• Adaptable and flexible

Hard Skills

• Mastery level knowledge of collaboration and issue tracking tools such as Box, Jira, Confluence, Teams
• Mastery in completing tasks in office productivity tools such as Excel, Word, Keynote, and PowerPoint at a project and portfolio level
• Mastery in completing tasks with project management tools such as Tenrox, Smartsheet, and Halo/Abacus at a project and portfolio level

Activities Performed

• Lead and collaborate to ensure the work stays on brief, client needs and feedback are understood and addressed, and the work delivered is of high quality
• Lead a variety of small to large projects with budgets likely under $1MM and with teams of 20 or fewer
• Act as main POC for the clients, handling communications with the intent of client satisfaction
• Complete meeting notes and distribute to all team members, build basic-to-complex schedules, continue scoping and managing small-medium scale projects, begin leading projects that are not repeatable
• Own budget management for all projects
• Identify and communicate risk/implications and mitigation strategies
• Build strong relationships with the team across all disciplines
• Identify and act on organic account growth opportunities in partnership with Client Services
• Perform analysis and reporting on project health, attending finance meetings to inform account health (Metrics include: Remaining forecast, forecast to completion, burn (actuals) to date, % project progress, % budget utilized, write off %)
• Champion project management fundamentals across all assigned projects, across timeline, action logs, change logs, risk logs, appropriate kick-off and closure processes
• Facilitate (when appropriate) in project retrospective and sunsetting process
• Act as a beacon of best practice within the account and discipline
• Mentor emerging talent and provide career development aligned with CM expectations
• Be an active and visible presence in the office and online, shares at Town Halls, All Hands, Snack N Learns
• Actively and visibly champion the work and team
• Participate in global Project Delivery initiatives and bring forward ideas on how to improve processes and build community within the discipline

The Talent Team at Critical Mass is focused on ensuring we provide the best training, mentorship, and employee experience possible!  CM new hires & employees are the future of our organization, and we want to set you up for long-term success.  In an effort to do so, we expect our team to work from an office a minimum of 4 days a week.  The ask stems from our want to:

• Strengthen opportunity for continuous learning
• Improve collaboration and team relationships.
• Increase employee engagement

We understand that not everyone may feel comfortable with this expectation, so we ask that you please let us know immediately if there are any concerns so we can help navigate accordingly.