According to a Jobera survey, companies that promote collaboration among their employees are 30 percent more effective in innovation. This shows the importance of having employees with effective project coordination skills. Working in a corporate structure, employees face several challenges while finishing projects within the estimated deadlines.
This is why companies are now also focusing on analyzing soft skills such as leadership, teamwork, and camaraderie while hiring. According to a report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the cost of a bad hire, including recruitment, training, and onboarding costs, can range anywhere from three to five times a candidate’s annual salary.
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Coordination is not only about getting the work done but also about doing it without any disruption or miscommunication with the organization. Other areas that companies need to focus on are resource allocation, adaptability, and time management.
So, here are the top project coordination skills that every recruiter must look for in a candidate while interviewing them.
Also Read: Hiring Success Framework: Key Strategies for Effective Recruitment
Review Past Performance
While hiring, recruiters analyze the employees’ past performance to get a picture of how effective their project coordination skills are. Analyzing the previous projects that they have worked on is a great way to start assessing whether they can be a great team player and have other skills such as time management and financial management.
The next step is to quantify their achievements on some widely used and accepted metrics, such as timeliness of deliverance, budget adherence, quality of deliverables, and project completion rate. This quantification helps the recruiter develop a general baseline from which to judge each individual’s performance in the interview.
After hiring the employee, the recruiter should continuously seek feedback from teammates, seniors, and juniors to track their progress.
Also Read: What is Job Analysis? A Guide to Effective Hiring and Recruitment
Assess Key Skills
A project coordinator must grasp every aspect of the project, including timelines, deadlines, and task lists. They must also manage the list of deliverables and ensure that the entire project runs on time. Key skills required include knowledge of management tools such as Gantt charts and Kanban boards.
The next important step is assessing communication skills. As a project manager, you are expected to ensure that every person on the team is on the same page. Miscommunication during an important project can have disastrous consequences. So, it is the job of a project coordinator to not only stop miscommunication but also resolve it if it does happen.
A project manager should also be adept at time management and problem-solving. Time management involves creating a pipeline that sorts tasks according to their urgency and importance. If a project runs into an unexpected delay, the manager must make calm decisions under pressure.
Also Read: Inclusive Language in Hiring: Strategies for a Fairer Workplace
Observe team dynamics
A great way to analyze a manager’s project coordinator skills is to observe team dynamics. In day-to-day office work, the major tasks of a project coordinator are collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, and task delegation. A skilled project coordinator encourages open communication , fostering a positive work environment where every team member feels valued.
In a workplace, no matter how hard everyone tries, conflicts are bound to happen. This is where employees need to step in to actively identify conflicts and resolve them as soon as possible. Team members also need to keep in mind that the project should continue even while resolving conflicts to ensure they finish within deadlines.
A project coordinator should also be responsive to suggestions and criticism. This will create an environment where every employee can share their ideas, increasing the chance of innovation.
Also Read: Charthops Approach: Enhance Candidate Experience in Hiring
Conduct Behavioral Interviews
Another way to assess a project coordinator’s skills is to conduct behavioral interviews to assess the managers. The key skills that are being evaluated in these interviews are problem-solving, leadership, communication, and decision-making. The use of behavioral interviews is to test how a manager would react in real-life scenarios rather than hypothetical ones.
An example of a question that should be asked in such an interview is as follows:
- Tell me about a time you had to manage multiple tasks simultaneously. How did you prioritize and ensure everything was completed on time?
One of the best behavioral interview methods is called the STAR method. In this method, the candidates are tested on four methods:
- Situation: Candidate has to describe what situation they found themselves in.
- Task: Then the candidate should describe what task they had to achieve in the certain deadlines.
- Action: Next, the candidate should describe what measures and remedies they took to solve this crisis.
- Result: Finally, the candidate should share the results of the task, sharing the contributions made by him.
While companies may follow various methods to ensure they have the employees with the best project coordinator, the best way is to align your recruitment process that only attracts candidates with good project coordination skills.
Also Read: What is Skill Gap Analysis and how to conduct it?
The hiring industry has seen a massive shift in recent times. With the rise in remote work, or hybrid work interviewees have to also improve themselves. BarRaiser is the perfect tool to raise the interview standards of a company.
With BarRaiser our clients will get access to a state-of-the-art platform that allows the recruiters to conduct a flawless interview. Using our Ai interview copilot, interviewers get real time updates on what question to ask, the quality of answers and also if the interview is exceeding the prescribed time.
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This allows the interviewer to improve upon any deficiencies in the interview in real-time.. Our solution provides the clients with Interview highlights along with Ai interview notes. barRaiser also creates a report on the recruiters’ performance as well. This allows the organization to ensure that the interview is being done in a non-biased and flawless manner.