Project Manager (Contractor Conversion)

In this position, you will be reporting directly to the Head of Project Management. It is critical for you to be able to understand and track project status, identify and track team commitments, identify resource needs and risks, and coordinate project schedules. You will often be managing both internal and external (client) tasks and working with an external (client) project manager, so a key responsibility is working cross-team to identify possible issues before they occur and working with the teams to mitigate them.

The ideal candidate will have a good understanding of and experience with working through a project lifecycle. This person will be extremely detail-oriented, with an impeccable knack for follow-through and completion. Technically minded and able to adapt to differing project management methodologies on the fly as situations evolve. The ideal candidate will be able to collect, organize, and manage large volumes of information – documents, lists, tasks, etc. – and facilitate efficient information flow throughout the entire project team using tools like Sharepoint where appropriate.  This person also will be an excellent communicator with a high level of EQ; not afraid to ask difficult questions and be willing to learn about our business and our products. A background in supporting large scale projects, IT, software application delivery, the financial services, or the insurance industry is a plus.

Who We’re Looking For

Key Characteristics:

1. Leadership – managing diverse project teams across multiple practices and clients; influencing and motivating the team towards a common goal.
2. Strong project management skills – project planning, capacity management, delivery management and risk and issues management. Expected to be proficient in project management tools such as Project, Excel, Smartsheet etc.
3. Excellent visualization skills; experience with Visio, PowerPoint, Excel.
4. Project management experience with large scale projects; systems implementations a plus.
5. Committed to the development of all team members and continuous development of capability within the department.
6. Exposure to or awareness of all phases of software development projects including analysis, systems design, development and testing approaches.
7. Experience in bringing together complex delivery with multiple strands and multiple locations.
8. Very strong interpersonal skills. Understands how to collaborate with different stakeholders, when to push, when to hold back. Comfortable in dealing with different organization levels.
9. Persistence and the ability to work with people who are very deep into technical speciality, and do not really understand how to estimate and plan. Needs to be able to ask the right questions and know when to slow down or stop.
10. Able to extract the essence from the technical details that are required to build a project plan and schedule to assure delivery.
11. Able to manage multiple projects and handle competing priorities.
12. Highly organized and able to collect, organize, and manage large amounts of project information.
13. Flexible and able to quickly re-prioritize while protecting project momentum.
14. Ability to anticipate and mitigate issues before they become business risks.
15. Empathetic – hard empathy – can relate to issues while remaining focused on delivery objectives.
16. Unafraid of constructive conflict and challenge.
17. Understands the law of diminishing returns.
18. Has a “whatever is needed to be successful” attitude. Motivated to work hard and be compensated accordingly.

Qualifications:

Required:

• A bachelor’s degree in Project Management, or another technical program of study relevant for the role
• A minimum of 7 years of experience in a Project Management role; the targeted experience range for this role is 7 to 10 years
• Experience working in the insurance industry
• Highly proficient in Excel, PowerPoint and Visio
• Highly proficient in project management tools such as Project, Excel, Smartsheet etc.
• The ability and willingness to travel approximately 10% of the time for client and internal meetings

Desired:

• PMP or equivalent project management certification preferred
• Experience managing multiple projects at any one time, with prioritisation of workload
• Experience working on projects with multiple work-streams and multiple delivery phases
• The ability to manage through partnership and influence, rather than relying entirely on authority.

 

Work Location:

Candidates hired into this role will be required to work in-person in the Milliman office in Chicago, IL on a weekly basis, but flexible work arrangements will be conside