First, it is worth deciding on the concepts:
- A person who has completed any course of 1 year or less is a Junior.
- Middlelings usually become after a year or two of work in a relevant field (IT, Digital). Of course, everything here is very individual. It is worth considering the background of the specialist, past activities, the degree of involvement in training, the level of study of materials in the courses, as well as the implemented freelance projects.
Let's dwell on novice project managers and their hiring.
Why hiring a june?
- Quickly take a person to the team (the term of hiring is 2-3 weeks, and not 2-3 months in the case of a senior);
- Stop constantly looking for, hiring and managing freelancers who were solving small tasks. June can solve routine tasks on the stream. You can give small tasks that the senior is not very interested in doing, but for a junior it is perfect to fill his hand.
- Those same burning eyes! New ideas can be brought into projects at the senior level.
- Specialists who are just starting to immerse themselves in new activities are usually ready to invest fully in projects and are available 24/7. Seniors do not sin with this and are often completely turned off on weekdays in the evenings and even more so on weekends.
- If a company has a new project or a project at the initial stage, then June will fit as well as Middle (but Middle is more expensive than June). For me, the senior manager, it doesn't matter who to bring up to date.
- June grows up in the team and after six months is / becomes a super loyal employee. Therefore, it is more likely that June after the test will remain and will not run away anywhere.
That is why I tend to take Juns to the team, as well as guys after a year's full courses. But what is important to understand: a beginner specialist will be able to bring real benefit (profit) only after 4-6 months and independently manage projects. Therefore, at the start you need to try.
Now I propose to move on to the hiring process itself. As for the resume, there is quite a lot of information in open sources, so we will discuss a portfolio, a cover letter, a test assignment, an interview, questions at a meeting, as well as follow-ups.
Portfolio
Why do you need a portfolio? It does two things: it helps you get to the interview and helps you get through it. I suggest doing the following with the portfolio: collect it in the format of a presentation or landing page on a website builder: tilda or wix. You will have a question: what to add there if there are no real projects? Add university activities, olympiads, freelance projects and, of course, all educational ones. Insert screenshots of your diplomas and certificates. Show the timings and estimates that you did during your studies, explain your logic and your thoughts. Take control of this process and conduct the interview yourself. Trust us, HR Specialist and Hiring Senior Manager will be impressed. This is what I did in my first interview with my current company Rambler Group. They later admittedthat they were looking for a manager for this place for many months and were surprised by my creative approach.
If you already have a certain background, then it is customary to attach links to completed projects in the portfolio, available via a separate link, and not in the resume. I start looking at the portfolio only after I mentally approved the resume. It really takes 10-15 seconds to view one portfolio, just like an HR specialist on a resume. Therefore, it is important here to describe your results and successes. If there were no resounding successes, then, for example, conducting 5 projects in parallel or diligent analytical work in the past can also be the result. It is not necessary to have festival cases and international projects. Think about the little steps you've taken in the past and pack them up. If you have only university activities and small freelance projects behind you, talk about it. Achievements in sports are also a plus!
Transmittal letter
To write a cover letter, you need to perform three steps:
- Go to the company's website and explore a potential high-level project;
- Write that you are interested in this particular project
- Add in this form: "I am very interested in the project and I would like to know more about it, let's discuss it?"
It is good practice to leave a call-to-action at the end of your cover letter, the so-called call to action. You will draw attention to yourself and will look favorably against the background of other facelessly sent resumes :) I would like to add that the cover letter is really read. It is very unpleasant to see impersonal letters or stereotyped phrases.
Test
I try to send a test task as simple as possible, taking into account that a potential candidate does not spend more than four hours of his time on it. Still, when hiring a manager, the decisive and final thing is the availability of the necessary soft skills, and not a perfectly completed task. You can teach how to make estimates and timings in 2 weeks, correctly build communications with clients in 2 months, with teams and contractors in 2 more months. But to teach not to be late, not to waste time, to push commands is difficult.
From the recommendations: do the test as soon as possible, ideally in 24 hours. You can make a test with external help. The main thing is to be able to explain it at a meeting and share all the thoughts and questions that arose during its implementation.
Feel free to ask for feedback. Since you spent your personal time working on the assignment, then you have every right to receive feedback. Do not demand, but ask politely and persistently - this is acceptable. A manager should be like this: persistent and obligatory.
Do not take 3-4 tests in parallel, your brain is not rubbery.
A meeting
An ideal meeting is when you, the junior manager, take matters into your own hands and begin a coherent story about your journey. It's good to start with school and university. The main thing is to tell about yourself as honestly and openly as possible and smoothly approach the current company. In an ideal world, your story should look as if you have been walking towards this position and this project all your life. Think in advance what you will say. It is considered a good form to open a laptop, the very portfolio in a presentation or on a landing page and broadcast directly to it. Remember, people love with their eyes.
Be open, do not speak in riddles, if you do not know something - just say that you look after the meeting, google everything and figure out the issue. The main thing that I want to see in a junior manager is a desire to learn and love for people. Because it is this beginner specialist who will work both with my team and with customers.
Hardskills are, of course, important, but not central to the hiring decision.
What am I asking a candidate for an interview. I propose to analyze five questions and five cases
Five questions
- What is front-end and back-end development? How do they interact?
- What development methodologies are you familiar with? When and for what project should they be applied?
- In which program can you make a design prototype of a project?
- What task trackers would you use for internal and external teams?
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Don't follow-up immediately after meeting. If you have not received feedback, you should remind yourself in 2-3 days. When applying for a job in a corporation, remember that the approval of a new specialist for a team may take 1-2 months. There is nothing wrong with that, just take it for granted. And keep looking for your dream project on the market. Don't hang your hands after rejection!
Final meeting
After a resume, a test task, an interview with an HR specialist and a senior manager, sometimes a final meeting is held for a junior specialist with the head of the department. They organize it just to make sure the new team member is adequate. Usually a manager of this level has 10-15 minutes for you, he will not ask anything specific. What should you do, you ask? Take everything into your own hands again, tell us about yourself in just 7-10 minutes, answer a couple of questions and expect the long-awaited offer!
Good luck!