Hiring Project Managers: Job Description, Pay, & More

Updated October 2026

Consider your last road trip. You may have used a mobile app to navigate your route and plan pitstops. Then, you may have turned to scheduling software to book your itinerary along the way. Along your route, you stop at architectural sites or amusement parks for entertainment.

What do your mobile app, booking software, and even the rides at the amusement park have in common? They likely relied on qualified project managers to get made.

What is a project manager, and how can the right project management expertise help your organization keep complex work moving? Whether you need individual talent or consulting support for a larger initiative, understanding the role can help you identify the skills and experience your project requires.

What is a project manager?

Project managers (PMs) are responsible for planning, executing, and overseeing projects across an organization. They coordinate people, timelines, budgets, technology, and deliverables while helping teams work through risks and keep initiatives moving toward their goals.

Organizations may bring that expertise in through individual project management talent, a dedicated project team, or consulting support, depending on the complexity, scale, and goals of the work.

Project manager roles and responsibilities

So, how can teams assess when their project scopes are big enough to warrant a project manager? Your organization might benefit from a project manager if:

A large project lacks leadership or direction.
Specific goals or benchmarks need to be monitored and tracked for a project.
An IT project needs oversight from a technically proficient leader.
A project is being managed across several teams and needs consistency.
A specialty project is being initiated, and the business needs an expert to navigate this new terrain.

Regardless of what project they are working on, core responsibilities of a project manager include:

Supervise projects’ end-to-end lifecycle to ensure successful completion.
Identify project goals, benchmarks, and milestones to track progress throughout a project.
Understand the full scope of a project, including all tasks, deliverables, and timelines.
Oversee the project timeline and delivery of all project assets.
Delegate and oversee the execution of project tasks by team members.
Manage project resources and replenish as needed.
Liaise between project stakeholders and foster two-way communication between the project team and business leaders.
Use project management technology and AI-enabled tools to document progress, organize project information, monitor workflows, and support reporting.
Ensure project goals are met, and deliverables are top-quality.

Top skills to look for in a project manager

The projects managed by PMs can vary drastically based on industry, expertise, and scope. Therefore, it’s important to have a project manager who is skilled in many key areas, some of which include:

Leadership—These individuals should be skilled in leading teams by instilling confidence and guiding by example. They are responsible for relaying updates to business leaders to mitigate issues that arise.
Communication—Project managers need to communicate with stakeholders across the entire project development lifecycle, making this a critical skill to look out for.
Time management—PMs need to juggle competing or shifting priorities. This requires strong time management and delegation skills to guarantee project deliverables are completed on time.
Flexibility—Pivoting is the name of the game when something inevitably goes wrong during project planning. Ideal PMs welcome change and are able to adapt projects creatively to keep timelines moving.
Problem-solving—Similarly, teams rely on project managers to come up with creative solutions to help projects stay on task, on budget, and avoid preventable mishaps.
Team player—Project managers are part of a team, and their role is to motivate team members throughout the project’s lifecycle and help team members liaise with other stakeholders to keep deliverables moving.
Technology and AI fluency—Modern project managers should be comfortable working with digital project management platforms and understanding where AI can support workflows, reporting, documentation, and project coordination. The specific tools will vary by organization, but PMs should be able to adapt as project environments and technology evolve.

Project manager qualifications

There are many routes for someone to become a project manager. The role doesn’t require federal training or certifications; however, many employers prefer candidates with proper experience. Many candidates choose to pursue an associate or bachelor’s degree in project management, business, communications, or a similar field. PMs who aspire to work in healthcare or IT may pursue a degree in those fields.

To demonstrate foundational project manager skills, some candidates pursue the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification or become a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) through the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Pay and job outlook

Demand for project management talent is expected to remain strong. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment for project management specialists to grow 7% from 2025 to 2035, with about 76,500 openings each year on average. The median annual wage for project management specialists was $102,320 in May 2025.

The demand extends well beyond the U.S. PMI estimates that 39.6 million project professionals currently work worldwide and that global demand for project talent could grow 64% between 2025 and 2035. By 2035, the organization projects a potential shortage of up to 29.8 million qualified project professionals.

For organizations, that puts additional importance on identifying the project management skills they need and determining whether individual talent, a dedicated team, or broader consulting support makes the most sense for the initiative.

project manager Interview Questions

When evaluating project management talent, focus your strategic interview questions on the type, scale, and complexity of the initiatives they’ll support. The goal is to understand how someone plans work, manages risk, communicates with stakeholders, uses technology, and responds when timelines or priorities shift. General project manager interview questions can include:

Share your most successful project. What made it so successful? How did you measure its success?
What tools do you prefer to use when monitoring a project’s status or delegating team responsibilities?
What stakeholders do you have experience working on projects with?
Have you had to escalate a project issue? What was the outcome?
When would you identify that an issue needed to be escalated?
How do you differentiate project monitoring and controlling?
How do you conduct risk assessments and healthy risk planning?
What steps do you take when a project timeline or budget is no longer on track?
Walk me through the steps you take to develop a project plan.
How do you foster a collaborative environment on your project teams?
How do you effectively prioritize competing project tasks?
Share your most challenging project. What made it challenging, and how did you navigate it?
How have you used AI or automation tools to improve project planning, reporting, documentation, or team workflows?

Find the Right Project Management Support

The right project management support depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. You may need an experienced project manager to strengthen an existing team, specialized talent for a technical initiative, or consulting support to help manage a complex program from planning through execution.

Insight Global can help organizations access project management expertise through flexible talent and consulting solutions built around their specific goals. Whether you’re launching a technology initiative, managing organizational change, or coordinating complex work across teams, we can help you build the expertise and structure to keep the project moving.

Insight Global is a talent, consulting, and AI company that delivers business outcomes in an ever-changing world. With access to top talent in more than 50 countries, our tech-enabled recruiters can build teams quickly. Our technical experts across Cloud, AI, Data, Enterprise Operations, and Applied Engineering deliver solutions tailored to each customer’s needs.