Project Manager

Project Manager – External Communications & PR

Location: Remote (Central Time hours, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM CST)

Type: Contract, 1 year, with possible conversion for the right fit

Start Date: ASAP

Engagement details
Location: Remote, working Central Time (CST) hours
Schedule: Full time, 40 hours per week
Start: As soon as the right person is identified

About the role
This is a project management role for someone with a communications background. The External Communications and PR department runs several large, semi-complex projects each year, and it wants someone to own the timelines, keep deliverables moving, and execute the work internally once outside vendors hand it off. The work ebbs and flows. Projects kick off at different points in the year, and they don't all run at once.

Who you will work with
You'll work with the hiring leader and a communications strategist, and you'll work alongside the department's other project manager, who is currently over capacity. You'll also work with outside communications and PR vendors, compliance and legal reviewers, and teams across multiple areas of the business.

Core responsibilities

• Manage the department's annual corporate responsibility report. This takes about half your time, with the peak season running through April
• Take deliverables from outside vendors and execute them internally, such as updating an internal site after a vendor hands off content
• Run the awards and rankings submissions. You'll manage timelines, coordinate the internal work, and get compliance approval
• Handle project management for inclusion and accessibility memberships and reporting
• Support partnerships in priority markets. You'll track sponsored events and make sure the collateral is on target
• Help the department's other project manager with leadership communications work
• Write some copy as projects need it
• Build spreadsheets, diagrams, and process maps to document needs
• Prepare status reports for upper management

Scope and accountability
You own each project's timeline from kickoff to completion. That includes coordinating with vendors, internal teams, and compliance and legal reviewers, and keeping approvals from holding up delivery.

How success is measured

• Project timelines stay on track
• Vendor deliverables are executed internally on schedule
• Compliance approvals are obtained in time to meet deadlines
• Projects are delivered on time, within scope, and within budget

Tools you will use
The team doesn't use a single standard PM tool. You'll coordinate your approach with the department's other project manager. You'll also use spreadsheets, diagrams, and process maps.

Required qualifications

• Proven project management experience
• Communications background
• Comfortable managing large-scale, semi-complex projects
• Able to pivot from project to project as priorities shift
• Proactive, drives projects forward without waiting to be pushed
• Degree in Business Management or a related field
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with clients and internally
• Solid organizational skills, attention to detail, and the ability to juggle multiple projects

Preferred

• Experience at a complex, regulated company, including working through compliance and legal review
• PMP (Project Management Professional) certification

A day in the life
It depends on the season. During the peak months for the annual report, most of your time goes there. The rest of the year, you might be tracking a sponsored event in one market, moving an awards submission through compliance, and turning a vendor handoff into a finished internal deliverable, all in the same week.

This is probably your role if

• You're a project manager who came up through communications, or a communications professional who has been running projects
• You've worked where legal and compliance review is part of every deliverable
• You like juggling different kinds of projects, and you don't need someone to tell you the next step