IT Project Manager

First Quality was founded in 1989 and has grown to be a global privately held company with over 4,000 employees. Its corporate offices are located in Great Neck, New York, with manufacturing facilities and offices in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia, and Canada. First Quality is a diversified family of companies manufacturing consumer products ranging from Absorbent Hygiene (adult incontinence, feminine care, and baby care), Tissue (bath and towel), and Industrial (print and packaging materials), serving institutional and retail markets throughout the world. First Quality focuses on private label and branded product lines.

We are seeking an IT Project Manager for our First Quality Enterprises working remotely. This position accomplishes project objectives by evaluating requirements and outcomes needed from the project as well as planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing project activities. In addition, the position will ensure change is introduced efficiently and effectively in the organization by leading, directing, coordinating, and providing visibility into the organization’s change management efforts. The role creates change management strategies and develops change workstreams that maximize employees’ change readiness and adoption.

Primary responsibilities include:

• Employs structured project management methodologies (e.g. PMI) to deliver successful business outcomes through expertly managed projects at the IT or enterprise level.
• Develops detailed project plans, deliverables, milestones, goals and inter/intra project dependency maps that ensure all required project work is executed completely, correctly and timely.
• Works with project sponsors and stakeholders to define the appropriate resource requirements in terms of skills, knowledge, availability and capacity to successfully conduct project work. Ensures that any gap is identified and addressed at the proper time within the project timeline to maximize project efficiency and efficacy.
• Assembles and coordinates project team members and assignments across individuals maintaining balanced workloads.
• Creates comprehensive communications plans that identify the level, type, format and style of communications for the project team, stakeholders, and sponsors. Utilizes standard tools (e.g. RACI) to define roles and responsibilities at all times within the project lifecycle.
• Prepares requests for proposals (RFPs) for external services and conducts all necessary meetings to facilitate selection. Monitors contracts and maintains regular communication with service providers.
• Develops proper risk management strategies that focus on risk identification and proactive response/mitigation.  Ensures that issue management is comprehensive, visible and timely to minimize impact to the project. Educates team members in risk/issue management and ensure that the discipline is built into the DNA of the project team and its operations.
• Develops, maintains and communicates detailed project financial budgets and forecast status. Ensure project financials are managed proactively and provides visibility at required levels of the organization. Works closely with Sourcing and Vendor Management to ensure supplier engagements meet the project requirements and benefit the organization.
• Complies with all policies and procedures and ensure the project teams are educated and follow them.
• Works with IT Leadership to continuously improve project and change management processes, tools, knowledge and capability across the organization.
• Employs a structured change management methodology (e.g. ADKAR) to facilitate change and promote commitment to adapt to the change. Knows how to tailor this methodology to be culturally appropriate for the enterprise.
• Prepares for change by assessing the magnitude of change and the organization’s change readiness. Identifies pitfalls and potential points of challenge or change aversion. Develops counterstrategies to mitigate or minimize potential issues. Assesses impact to stakeholders affected by the change and regularly reviews the community for potential change fatigue.
• Tailors change management plans (training and orientation) to accommodate the needs of the different stakeholder groups impacted.
• Works with HR and other stakeholders to create a communications strategy and plan to ensure all employees are fully aware of impending changes. Creates mechanisms to de-emphasize old behaviors and encourage new desired ones.
• Identifies, educates and provides leadership for change agents and change advocates within the stakeholder, executive and trusted informal leaders to create employee understanding and influence successful organizational change.
• Performs quantitative assessment of change success and change adoption. Solicits feedback from stakeholders to determine the success of change management activities and ensure that behavioral changes align with strategic objectives.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong organization, presentation and customer service skills.
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent priorities/projects and deliver results with limited resources.
• Ability and desire to be hands on with applications and technology tools to deliver solutions
• Demonstrated leadership to project teams across matrix organization.
• Proven project and process management skills.
• Strong problem solving and decision making skills.

The ideal candidate should possess the following:

• Bachelor’s degree in Technology, Engineering, or related field. Advanced business degree preferred.
• 5-10 years project management experience in an Information Technology environment and 2-3 years organizational change management experience. Multi-plant manufacturing environment preferred.
• 3 or more years of experience in cross-functional areas or leading cross-functional organizational projects.
• PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification or equivalent preferred. Change Management professional certification desired.
• Financial knowledge to ensure organizational change efforts are aligned with the financial perspective of the desired business benefits.