How To Become A Remote Project Manager With Arthur Gasparyan

much time you spent on the task. You are not judged how much, how much you spend in the office, how, how much effort you put in. You are judged by results only. And that's the difference because no one, when you are working remotely, no one sees like how much time you spent on the task. And all that all people care about is the task is done so that your developers, your designers, they can move on with development or design. So, and the other, other thing is that When you are working remotely, when you are working in office, first of all, you are still working, but there is a lot of chitchat. There is a lot of communication happening with your team, with your teammates, with your colleagues. So there is a lot of social— there is some social aspect when it comes to working in office. When you are working remote, you don't have colleagues next to you. You are not going to speak about weather or ask them how their parents doing, how their kids doing. So You do need some type of hobbies other than work. You do need to have— you do need to get involved in some type of social activities. So for my case, I'm just— because since I started working remotely, I basically went and I subscribed for like a debate club so that I can speak with people. I subscribed for like Toastmasters. There's a New Horizons Toastmasters in Toronto. It's a very good one. So I'm there every week. I'm there and I'm practicing my communication and speaking with people and communicating. So you have to substitute the social life that you will get in office with something when you are working remotely, because otherwise it could be very lonely and people actually get depressed.

Right, right. That's really good. But a lot of people do like the freedom of working from home. So there's a lot of pros with with that as well. You set your own schedule, you know, you don't have to work the traditional 9 to 5 kind of job.

Yeah.

So for people who are interested in landing like a remote role, either full-time or maybe some of you here just want it part-time, something that you can do on the side and make maybe like, you know, $1,000 to $2,000 per month extra or something like that. So can you share with us like some of the websites that you use to find these remote jobs?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So most of traditional websites, they do— they are not optimized for remote jobs. So you basically, for remote job, you have to go for like niche websites. For example, if you go to AngelList, angel.co, they have a lot of remote job offerings. Can you guys pick up? Yep. Yep. So you gotta go to AngelList. You gotta go— if you are going to Indeed, you have to put like work from home type of options. You can go to weworkremotely.com. You can go to remotiv.com. You have to go to remote.com. So these are the websites that, that basically their core focus is the remote job. You are not going to be able to find a remote job if you are, if you are searching on like, I don't know, LinkedIn, or if you are searching on monster.com. These jobs don't, these jobs don't exist there. And You have to create your profile in some niche websites. For example, like again, AngelList, Remotive, remote.com, weworkremotely.com, skipthedrive.com, workfromhome.com. So these are the websites you have to go to find a remote job. And as Helena said, you can actually a lot of times find a part-time remote job if that's what you are interested in, but it's going to be really really complicated to balance it with your office job because even if you are working remotely and even if you are working a couple of hours per day, you are still gonna get a lot of communication from your teammates. They're gonna still request some documents. They're gonna still request something that you have to do while you are in office. So I would say if you are searching for remote jobs, search for full-time remote jobs. Don't focus on part-time remote jobs. Because it's going to create a lot of complications. You are basically going to be unhappy and kind of underperforming in your full-time office job and remote job. So if you make up your mind that you are going to go for remote job, just go for it. Don't go for like part-time. Don't balance it.

Right, right. Okay. So how did you land your remote job? Like what website did you use and how did you market yourself?

So for the most part, I'm using angel.co because I am— I have like a focus. My focus is startups. That's my master's degree. That's my master's thesis. So I have a lot of interest with startups. For startups, you go to angel.co and they do have like— you can filter the results, the job results based on like your preferences. And one of the preferences could be work from home or office work.

Right.

So that's how I landed my job. And be prepared that when you are searching for like remote job, you are competing like with everyone in the world, basically. So at that point, it doesn't matter whether you are American, whether you are Canadian, or you are in Europe, India, doesn't matter. So for each application, you probably will see like a couple of thousands of applicants.

Mm-hmm.

So you have to make sure you are somehow different. And the way to make sure you are different is to have a good portfolio. So it's essentially paramount to have like a portfolio of projects or products you created so that you can demonstrate it.

Mm-hmm.

Also, something to consider is that when you are, when you are applying for a remote job, a lot of people— this is from employer side— a lot of employers, they want you to, to, to be like pretty much in the same time zone. Doesn't necessarily need to be like exactly the same, but like plus minus 2 hours from your time, from their time zone. So that you will have a lot of overlapping hours with the core team. So for example, I'm working with US guys a lot, like America-based companies a lot. So if it's like Silicon Valley companies, still okay because difference is 3 hours. But a couple of times I worked with Eastern European companies like England. So in that case, you gotta either wake up really early or go to sleep really late because Otherwise you will not have enough time with your core team working in Europe. And you need this communication. So you consider the time belt as well.

Right, right. So how did you— so you said, like, you mentioned something earlier that when someone applies for these jobs, there's thousands of applicants. So how did you make sure that you stood out from the crowd?

Yeah, you gotta have portfolio because most of the applicants, they do not have portfolio. So you have to have portfolio. Also, when they give like a job description, you have to figure out what exactly they want to— what exactly they are looking for. So if they are looking for like technical project manager, which I am, so you will need to demonstrate like how your technical abilities match the technical skills of the job. You have to be really, really on point because again, you are basically competing with like everyone in the world.

So what did you have in your portfolio? How did you put it together?

So I had a successful experience with a startup, actually. The startup I was working with, it was very technical. It's basically like IT bootcamp, creating IT bootcamps. So I was also teaching the IT to basically juniors, and it got me really technical. I know a lot of like development languages, whether it's iOS, whether it's Android. I know a lot of like software and web development. And I am pretty good with design, UI/UX design, or even graphic design. I'm pretty— not very good, but pretty decent. So when I'm applying for a project manager job, I will make sure I show this technical ability so that they know that I'm going to speak the same language with their designers. I'm going to speak the same language with their developers. Because one thing about developers, they don't like when they explain to you something technical, you do not understand it.

Yeah.

They want— ideally, they want to work with engineers, basically with someone who has an engineering degree. So I will make sure I will say to them, okay guys, you know, I have an engineering master's and bachelor's degree, so I will— I'm gonna be very fluent with the technical language. I'm gonna be very good with your engineers. Also, if I'm applying for a startup, I will make sure that I show them that I used to work in a startup. And startup I was working with, it's Armenian Code Academy. It is doing phenomenally well. So I will tell them like, I have a successful experience with startups. I know it can be tough, but I know the reward is there. So this will demonstrate then that I'm basically ready for a little bit of chaos that startup world brings.

Yeah.

I'm ready to work like sometimes in startup you work like 50, 60 hours.

Yeah.

So they know that I'm ready for it. I've gone through it. So I'm not gonna quit or I'm not gonna be like depressed. So these are the things they want. And remember one thing, like when you are— when you go face-to-face interview, you are talking with someone, but it's not just your voice they hear, right? They also look at your gestures. They also look how you kind of behave yourself. But when you are just in front of camera, it's basically your voice.

Right.

what you said. In PMP, there is the law, right? So it's just 80% of whatever you are saying is whatever people understand from what you are saying is basically transmitted from nonverbal communication.

Right.

So this nonverbal communication is absent when you are working remotely. So you have to be really convincing with your voice, with whatever you are saying.

Yeah. So when you were going into these interviews, did you have like a website with your portfolio or did you mean a portfolio was just your resume and your cover letter?

They normally ask for the website. At the time I didn't have a website, so I basically copy-pasted all the links of the companies I worked for.

Yeah.

And I put everything in a Google Doc, like some designs, like templates basically.

Yeah.

So I showed them, okay, this is the guys what I worked for. This is the feature I come up with. Yeah. Basically, you Like you show them what you did.

Okay.

And you will not be able to show them if you don't have it on paper somewhere.

Right, right, right. So you kind of have like, you know, maybe like a one-pager or two-pager for every project that you manage. Like this is the project, this is the company, this is, you know, the software part that I implemented kind of thing.

Yes, exactly. And another thing about the remote job is that There are some legal complications actually. So a lot of companies based in the US, they have legal requirements to hire someone only in the US.

Hmm.

So if you see that someone is offering like 401 type of coverage, so it means it's for US employees only. So don't waste your time if you are not a US citizen or green card holder. So for— I'm Canadian. So if I see someone is offering like health insurance or 401 coverage, I know this is the job for US people only. So even if you're very good, they are not going to be willing to consider you because they want to hire someone within the US, whether it's for tax reasons. Sometimes I was told it's because one of their customers, they— if it's like government contracts, so it's kind of a hard requirement, they cannot work through it.

Right.

In other times, it's just like, could be patriotic feelings. In other times, it could be just some requirement. In other times, it could be just because accounting and bookkeeping will be just kind of easier. But if you see that 401 or full dental coverage or something like that, just don't apply if you are not a US citizen because you'll waste your time.

Right. And when you apply, did you just go to these websites and just apply like during the normal process? Or I've also heard some people like they seek out the hiring manager when they are applying for jobs.

I have tried both ways actually. The seeking out the hiring manager one, it kind of never works for For me at least. I know that for some people it does, but not for me because, yeah, a couple of times I found a hiring manager on LinkedIn. I messaged him or her like, hey, this is, this is Artur, I sent my application, and they will always direct me to like someone in the company. So they will give you like email like, please follow up with this person, for example, or please direct your question to this person.

Right.

So it doesn't really work and It took them— it takes them like a lot of time to reply. So when they reply to you, it could be already too late. So the best bet is just to go through the regular process.

So you just go through the regular process. You submit your resume, your cover letter. And then so out of how many jobs did you apply to before you land one of the jobs? Like, what's your success ratio with applying?

So, okay, I think it's about— so I think it's about like 10% or 5% of success ratio.

Okay, that's pretty high.

Yeah, it's very high. I've been to very different situations when I was first looking for a job when I was just out of university. So this is, I consider to be like very good case. But when I'm applying, just applying to something, it takes a lot of time because I'm being very meticulous. I'm making sure sure whatever I'm doing is kind of very much in line with what they want to. So you can't just like shoot out like your template cover letter to them because they hate it.

Yeah.

You spend a lot of time on writing like single applications. So I would say like if you are applying to 20 different companies, it's basically like 20 different days. You can't give them like templates and consider like— consider to be doing a good job. They will never come back to you.

Right. Any resume tips? Any resume or cover letter tips that you can share to kind of like boost?

I think, to be honest, I think I'm pretty sure people don't look at my resume. Okay. Like if you have a website, if you have like a Google Doc with your projects, people are gonna be much more focused on what you did on that projects. So, resume-wise, just make sure it's kind of precise, it's nice, it's nice looking, it's good design, you don't have typos and stuff like that. But basically, the deal breaker or deal maker is going to be whatever work you have done before.

Okay, great advice. Okay, now let's move on to the interview. What is the interview? So, like, okay, they say, Arthur, we love your application, we want to interview you. What is the interview process for a typical project manager role look like? And what are some common questions that they ask?

Yeah. So process-wise, it's normally like 4 or 5 different levels of interview, different stages of interview.

Oh, wow.

Based on my experience. So first one, it's always just kind of a chitchat. First one is kind of get to know each other. Yeah, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, something like that. It's not long. They just want to talk to you to make sure you are like a normal human being. You are— whatever they will ask you, something like, okay, what do you want from life? What is your career goals? These type of questions you will receive during any interview, whether it's—

Right.

They want to make sure that whatever you want is aligned with the company so that you are not going to leave in 6 months. It's short. It's kind of informal.

Okay.

So if you pass that, it's going to come to technical interview. Technical interview means it's going to take at least 1 hour, at least 1 hour. You are going to have a couple of people interviewing you. So for project manager or product manager role, I had 3, 4 people interviewing me. So it's going to be head of product or director of product. It's going to be a couple of senior product managers and basically like a product manager. So, and they're going to go through like a lot of details, a lot of details. They can ask like very particular questions about a feature you implemented, or they can come up with something like, what is the product you love? Why you love it? What will you change about it? So they are going to be very— you will fail if you are not good prepared, if you are not prepared, like really good.

Okay. So how do you prepare for your interviews?

What's your process? Normally there are like lists of questions they will ask. So for product manager or project manager, if you're a project manager, they will definitely ask about Agile.

Okay.

So no one is doing Waterfall in remote project management. Like, I've never seen it. So most of the time it's either like Agile, Scrum, or some type of combination of Agile, Scrum. They will ask you about the Scrum ceremonies. They will ask you about how you handle kickoff meeting. They will ask you about the Scrum, just like daily standups, like Scrum review, retros, how you handle— a lot of information is going to be asked about how you handle communication, basically stakeholder relationships, how you are communicating with stakeholders, how you are eliciting your requirements.

Okay.

They will ask you what's your communication style. They will ask you like how you want to interact with your team, how you manage your resources. They will ask you about resource leveling for sure, because like in remote teams, like resources are always limited and they have like hundreds of projects running at the same time. So they'll definitely ask about how you level your resources for the particular project or projects.

Right, right.

Yeah, and they will ask you about your hobbies. So when you— when they are asking about your hobbies, you want to say something they want to hear, basically, while not lying. So in my case, I'm gonna always go for Toastmasters because it's communication, it's leadership. So it's basically what they want to hear, and I'm actually doing it. It's not like I'm faking it. But you definitely expect this because communication is very important. They are going to ask you how you keep yourself accountable while working remotely.

That's good.

Because a lot of employers, they have this feeling that if they are not standing next to your chair, you kind of will drop the ball or you will kind of drop the deadline. You are not going to work properly. So they are going to ask you like how you keep yourself motivated, how you keep yourself accountable. What are you willing to do to deliver it on time? So expect these kinds of questions specifically when you are doing a remote— when you are applying for a remote job.

So when you're doing a remote job, maybe some people would think like the salary would be lower. Is that true? Is that misconception true or not?

It's misconception actually. Actually, it's partially true. It's partially true, but you don't want to apply to the company who uses like remote job as a disadvantage of yours. So I will, as a general rule, I will not apply to this type of companies. There are very— there are like a number of very good companies who are hiring remotely only, and they are paying like decent US salaries, decent Canadian salaries.

Mm-hmm.

If you are a very experienced project manager, it's like starting from 6 figures, basically.

So from $100,000.

Yes.

What's the, what's kind of like the range for the salary?

If you're a technical project manager with like 5+ years of experience, I would say like you are looking for, if you're working remotely, you are looking for like, I don't know, like from $90,000 US to $150,000, $160,000, something like this.

Okay. So it's the same, same rate as someone working in the office.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. Okay. And the only thing is that you're now working from home, so you're kind of almost getting the best of both worlds in some senses.

Yes, yes. There is a disadvantage because when you have a question, you are not like— there is no one readily next to you so that you can ask it. If you have some idea, you can't brainstorm it with the person sitting next to you because there is no one.

Right.

So there are certain disadvantages, but you will normally get used to it and you will normally develop some relationship with your teammates so that you can just shoot them a quick Slack message like, hey, what do you think about this idea? You'll be able to find a workaround.

Perfect. Right. So how do you properly manage distributed teams and stay motivated? Because of the disadvantage that you just mentioned?

So, yeah, when you are managing distributed teams, it's very important to be very detailed, like unknowingly detailed. So, if you are doing project management, if you assign someone a task, you have to make sure it's very detailed. You have to make sure there is acceptance criteria against that task. You have to make sure there is like a actual design attached to this task. You have to make sure there is scenario attached to this task so that people know what is the context of the feature they are building. Because let's imagine you don't, you don't do that and the developer has a question. So developer, most of the time, they— if you are working like I have a developer working in Argentina.

Okay.

So if I'm not detailed enough, so it means he will send me a message. asking for details, but at that time it's going to be either like nighttime here or I will not be on my desk. So when I see it and reply to him, he's going to see it the next day. So basically you postpone the project, postpone the task by a day, which is not the way to go, right?

Right, right.

So you have to be very detailed. You have to keep giving people credit. So public recognition is very important when you're working remotely. You have to make sure everyone in the Slack group knows that this person is just ahead of the schedule. You have to make sure they know that this person is doing some hard tasks and he's just championing through it. People like it and your developers will like you. They will appreciate you. They will make sure that your tasks have priority if you just give them credit.

Yeah. You mentioned Slack as one of the tools that you use to manage your distributed remote team. Can you give a list of tools that you use to manage these distributed teams that you have to manage? And also, how big are the teams that you manage as well?

So I have one team. It's basically 3 people, developers. I have another team which is 8.

8.

Okay. It's like small to middle size. And normally, like if you are in remote, your team will rarely be more than 8 people actually.

Okay. Okay.

Because at that point it's getting really hard. You don't need more than 8 developers. You don't need actually more than like 4 developers plus like 1 or 2 QA guys plus 1 designer. It's already plenty.

Yeah. That sounds like plenty of work. Yeah.

Yeah. You don't need— and it's not the best practice to have like a 20-people team because at that point, just like no one knows what everyone else is doing.

Right. Absolutely. So how— what did you— what do you do to— sorry. What tools? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. What tools do you use?

Slack is the god. So you are going to use Slack every day, very many times. You are going to use Jira. I'm using Jira. I'm also using Basecamp, actually. I'm using Confluence for documentation. I'm using Balsamiq for mocking up for wireframing. I'm using Adobe for communicating, or Adobe or Sketch depending on whether it's iOS or Android operation system. So it's going to be Sketch or Adobe for basically working with designers. I'm using Figma again for working with designers. And yeah, the servers you are going to use if you are a developer, you are going to use Heroku, Bitbucket, Just basically all the GitHub, GitLab, Elasticsearch, all the just usual suspects, basically.

Okay.

There is another tool which I use to kind of be accountable to myself. It's called focusmate.com. Basically, they match you with someone else and someone else keeps track of you whether you are working or not.

Oh, okay. Yes, that's a good one. That can be dangerous.

It's like this. We keep silence. We work on each of our— we work on our tasks for like 40 or 50 minutes. And at the end of the session, we kind of update each other on our progress. This way, you are kind of forcing yourself to work instead of making like additional cup of coffee, instead of drinking water or just going for a walk.

Right, right. Absolutely. Okay. So, um, can you provide a list of companies that hire these project managers? Oh, and we see in the comments, can you repeat the tools that you use again?

Sure.

Other tools again.

So for team management is Jira and Basecamp. For documentation is Confluence. It's part of Jira, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah. Some teams will use also Trello. For communication, I'm always on Slack. Sometimes you will send emails if it's like status report to customer, but most of the time it's Slack. So for design-related UI/UX design or graphic design or working with these guys, I'm going to use Adobe Sketch or Figma. I'm also using InVision. It's for basically the customer experience to validating customer experience. And if you are in IT, again, you are— it's more like a developer program. So Bitbucket, Heroku, some type of MySQL databases, GitLab, GitHub.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Okay. Thanks for that list. One other question here. How do you handle tax compliance when you're hired by a foreign country that doesn't require CRA accountability?

You cannot escape CRA accountability, whatever you do.

For the Americans on this call, CRA is the Canadian version of the IRS. Yes. So I'll let you take this question.

Yes. You are normally getting— you register yourself as a W-2 employee. Basically, it means you are some type of a freelancer. So whenever you are receiving funds, you are receiving funds in the name of your company, and then from the name of company, you pay taxes.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Americans, they don't want to hire you full-time because, like, They want you basically on contract most of the time, so they treat you as like another subcontractor of theirs, and then you are going to do your taxes.

It's kind of like the same as a contractor project manager that a lot of people do as well. By the way, that's another option for you guys in pursuing a career in project management. You can go the full-time employee route. You can go remote project management, or also you can become a contractor project manager. Basically, you would kind of be paid based on a contract. Usually that contract is a bit higher. It's usually between $80 to $100 per hour. So it's higher pay than the full-time. The only thing is that, let's say the project is 6 months or 1 year, you might have a break in between until you find your next So that's kind of the pros and cons of doing contractor, but that's a topic for another talk. Maybe I'll do another time to dive more into this, but for this talk, let's stick with remote project management. Okay, so moving on, what are some companies that hire project managers? And I know you have a list that you can provide to us.

It's not my list, it's a list on a website I use every day. It's like WeWorkRemotely.com. I posted it in a Slack group, in a Zoom group actually.

Yeah.

You go there, there are like hundreds of companies. These are actually big companies. These are not startups. These are not boutique software development shops. So you will have companies like GitLab there. You will have companies like Zapier there. You will have companies like Elastic there. And a lot of times more and more companies when they are starting, they're starting remotely.

Right.

So this trend is growing, actually. So if you start working remotely at some point, it's going to be very good. It's going to be like you are going to be very ahead of the curve, basically. Just check the link out.

Right. Right. The link, you just have to get rid of the V. I'll post it again in the chat. You just without the— there was an extra V at the end. Yeah, no worries. OK, cool. Yeah, no, it's definitely part of the trend. You know, the traditional 9 to 5 kind of jobs are getting less and less. Not that they're extinct, but there's a bit less of them. And then there's been a rise of these kind of alternative work methodologies. So, you know, if you're— especially like if you have a young child or something at home, it could be a good option to look into having a remote role so that you can spend more time with your kids, right?

Yeah.

Anyway, so what— so we kind of touched on this a little bit earlier during this talk, but I want to deep dive into this a bit more. What are the skill sets of a remote project manager that these companies are looking for?

So most of the time they are looking for, first of all, accountability. They are looking for communication, and they are also looking for previous work experience as a remote employee. That's the catch. So I think most of the companies who are hiring remotely, they will say like the best evidence that the hire will work out is that the person worked remotely before. So it's pretty much like, you know, when you graduate university, they ask you for experience, right, to give you a job. So, and they don't give you a job because you don't have experience and you cannot have experience because they don't give you a job.

Mm-hmm.

So it's a little bit like that. for the remote work because they always want to see that you worked remotely before somewhere so that like you kind of learn your lessons on someone else's company before coming to them. But if you like, you will always be able to convince them that it's gonna work out. Sometimes companies give you some probation, you know?

Yeah.

Like 3 months. Even sometimes more so that they want to make sure that you are capable to work remotely. A lot of time, remote— you have to have a type of character. You have to be able to sit down and do the job. A lot of time, like, why remote employers fail is because they don't have like a boss next to them. They are not in front of the boss's eyes. So they will just go for a walk. You know, just postpone the task as much as they can. They will just start working the day before the deadline. Yeah. You have to understand that this is basically a job.

Right.

It's not like a hobby. It's not like a part-time job. It's not like not that serious job. This is a job. You have people dependent on you. So you have to perform. A lot of times, like when something doesn't work out with your remote job, it's just because the person dropped the ball when it comes to accountability.

So I see a couple of questions coming in here. A lot of people are asking, is the remote project management job only in IT or for software, or can you do it in other industries as well? Besides—

I would say from what I see, I don't know, 40% of all remote jobs is basically hiring a developer of some sort. But you will still be able to find a job if you are a marketer, if you're a digital marketer, if you are on optimizing something, Like website optimization, if you are a project manager, product manager, product owner, or Scrum Master. If you are in traditional industries, if you are like in manufacturing, it's going to be really hard to find a remote job, actually. Really, really hard.

I think the question was, can you find a job as a project manager outside of the software industry? Not like talking about the remote jobs. Uh, I would say yes. So I'll take that question. I'll give you a minute to think about that. I would say definitely yes, you can. For example, like at Examspm, we're not a software company, but we operate mostly online because we sell mostly to our students who are online. And, you know, we have project managers helping us every day to kind of get organized. Just as one example, we had to kind of plan out all of our content that's going out. So when is it Like, you know, when is this agency going to talk to that agency, like, so that we have this marketing material posted and that's going to coordinate with this other piece, blog content that we're going to post, that kind of thing, right? So that's just one example of, you know, why, why, you know, at Xems PM, we need project managers. So I think any company with an online presence, it doesn't have to necessarily be software, will need a project, kind of like need a project manager to Manage their workflows that make sure that, you know, the day-to-day runs smoothly, right?

Yeah, and I'm mostly in IT, so that's why I'm kind of thinking whether it exists somewhere other than IT, but I see no reason why it wouldn't.

Yeah, you know, in e-commerce stores, they definitely need someone to manage all the orders, making sure Everyone's doing their job. The customer support reps are replying to all the inquiries. The orders are going out. All the advertising is still running. The products are in fulfillment. All those kinds of things. So basically, to answer your questions, yes, it's not just software companies that's looking for remote project managers. I think any company with an online presence will need remote project managers. Like project managers. Yeah. Can you elaborate on how to answer the interview questions, especially the open-ended behavioral questions?

So give me an example, maybe.

That's a good question. All right. The person who asked that can elaborate on the chat. We can come back.

Please. Yeah.

We can come back to that. If you guys want an example of how to answer specific interview question, let us know what the exact question is. I do have a question. So kind of like circling back to what we mentioned before, you said the interview process was 4 or 5 interviews, right? So you just mentioned what happened in the first 2. What happens in the next 3?

So first 2, if you pass first 2, it's gonna get serious from there. So at that point, there is probably like 10 people remaining. So for these 10 people, they are gonna give you some type of homework. This is a task that you are going to perform at home and just submit the report to them. And it differs from company to company. I've given a task for senior project manager role. It took me, I don't know, like 70 hours to complete because it was whole, just create like whole backlog, create the roadmap, create the, you know, like find out how much resources you need, what's the delivery date. It took me like a lot. It Like almost 2 weeks to complete and that was the deadline basically in 2 weeks, send it out. But paradoxically, I applied for VP of Project role and they give me like really easy 2-hour-long questionnaires of some sort. So I completed it within like an hour or something and I submitted and they liked it. So you're definitely going to get some type of homework as a third level of interview. But it depends on the company, what kind of and how tough it's gonna be.

Mm-hmm.

So if you pass this, at that point they are gonna start talking to you. At that point, you are gonna basically be introduced to your colleagues, to the CEO, to the CTO if it's a small company. So in my case, I got introduced to the CEO, the CTO. I spoke with like hiring managers. The questions are basically about whether you are a cultural fit Whether you are a nice person, whether you are a person they want to work with. So at that point, no one questions your professional abilities. At that point, they all know that you are good. They all know that you know what they want you to know. At that point, it's more about soft skills. It's more about what kind of person you are, whether you are like a nice person, whether you are a person they will enjoy working with or not.

Right, right. Okay, so we have some interview questions coming in. How do you handle multiple projects simultaneously? As an interview question, if you got that in an interview.

Yeah, so it's— you are going to basically roll out on what's the priority. So if Project A is priority, so you have to focus on it while not— while still keeping track of Project B so that Project B or Project C will not be late. So you are prioritizing based on how important the project is for your company. You are prioritizing based on what's the delivery date. So this is like one of the most asked questions and it's kind of like easy answer you're given. They want to hear like the word priority, prioritization when this type of question comes.

And what if they follow up with how do you prioritize the project task?

Yeah. And then at that point, you are going to mention whether like the deadline is close, whether if you are like on, on, on, basically whether if you're doing good progress for one project, project is not late, you don't need to fast-track it or you don't need to crash the project. So you will say like, okay, some of the resources, if you're doing this good with this project, some of the resources I can allocate to another project.

Mm-hmm.

So you can answer it saying that like it depends what is the— which project gives like a better benefit for the company from ROI standpoint. So if you have an R&D project that potentially is going to bring your company millions and you have some kind of like software modernization project that is basically internal, customers won't see it. So make sure you say like, okay, I'm going to go for R&D project because it's for customers and the return on investment is huge. Whereas if it's a modernization project, I can kind of like postpone it. I can keep it for later when we have like a slower, slower like project flow. So yeah, you are basically— this is the questions for your reasoning.

Mm-hmm.

For reasoning and basically experience. So tell them it's basically based on deadline and based on return on investment and how important is the project for your company.

Hmm.

So sometimes they will say like, okay, you know what, both of the projects are very important. Both of the projects are huge on ROI. Both of the projects have to happen simultaneously and there is no way that we can postpone something. At that point, you have, you know, you tell them we have limited resources. We need to bring in contractors. We need to bring in some more programmers or whatever your project is doing. So you basically need to— you will say like, I'm going to request additional resources and I'm going to request additional funds from the contingency reserve or somewhere else, management reserve, to cover the funds.

Right, right, right. So all the terminology you guys learned in the PMBOK, it's coming back.

Yeah, yeah, I still remember.

Oh, I think we are— Hello? Oh, I think we're— Oh, the screen was frozen for one second.

Okay.

Yeah, so I was saying to everybody, all the terms and all this stuff you learn in PMBOK, it's not just To pass an exam, you actually do use it in real life too. Okay, so next interview question that we have in the chat here is, do you encounter conflict among your team members and how do you handle that since you're working remotely?

Yeah, so most of the time when you are working remotely, the conflict is going to be because of lack of communication. So someone didn't communicate clearly his task so that another person is doing the same task. So now they end up doing the same task, both of them, and like one of them basically just like miscommunicated.

Yes.

In this case, when these kind of situations arise, it's very important to kind of not to lose it. So you have to establish like ground rules. I think that's how it's called in PMP.

Yeah.

That whatever happened, everyone has to be civilized and respectful, not to just fall out on, just not to go crazy, basically. So other than that, you explain to people that this is not a big deal. This is the mistake. We have to learn from the mistakes. And you do not compromise. Don't try to hide the project. Don't try to hide the, hide the, like, you know, the problem. Make sure you confront it. Make sure that everyone knows that what was the solution. So that no one is doing the same mistake again. And don't criticize like mistaken party in front of everyone. That's the worst thing you can do because at that point they are going to take it very personal. Hmm. So the ground— basically the rule of thumb is if you are giving someone credit, do it in public. If you are blaming someone, do it in private.

That's a good rule of thumb. That's a great rule of thumb. Next question is, have you encountered scam companies before?

I don't know whether they are scam or not. I think they are very like— so a lot of companies, they will come to you, they will do 2 rounds of interview and they will disappear basically. If it's a really small company, like 5 people team, a startup, they will just do 2 rounds, they will disappear, they will come back in 2 months. They will say, you know what, we had like some problems. So can we kind of resume the process? At that point, you have to decide whether you want to work with this type of people or not. I think I will. A couple of times I said like, okay, I'm already employed. I'm not interested in the position or I'm just not interested in the position. That's it.

Right.

Because this kind of behavior will continue. If they hire you, this kind of behavior will continue. They will just disappear. They will give you tasks. No one will help you. So you don't want to work with this company, with this type of companies, right? Not a scam company, it's just like very unreliable companies. Scam companies, normally they— you can't really find them in like AngelList or like Indeed or remote.com because they kind of vet the companies.

Right, right. Absolutely. And let's talk about recruiters. I know that you work a lot with recruiters. So how do you find recruiters? How do you manage the relationship? How do you use the recruiters to help you find opportunities?

Well, when I was just starting my career, it was really hard to work with recruiters because they were not interested in finding me a job because I was just a student without— just like new alumni with no experience. Nowadays it's kind of shifted, so you will get a lot of— I'm getting Not a lot, but just a couple of emails every week about some type of company that maybe will be interested in me. So whether I'm okay for recruiter proceed with my resume or something like this. So recruiters normally find you if you are that kind of experienced, at least a little bit, especially if you're technical.

Yeah.

But when I'm working for a remote company, when you are searching for remote jobs, So you don't need to work with recruiters at all.

Hmm.

Because most of remote companies, they are just out there on the web. So they, they have like apply button. A lot of them will say like, we don't accept third-party interviews. We don't accept third-party resumes. Recruiters, please do not contact us. So it's actually against you, against your best interest if you work with recruiters.

Right, right.

If you are remote, don't work with recruiters at all. And recruiters are not really very knowledgeable about the remote job market because it's something very new for them. They will much rather work with a bank who needs you in downtown office than work with the company who is just located in Silicon Valley, something like that.

Right, that makes sense. Okay, now let's talk about the post-hire. You are now hired as a project manager. What do you do? to keep your remote job?

Yeah, first of all, first of all, you go through documentation of the company a lot. So you have to understand if there's a project that is you taking over, you have to go through documentation to see what happened, who was the decision makers, who are the parties involved, who are the key stakeholders, who are the stakeholders with high impact. So you have to go through documentation to understand the project. And to understand the company too. Normally the companies have this like kind of like how you have to work with them.

Yeah.

A lot of companies, they will have a lot of people in the company, they will have like specific style they want to be worked with. So for example, someone hates emails. So for that person, you basically go for Slack messages. So another person, they work I don't know, like from 8 to 12 and they work next time from 4 PM to 8 PM. So you have to account that too. So you will learn like habits of your team. You will have, you will learn the habits of your like upper management and you have to basically juggle between them. But other than that, you have to also stay motivated.

Hmm.

In order to stay motivated, I normally wake up I wake up, I put— even if I'm working from the home office, I'm not gonna just, you know, wear shorts or slippers or like don't wear like t-shirt or something.

Mm-hmm.

I think it's a job. When I wake up, I put like my casual dress, the same thing I will use to go to the office. So it kind of puts me in the work mood. You know, I kind of treat it as a work mood. I go to my office, the home office, and I I make sure no one bothers me. And if you have family, wife or parents or kids, you have to make sure they understand that even though you are home, but you are also not home, not available. Because when people see that you are home, they will assign you tasks. They will say like, do this, do that. But make sure they understand that you are— while you are at home, but you are also like absent. You are not available for them.

Right, right. So how do you organize your day, day to day? While you are working as a remote project manager?

So every morning, early morning, you will have like a daily scrum, your standup meeting, your status update meeting. So that's how my day starts. And based on this meeting, I'll know whether I need to resolve a blocker or not, whether like my developer needs me to do something to kind of help him to do his job. If there is something of that sort, if there is like a blocker, If there is like, for example, I have to communicate with customer for requirements, so something is not clear. So whole day I will spend on communicating the requirement, getting it, making sure that the requirement is part of the scope, it's not a new requirement. Otherwise, I will just generate the change request form. So I will make sure that like I'm resolving the issue for the developer. If I don't have the stuff like that, You always have stuff like documentation. You have to document everything. You always have some meetings to attend. You will always have some new project assigned to you. So currently I'm leading like 3 projects. So you will not have like free time. So I start with the daily scrum, then maybe at the same date I will have some type of status update meeting with another— for another project. Normally I will communicate with 1 or 2 customers about the questions I have about the project. I'm also doing QA, so it takes a lot of time. So when my developer does something, they will let me know. I will go and do the QA. It's a very time-consuming job, especially if you're doing it manually. So you will not have time to just mess around.

Right. How do you stay accountable and motivated then while you're working? Remotely?

So when I just started, I was just fired up. I will be very excited at the very beginning, and in 2-3 months I will get depressed basically because of that. I will just give all my energy for 2-3 months and then I will just be really like kind of relaxed, depressed mode.

Yeah.

So nowadays I learned how to be more balanced person, how just to, you know, not treat it as a sprint but rather as a marathon.

Yeah.

So I'm, I'm using Focusmate actually a lot, a lot. So every time I have like a lengthy task I don't want to do, I will schedule a meeting with some accountable partner. Basically, the partner will make sure I'm doing the task.

That's great.

Yeah. I'm also like meditating just to keep cool, keep calm, you know, just not to be nervous. So it helps actually.

And And then we have a question here. Can you share a portfolio example that you recommended for the application process? There are templates available for technical project portfolios, but I am not sure how to create a portfolio for a PM experience.

So what I did myself, I'm like in process of updating my portfolio actually, so it's not available. It will be available, it should be by next Monday. So I'm normally going to like wix.com and you are creating basically your website. They have a couple of good portfolios. They will give you a template like website, like your basically for your own website. And what you want to do, you basically print screen your product. You blur every sensible information, every sensitive information because it could become an issue.

Yeah.

And you show the flow of the screens. like from which screen you go where, what you did on the screen. And in my case, I will also have like technical stuff there, like technical architecture of the product. I will have the QA results of the product, but make sure you blur everything because it could— I was not in trouble, but like, it's good that for one of my employer, past employers, I asked them and they said like, okay, no, not this project. I have You can demo everything else, but not this project because it's our project. So make sure you either blur it completely and just show the whole diagram or get approval from your past employer before showing everything. Because technically, even though you have done it, but you have done it within the part of being part of their company. So it's kind of their asset.

Their asset, right. And then a lot of people might make you sign an NDA agreement. Something like that.

Yeah, I've signed a couple of those. Yeah.

Okay, so I think I have one last question for you. And that's that, like you were saying that, you know, right now you get a lot of offers because you have a lot of experience now.

Some offers.

Some offers now because you have experience as a remote project manager. But how did you get your first job? So for people who are listening, but, you know, maybe they don't have any experience and they want to break into this field. So how did you get your first opportunity without a prof— like you don't have anything to put in your portfolio? What would you do?

So when I was a student, I studied in Armenia and Switzerland. So when I was studying in Switzerland, I was— I had some idea of my own business. So I was managing my— like I have like a 2-person team back at home. So I was managing my basically team from Switzerland. So it was kind of a remote job, even though I was just working for myself. So when during the first interview, I said to them, okay, I have work experience working remotely because I did this thing. So it was proof for them that I have a— I'll be okay working remotely. So in that, you can do pretty similar things. Make sure like within your life, at some point you communicated with someone overseas, you have done a project with someone overseas. or maybe in another city, or you— there is definitely something you have done while not being in the same room. So put it as a remote work experience because it doesn't matter whether you are working from home, like, or whether— like now me and Helena were talking, we're both in Toronto, but it wouldn't matter if Helena was in like UK and I was in like some like Australia. So it would be same experience. This is basically a remote project, like very small remote projects. So these type of things, maybe if something a little lengthy, just put it there as something you have done as an experience for being remote employer or employee.

Right, right. That's a good advice. That's good advice. Let's start small. If you became a volunteer somewhere, something that you can put onto your resume, right? And you can always You can always approach— what's it called? So there's a website where you can volunteer for online businesses and do some work for them. It's called genm.co. And we've had people— I've had people in the past who has worked for Examspm from there. And it just basically allows them to like get some work experience. But, you know, the company— they're not getting paid.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think we just pay a small fee to be part of the community to get access to all the people, and that's how they make money. So yeah, so that's an option as well for those of you who want. I know we're coming up on the hour, and I know this session is scheduled for 1 hour. 1 hour long. So I just want to ask, does anyone have any other questions for Arthur before we end this session? The end of the session, it's called genm.co. Let me just look it up and I can paste it in there. But I should mention, you're not going to get paid from these guys. And It's a lot of students that's on here, so I'm not even sure if it's really appropriate for the skill level that you guys want to go on. But it's called genm.co if you guys want to come on here and basically, you know, just get like some remote job experiences from a company. It's generally pretty competitive for the company. to hire someone from this, actually. You have to really sell yourself because the other person is not getting paid, so they have a lot of options to choose from. So we've had interns in the past who came to ExamSPM from this program, so that's how I knew about them. Okay, so that's it for this session. Thank you, Arthur, so much for coming on board, sharing all this great information with us.

Thank you.

And thank you for sharing all your knowledge with us and It was a pleasure speaking with you. I hope that you will come on board again at a future date to share more, more information. And for anyone listening, if you guys want to become the next author, share your work experiences with the rest of the group, please feel free to shoot us an email, support@examspm.com, and we can schedule you in. And it just helps the entire community when we all share information, right? Yeah. So if you want to do that, share your career, Share how you got jobs, shoot an email to support@examspm.com. So we see a lot of thank you messages. So again, Arthur, thank you so much.

It's my pleasure, guys, like really. Let me know next time if I can help, like definitely.

Yeah, perfect.

Yep.

I think all your software experience was definitely very valuable, so thank you for coming on board. Thank you.

Okay, have a good evening everyone. Thank you very much.

Have a great evening. Bye for now. Bye.