Recruiting a Project Team: 14 Questions to Ask Before You Hire

The executive committee has just approved a new ERP. Kickoff is in eight weeks, and the project manager still has no business analyst, no test lead and no backfill for the controller who is supposed to be freed up 50% of the time. Recruiting a project team under those conditions is the exercise most organizations improvise. Here are the 14 questions that replace improvisation.

Market figures cited come from public reports by PMI and TechnoCompétences; effort benchmarks are PlanAxion observations from its engagements.

According to PMI's Talent Gap 2021 report, the global economy needs 25 million new project professionals by 2030, meaning 2.3 million people must enter the field every year just to keep up with demand.

Why is recruiting a project team different from any other hire?

Recruiting a project team differs from permanent hiring because the roles are temporary, the skills are scarce and the calendar is set by the project, not by the job market. You are looking for people who can deliver in 12 months and then transfer their knowledge before leaving. That profile does not answer a standard job posting.

The scarcity is documented. PMI's 2025 Global Project Management Talent Gap report counts 39.6 million project professionals worldwide and projects a shortfall of up to 29.8 million by 2035, with demand growing 64%.

In Quebec, competition for these profiles extends well beyond the technology sector. According to the TechnoCompétences 2025-2028 sector diagnostic, the province had 257,000 ICT professionals in May 2024, and 46% of them work outside the ICT sector: in manufacturers, municipalities and financial cooperatives. Your competitor for an ERP analyst is as likely to be the plant next door as a Montreal consulting firm.

Keep these benchmarks in mind before launching a campaign:

• 25 million new project professionals needed worldwide by 2030 (PMI, 2021).
• 2.3 million people must enter the field every year to keep pace with demand (PMI, 2021).
• 39.6 million project professionals active in 2025 and a possible gap of 29.8 million by 2035 (PMI, 2025).
• 257,000 ICT professionals in Quebec in May 2024, 46% of them outside the ICT sector (TechnoCompétences, 2025).
• 25 to 50% of internal superusers' time must be freed during testing phases, based on PlanAxion observations.

What are the 7 questions to settle before posting a single role?

Before posting, you need to fix the purpose of the campaign, the headcount, the team composition, the mix of internal and external people, the incentives for employees loaned to the project, who writes the job descriptions and the compensation policy. Seven decisions, and none of them belongs to the HR department alone.

1. The purpose of the campaign. Are you acquiring expertise the organization lacks, or simply adding capacity for a temporary peak? The answer decides whether you target contractors or permanent staff, and it sets the tone of the posting.

2. The number of people. A one-off replacement, a specific business strategy or the resource plan for your whole project portfolio? Without a consolidated capacity plan, you will recruit twice for the same need.

3. The team composition. Internal or external, junior or seasoned, specialists or generalists? Plan the knowledge transfer now, or the expertise leaves with the last consultant. The key roles in a project team are a good starting grid.

4. Permanent employees loaned to the project. Who gets assigned from the business units, who backfills their position, and do they get their chair back at the end? You already know how these employees work. No external résumé offers that advantage.

5. The upside for those employees. More workload and more responsibility call for recognition: salary, promotion or a defined career path. If your HR policies say nothing about a stint in project mode, your best internal candidates will politely decline.

6. Preparing the job descriptions. Who writes the role, responsibilities, skills and experience level? Add the working atmosphere and your values. A seasoned analyst chooses a team as much as a mandate.

7. Compensation. An expert hired for 14 months will cost more than the permanent employee sitting next to them. That gap is normal, but it has to be owned and explained before day one, not discovered at the coffee machine.

How do you structure recruiting during the campaign (questions 8 to 10)?

During the campaign, three questions determine the quality of your applicants: the sourcing channel, a common interview grid and the management model, centralized or delegated to each team. Everything else is execution.

8. Receiving applications. Job boards, LinkedIn, a headhunter or the network of consultants already on site? Each profile has its channel. An Oracle Cloud architect does not answer the same ad as a test coordinator.

9. Preparing the interviews. Who builds the interview grid and the scoring grid, which managers conduct the interviews, and does HR take part? A common grid guarantees every candidate faces the same questions and the same scenarios. Without it, you are comparing impressions.

10. Managing the recruitment. Centralized by HR under established procedures, or handed to each project team? Centralization protects fairness; delegation speeds things up. Choose deliberately, then stick to it.

Recruiting the team does not end at signature. Their training on the software package should start right after the kickoff meeting, which assumes the recruits are in place by that date.

A project team is not recruited to fill an org chart: it is recruited to hit a date, then to leave with the knowledge staying behind.

What should you do after hiring to retain the talent (questions 11 to 14)?

After hiring, four questions remain open: final selection and contract negotiation, onboarding and performance evaluation, retention incentives and your policy on consulting firms. This is where most organizations relax their attention, and this is where departures start brewing.

11. Selection and agreements. Reference checks, then negotiation of permanent, temporary or services contracts. Who negotiates with consulting firms: procurement or HR? Decide before the first proposal lands.

12. Onboarding. Do you have an onboarding procedure, a performance evaluation grid and a development plan? The quality of your recruits, measured after 90 days, is also the only honest measure of the quality of your recruiting.

13. Retaining talent. Compensation, benefits, atmosphere, values: why would your analyst stay with you rather than the competitor already calling? In a market where PMI projects 2.3 million entrants per year, the question is not theoretical.

14. Consulting firms. What is your policy on using consulting firms, and have you worked with them before? These firms live on fixed-term contracts and keep a network of resources ready to start. They simplify and accelerate recruiting, provided you know how to work with consulting firms.

Where should you start when recruiting your project team?

Start with questions 1 to 3, purpose, headcount and composition, because every other question flows from them. A manager who has answered those three in writing recruits faster and retains better than one who posts first and thinks later.

Selecting, recruiting and retaining the team rank among a project manager's first responsibilities. They deserve to be treated that way.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to recruit a project team?

Plan on 8 to 12 weeks between defining the needs and the start date for specialized profiles, based on PlanAxion observations. Internal resources loaned to the project can be freed faster, provided their backfill is organized. Launching recruitment after the kickoff meeting guarantees you start the project without a complete team.

Should you favour internal resources or external consultants?

Both, in different roles. Internal employees know your processes and will still be there after the project; consultants bring expertise in the software package and experience from several implementations. The real question is knowledge transfer: which know-how must stay in the organization, and who will absorb it before the external people leave.

Why are project professionals so hard to recruit?

Because demand exceeds supply. PMI estimated in 2021 that the global economy would need 25 million new project professionals by 2030, and its 2025 report projects a gap of up to 29.8 million by 2035. In Quebec, 46% of the 257,000 ICT professionals already work outside the technology sector, according to TechnoCompétences.

How do you measure the quality of project team recruiting?

By the performance of recruits after 90 days, measured against an evaluation grid defined before they arrive, and by the retention rate through the end of the project. Successful recruiting also shows in completed knowledge transfer: if a consultant's departure paralyzes a function, question 3 was answered badly.