Cars.com is a leader in the automotive digital marketplace. Since 1997, we have built our brand to preeminent status in the industry. While enjoying great stability we continue to grow and innovate. Cars.com offers modern digital products for our consumers and customers using cutting-edge lean-agile techniques. When you are a part of the Cars team you have opportunities, unique in Chicago, to lead and grow.

Our highly-engaged workforce enjoys a challenging job, opportunities to learn, our dedication to work/life balance, wellness and career growth as well as a rich set of employee programs. We’re big enough to provide abundant resources and small enough for you to make an immediate impact.

The Project Manager leads project teams in the definition and delivery of business outcomes, focusing on efforts to support our Sales and Marketing organizations. The Project Manager will manage projects from initiation to completion and will demonstrate a high level of efficiency and effectiveness in driving results. Leveraging proven project management methods, the Project Manager facilitates the creation of plans, the communication of status, decisions and action items, the proactive management of risk and resolution of issues, the creation of a team spirit and ultimately a successful project outcome.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead end-to-end business projects focused on Sales and Marketing departments.
• Facilitate effective project meetings.
• Ensure roles on the project team are clear and clearly communicated.
• Actively monitor the progress of work understand details at an appropriate level.
• Leverage traditional project management and Agile (e.g. Scrum) frameworks, and be able to correlate concepts between both when needed (e.g. sprints to milestones.)
• Master, apply and champion the existing Agile process framework and participating in the continuous improvement/evolution of the Agile process framework by the experiences learned through its use and application.
• Coordinate and collaborate with other project teams as it relates to project dependencies.
• Create and execute project communication plans. Proactively communication with individuals and teams at all levels of the organization. Ensure a high level of communication within the team and with Cars.com stakeholders.
• Report and effectively communicate progress via status reports.
• Identify, resolve or escalate barriers to success with urgency.
• Facilitate the identification of key risks. Facilitate the creation of mitigation plans where needed and monitor.
• Maintain a successful attitude: solution-focused, positive, vocal, engaging, resilient, proactive.
• Train others on Cars.com project management tools and techniques.

REQUIRED SKILLS 

• Experience working with diverse business functions.
• Able to gain trust and build confidence with all team members and senior leadership to establish and maintain effective and collaborative working relationships throughout the project.
• Leadership skills including moderation, facilitation, negotiation, presentation, and conflict management.
• Able to anticipate, mitigate, and resolve conflicts within the project, leveraging established credibility and trust.
• Adaptable to changing needs of the business and ability to maintain composure and positivity under stress.
• Able to work with minimal supervision in a dynamic and tight deadline work environment.
• Able to facilitate large group discussion to achieve a shared vision among project team members.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, ability to work with diverse personality types.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a high attention to detail.
• Excellent oral and written communications skills with both technical and non-technical information.
• Resourceful, self-motivated, methodical, detail-oriented, highly productive.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 3+ years in a Sales or Marketing Project Manager role.
• PMI training/certification a plus.
• Experience writing and executing against communication plans.
• Agile (e.g. Scrum) training/certification a plus.
• Proficiency with MS Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
• Comfortable using project management software such as Confluence and Jira.