PAPERS 36 October 2013 ■ Project Management Journal ■ DOI: 10.1002/pmj ABSTRACT ■ This research addresses the competencies organizations use through project manager job advertisements. We develop a list of project manager job competencies; break down the competency components into knowledge, skills, and abilities; and conduct a comparative analy- sis of the use of these competencies. We exam- ine the online contents of project manager job advertisements in the public domain. Analysis shows that industry job advertisements empha- size “soft skills” and competencies in a manner different than that in the literature. Additionally, differences are found across countries and between industries. Implications from the find- ings highlight the incongruent dissemination of project manager competencies, regional and industrial demands, and the recruitment of proj- ect managers. KEYWORDS: project manager; competen- cies; project manager job; content analysis Project Management Journal, Vol. 44, No. 5, 36–54 © 2013 by the Project Management Institute Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/pmj.21366 INTRODUCTION ■ R ecruiting the right project manager is an important challenge for organizations. According to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK ® Guide) (Project Management Institute, 2008), the project manager is the person responsible for accomplish- ing project objectives. The project manager manages the project through identifying project requirements; establishing clear and achievable objec- tives; balancing the competing demands for quality, scope, time and cost; adapting plans and approaches to the different concerns and expectations of the various stakeholders; and managing projects in response to uncertainty. The project manager’s role is one of the most challenging jobs in any organi- zation, because it requires a broad understanding of the various areas that must be coordinated and requires strong interpersonal skills. It is widely acknowledged that the final outcome of the project depends mainly on the project manager; therefore, the selection of the project manager is one of the two or three most important decisions concerning the project (Meredith & Mantel, 2006, p. 139). How to attract the “right” project managers, therefore, is an important organizational imperative; however, there is a lack of research on which recruitment “signals” or messages are used to attract potential applicants to the project manager role and whether these signals reflect project management prescriptions from professional bodies and standards. In this study, we examine the recruitment of project managers from job advertisements, and address how organizations describe the com- petencies of project managers. This study provides a systematic approach to understanding how project manager competencies are utilized from both the “supply” and “demand” sides. The competencies used in project manager job advertisements are compared with the competencies from both the aca- demic literature and project management professional body of standards. This study addresses the following questions: What are the most fre- quently used competencies to attract potential project managers to organi- zations? Do the competencies sought by recruitment job advertisements reflect the competencies prescribed by the project management literature and from professional bodies? Finally, we examine whether there are differ- ences regionally and between industries in the use of project manager com- petencies to attract potential project managers. The contributions of this research are threefold: This study provides a systematic approach to identify- ing and comparing project manager competencies from both the supply side Recruiting Project Managers: A Comparative Analysis of Competencies and Recruitment Signals From Job Advertisements Kamrul Ahsan, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia Marcus Ho, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand Sabik Khan, Trust Bank Limited, Bangladesh