Project Manager

Long Beach Entrepreneur Experience Project

Economic Development Office

Salary: $65-85k (might be other forms of compensation to add here as well)

Overview

The Long Beach office of Economic Development (http://www.longbeach.gov/citymanager/economic-development/), Long Beach’s department managing business growth and business-City relationships in the city, is hiring a Project Manager to grow and maintain the City’s digital resources for entrepreneurs and business owners, including the business portal, BizPort (bizport.longbeach.gov). BizPort is the consolidated source of information for entrepreneurs and small business owners in the City of Long Beach. It’s the most centralized and up-to-date source of information on licensing, permitting, and small business resources throughout the City and community.

The Project Manager will be responsible for the city’s digital resources strategy for entrepreneurs and business owners. BizPort is central to the strategy at this time, but should also be considered as part of the overall strategy, and not an all-encompassing solution.

To ensure the ongoing quality of digital resources, the Project Manager will be responsible for understanding the needs of users; setting BizPort content strategy and feature roadmap; generating content (e.g. copy, images, and other formats); and coordinating with stakeholders throughout the city and community to ensure the accuracy of content. The Project Manager will inherit existing processes to support in the responsibilities defined below, but will also be expected to grow and adapt these processes as necessary.

This is a full-time role, reporting to the head of Economic Developmentand working in partnership with the project manager of the iTeam (http://longbeach.gov/iteam/), a cross-functional group of experts pushing forward innovative projects in the City.

Responsibilities

Entrepreneur and Business Owner Engagement

To ensure that user needs drive the content generation and continued feature development of the business-facing digital services, the Project Manager will:

Respond to inbound user requests sent by email, survey, live chat (i.e. Intercom), or other channels.
Actively seek user feedback via surveys, in-person testing sessions in the community (e.g. at the library or small business events), or other means, with the aim of reaching business owners likely to have the most difficulty starting or operating a business.

Project Management & Data Analytics

Define and maintain a dashboard of core performance metrics for the business portal that is available to City and community stakeholders.
Organize and run a monthly meeting (“Analytics Club”) with key stakeholders to review performance metrics. Set goals and actions to improve those metrics through business portal improvements and cooperation with stakeholders.
Maintain a roadmap of improvements to be made, including adding new content, revising and updating existing content, improving design, and adding new features. This roadmap should be informed by key metrics - generally the same ones shown in the analytics dashboard.
Coordinate with other departments in the city - including but not limited to Financial Management or Development Services - to create and update website content that answers entrepreneur and small business owner questions.
Work with designers and software engineers, seeking outside resources as necessary, to improve the look, feel, and function of the website.

Content Strategy

To ensure that the content in the business portal is easy to access and usable by a wide range of users, the project manager will:

Set and keep current an overall content strategy that includes planning, creation, delivery, and governance of content.
Work with stakeholders to generate new content, whether by asking for and reviewing their contributions or by generating content independently and seeking expert feedback.
Maintain a regular (e.g. weekly/monthly) process of auditing and updating content, as well as responding to inbound customer requests for content or frequently asked questions.
Make sure content adheres to access needs. Example considerations might include device type (i.e. desktop/mobile), English literacy, reading level, or visual impairment. This plan should meet and exceed any accessibility obligations set in City-wide standards.
Set and revise the information architecture of the website to help online users find information they are looking for to complete tasks for starting and running a business.

Qualifications

Writing/Documentation: Strong ability to explain and analyze processes step by step. Experience with UX, business intelligence, or documentation would be relevant. Clear and concise writing, with the ability to translate complex subjects into simple terms.
Research: Demonstrated ability to summarize large amounts of content from various online and print sources.
Communication/Influence: Ability to interface and build relationships with city staff and community stakeholders, and work with them to gain relevant information.
Communication: Demonstrated ability and experience serving as the primary point of customer (entrepreneur and small business) contact for the business portal.
At least two years as the product owner of a digital product or website, or other comparable experience demonstrating the responsibilities and skills listed above.
Government experience is not a prerequisite, but the Project Manager must be willing to quickly learn how government works, understand its nuances, and be willing to create small wins that add up to a larger, positive impact.

Technical Skills (Preferred)

Project management tools

Trello (or equivalent)
Waffle (or equivalent)
GitHub (for issue/bug reporting and task management; not code/version management)
Google Drive

Web development familiarity

Basic knowledge of HTML a plus
Basic knowledge of CSS a plus