Contract management calls for individuals to manage the contracts of a business with partners, associates, employees, customers, and vendors. This means that you will be in charge of many different aspects of the business and will have a major hand in the company's success. This form of consulting is vital to a company's success because you will have to minimize the risk that is present while creating and carrying out these contracts. You will have to get these other parties to agree to the contracts that you have created, so there is a certain level of selling involved in this process as well. The most important part of these contracts is that they must be worded in a way that does not put the company in any jeopardy, yet is still agreeable for the other party. This type of management project is definitely not something to take lightly, so only get involved if you have the ability to work one on one with people and potential business partners.
If you get involved with public management, your job description will be a little bit different, as you will dealing with private and nonprofit companies. This makes this type of consulting similar to working in a government setting, as you will have to make decisions and decide on operations like a public administration. You are not working for a private company in these settings, so your end goal is not to make your company money, but rather to help allot funding and plan the overall outlook for the community. This is a management project that can have a great impact on your community because you are in charge of the taxpayer's money. In some ways, this is a riskier job than a simple contract management position, as you will have many more people upset with you if you make a significant mistake.
The major difference between these two types of jobs is that contract management deals mostly with coming to agreements with other entities that will result in a beneficial situation for both parties. You will have to be good with words and have the ability to come up with solutions that are agreeable for everyone, or else you run the risk of losing your company money. You will have to implement certain provisions into your contracts that you company cannot live without and get the other party to agree with these provisions in order to be successful. The public type of consulting calls for the worker to focus more on the overall outlook for a nonprofit or government organization, which puts things in an entirely different scope.
In the end, there are contract involved with public management, so these types of management projects end up being very similar. The main difference is what you focus on while you are coming to these contractual agreements and what your end goal is through these contracts.
If you feel as though one of these management jobs would be a good fit for you, there are many different programs that you can get involved with in the Universities. A good start would be to go through a business school because these schools will be able to fill you in on what makes up a person who can be trusted with a management project in these industries.
