Career Roadblock?

roadblock – by Lyndi&Jason via Flickr

What can you do when you feel like you’ve hit a bump on your project manager career path?  Here are my thoughts, and I invite you to add your own comments with advice for this professional.

From a pmStudent community member:

I have recently been made redundant from my high flying project management role. This position was with a FTSE 100 Energy firm and therefore I was pretty dissapointed when things worked out as they did. That said it happens. So guess I wondered what your advice would be for someone who has 3 years project management experience-having managed some pretty big projects in finance, IT and engineering services. The only thing is I don’t have a qualification like Prince2 and am wondering how I would get recruiters and employers attention in a UK Market where atleast 5 years experience is needed for Junior project managers.

Any advice would be appreciated

Thank you

Certification

Gaining the predominant certification in your region is definitely a good idea.  It’s not all you need to do, but it’s a good step.  When potential employers screen your CV or resume you want it to make it into the “maybe” pile and a certification will help with that.  Find out what’s important to prospective employers, and also take into consideration your own industry and interests.  IPMA, Prince2, PMP, etc.  These might be possible candidates…but what about becoming a certified Scrum Master if you are in software development?  There are a lot of niche credentials that may offer you a lot of personal value and make you more attractive as a candidate.

Stretch and Be Aggressive

On the experience question, the perception might be that everyone requires 5 years of experience.  They probably say it right on the job posting.  After I dropped out of university, I started in a technical role and worked my way into management positions.  Being laid off many times, I had to constantly wrestle with the fact that most of the jobs I wanted “required” a degree I didn’t have.  I eventually did go back to school and earned the degree, but I learned that you can still land jobs that say they want more experience or education than you have.  I’ve landed jobs in the past that required 10 years of experience when I only had 3-4 years of experience.  My passion and demonstrated competency made up for the lack experience in the minds of the hiring managers.

It’s all about separating yourself from the pack.  Networking is powerful, because when people who know you are good refer you there is a trust factor that goes with it.  Being aggressive and demonstrating that you can exceed expectations consistently works well.  Don’t just send your resume or CV and a cover letter.  Make phone calls.  Ask someone in the company what the big challenges they face are, and come up with a solution to them.  Find ways to demonstrate your ability to add value to the organization.

Find a talk to people via social networks who work at the organization and network with them.  I don’t mean “hey, can you put in a good word for me?” to someone you just met.  Asking good questions about them and the work they do are good ways to find out more about the organization.  Take them out for coffee or lunch.  Give first, with no direct expectations.

Every new job should be a stretch, at least that’s my philosophy.  If you don’t have to learn more in order to be successful, then you’re stuck in a rut…you are not growing.  Sure, every employer would love to hire someone who already knows everything and can hit the ground running.  They realize that’s not always feasible though, especially when people are moving up into a new role.

Consider Alternatives

Sometimes it’s best to target related roles which allow you to keep close to your desired role and perhaps act as a stepping stone later on.  One example in my career was many years ago when I lost a job leading the technical operations for a company and stepped into a call center manager role.  It was a large step down if you look at it with a short-term mindset (role/salary was much less), but the decision was deliberate because I wanted to get my foot in a particular organization and I had an idea about how I could prove myself within the company and move into other roles.

Here, sometimes you have to wrestle with being overqualified for a position.  In the cases I have done this I’ve had to anticipate the hiring managers’ hesitancy to hire me because they thought I was overqualified and would leave as soon as something else popped up.  I usually initiate a frank discussion where I discuss that although I am overqualified, my goal is to work for this company.  I let them know that I see myself moving into a different role (within this company) a few years down the road, but the way I build credibility and trust is to outperform and exceed expectations.  I have to do that in this role first, before I’m going to even start considering other positions down the road.

Who Is Josh Nankivel?

I am the founder of pmStudent.com, a site dedicated to helping new and aspiring project managers succeed.

Learn more about project manager careers right now with my free eBook and newsletter!

Making networking meetings work for you

Last week I wrote about using project management industry insiders to help you gain insights into what hiring managers are looking for right now, in this tough economy.  But how do you get time with an insider and how should you act once you’re in front of them?

For a start, nobody really needs you to buy them coffee or lunch in order to ‘deserve’ their time, attention, and advice. Networking meetings cloaked in social guises are expensive, time consuming, distracting, and, let’s face it, fattening. Not to mention, maybe just a little humiliating:  no one who is working wants to have someone else – who is looking for a job – spend money to feed them.  Besides, project managers generally love talking about their work, and many will be more than happy to take a small chunk of time out of their day to spread the work about a profession that they enjoy.

I asked Duncan Mathison and Martha I. Finney, authors of Unlock the Hidden Job Market, for the essential ingredients of an ideal networking meeting.  They recommended that it should be:

Flexible: You are available to make an appointment any time of the day; whatever is convenient for the people you want to meet with.

Convenient: It must be convenient for them, not you.  Ideally, they shouldn’t even have to get up from their desk to meet you.

Efficient: You’re there for exactly one hour (or shorter: whatever length of time you have agreed). You start on time and you finish on time.  Be like a project manager and stick to the schedule!

With easy access to important information: When your networking partners are sitting at their desk, they’re going to have all the important names and phone numbers of additional project management people you should meet within reach.

Respected: This is a time when no one takes phone calls and other interruptions. Make sure your phone is off, or at least on silent.  Emails shouldn’t be checked.

Focused:  You’re not there to discuss what’s on a menu or compare opinions about news, weather, sports. This is a business meeting.  And when you meet at your networking partners’ office, it’s easier to stay focused on business.

All project managers are busy, even those who sincerely want to help you on your job search path. Their time is much more valuable than the gift of a lunch or the price of a cup of coffee. Make your meeting as simple and straightforward as you can. Have an agenda and prepare questions in advance. You’ll be saving time. You’ll be saving money. You’ll be saving calories. And you’ll be helping them help you.

Good luck with your job search!

Looking for a new job? Don’t start with the small ads…

If you are an out of work project professional, you’ll anxiously await your next email update from the project management recruitment sites or the professional press.  But don’t limit your job search to just these routes.  After all, you will often have heard the statistic that 70% of jobs never get advertised or make it to a recruitment website.  There is a ‘hidden job market’ out there, and it’s wide open for anyone who knows how to work it.

“When times are tough, the skills you need to find and land a great job are fundamentally different than when the economy is good.  It’s no surprise that people are getting increasingly frustrated by sending out hundreds of resumes and getting no response, they’re looking for jobs like it’s 2005 when the economy was hot and workers were in short supply.  In today’s economy they need a different set of tools,” says Duncan Mathison, executive career consultant and former vice president of Drake Beam Morin, who is also the author of Unlock the Hidden Job Market: 6 Steps to a Successful Job Search When Times Are Tough.

Great jobs don’t go to great people. They go to great job searchers – those who know how to navigate the hidden job market and make it work for them.  One way to seek out this market is to think like the person buying your services: the hiring manager.  And what better way to do that than by asking some of them what they are looking for.

Find someone in a project management role in your target industry and use them to start building your understanding around your potential hiring managers’ most pressing needs.  It’s not an interview – it’s a discussion, from which you aim to get as much information about what project management talent is top of the recruiters’ ‘must have’ list.  Enthusiasm alone won’t cut it when you get to a ‘real’ interview – you need to focus on what your hiring manager needs.  Your job is to understand how they think, what they worry about, how they behave and how they make their buying decisions.

Book half an hour with your project management insider and ask them some questions:

“Tell me about the best people you hired for this job. What were the qualities that make them a success? Are those qualities still relevant in today’s environment?”

“How has your business changed in recent years, especially as the economy has changed? How have those changes affected the kinds of talent you’re looking for?

“What keeps you excited about the work you do?  What do you worry about the most?”

“How have performance issues or standards for excellence changed in recent years? What’s essential for the future?”

“If you could add one thing to the mix of skills in your staff, what would it be? What would you subtract?”

When you ask these questions you will build the necessary understanding to finally land that great job.  Feel free to ask them in interviews too: you know, in the awkward moment when the interviewer asks you what else you would like to ask.  With all the understand you have built up you’ll be able to talk about your abilities and motivations in terms that your potential boss will immediately relate to. Your prospective boss will be thinking, “Wow, this person really gets it!”

Then the next question might be:  “When can you start?”