Fond Memories as a Hired Gun

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

Randy Nelson smiles and looks back nostalgically upon his several years as a hired gun project manager who bounced around the globe taking on challenging projects. He lived in the fast lane, staying in the best hotels and flying first class. And the money wasn't bad, either.

But those days are over. Why did Nelson get off the fast lane to swerve into a conventional lifestyle? There are precious lessons to be learned. Do you think you could be a hired gun PM--without the Colt 45s, of course?

Nelson enjoyed being a "hired gun." He was sort of the PM equivalent of Yul Brynner in the classic 1960 film The Magnificent Seven.

Nelson managed many formidable projects. His last was as CIO/senior project manager of Millennium Chemicals Inc., a $2 billion paint pigment and petrochemical manufacturer in Red Bank, New Jersey. The 53-year old PM was hired for an 18-month long assignment to manage the installation of company-wide (Millennium has 14 plants throughout the world) SAP software to automate all of the company's business functions.

In the staffing world, Houston-based Nelson is called an "Interim Executive," or simply a high-level temp who moves from one assignment to the next. He belonged to an elite group of managers hired by companies for short-term assignments. They've been called hired guns, mercenaries and …

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