Resume Reading

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

 

So you are trying to hire a project manager. You've defined your expectations, written the position posting and taken out an ad in the careers section. You are on the verge of your realizing your greatest fear: being inundated with literally hundreds of resumes, with no way to screen them and no means of figuring out who can and should get an interview and who is just trolling for an opportunity--any opportunity.

Worse, you're concerned that once you've actually selected your interview candidates, you aren't sure what to ask them to understand whether they can really manage a project in your environment. And to top it all off, some jerk wrote a column last month arguing that screening on the basis of whether or not people have a PMP wasn't necessarily the best way of winnowing out the resumes to look at. It's enough to make you throw your hands in the air and make you never want to look at a project (or a candidate project manager) again.

Unfortunately, ducking the issue isn't an option. The position is there, the project isn't managing itself and we need to make a hiring decision. So what to do? How can you effectively screen for a project manager? What should you be looking for in a resume, and what approach can you take in the interview process to know that at the end of the day someone really will fit your environment?

The challenge starts with screening resumes. …

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