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The Secret Lessons of Summer
Ian Whittingham, PMP is director of Calixo Consulting, providing project and program management expertise from initiation through to implementation, covering business transformation, workflow process re-engineering, and enterprise data integration. He is a regular contributor to ProjectManagement.com. You may contact Ian directly at [email protected].
Among the most effective gaffes guaranteed to blow your chance of landing that dream interview, listing summer jobs in your resume comes pretty near the top. Who wants to read about your stint as a lifeguard at the local pool or waiting on tables at the neighborhood diner when all your potential employer really wants is compelling evidence that you’re the right candidate to successfully deliver his multi-million, business critical project?
Like everyone else, I’ve long since purged such references from the recitation of my job history. But as summer kicks in, the recollection of one job in particular has made me reconsider the value of those experiences, and how they left their undetected traces in the yet-to-be project manager who recalls them today.
Callow Youth
The summer I graduated from college I worked as a clerk in the storeroom of a continuous stationery manufacturer. The shelves were lined with bins containing screws, rivets, grommets, rods, discs and plates of various shapes and sizes from which--at workbenches throughout the factory--ledgers, binders and other loose-leaf paper filing devices were assembled, by hand. At periodic intervals, someone would appear at the storeroom vestibule and hand one of us a bill of materials.
Walking up and down the aisles of metal racks we would collect the prescribed quantities of each …
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