Are You Experienced?

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Career Development  

Based on current trends, project managers will see an increase in the need for them to have more experiential training in real-life situations in order to stay competitive. To maintain a professional edge, PMs will need to set goals to gain significant knowledge through work scenarios and industry learning. While the core information, guidance and coursework that helps educate PMs in the practice of their vocation will still be essential, the institutions and individuals who teach this material to them will need to do so in such a way as to keep the material increasingly pertinent to the work at hand. The pressure on instruction will be to move away from models and move more toward reality-based learning in industry-specific settings.

Texts and tests are helpful in getting a starting position in the field; however, having true hands-on and tangible world experience is something that employers really want. The old ways of getting a degree and moving on directly into an occupation in your field of study are eroding away--specialized instruction methods that help learners see the application of their classes in manufacturing, technology, healthcare and numerous other industries are where learning trends are moving. This in turn helps advance students/employees into positions more quickly, despite soft labor markets.

Practical PM
Hiring managers have taken to task the …

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