Certifications Don’t Mean Squat...Unless They Do

 

Saw this post recently in Project Management Central:

Hello All, I'm a professional from telecommunication industry. Currently I'm employed with a telecom giant. My current profile makes me work for technical support group, however, I'm willing to move my career ahead in project management. But since I have no previous project management experience I cannot go for PMP certification. However, I can pursue Prince2 ( foundation + practioner) as it doesn't require any pre-requisites to be met. And I hope that Prince2 will aid me to change my job profile to project coordinator/ assistant. I'm also pursuing MBA in project management from Disance education. Please advise me if Prince2 is worth doing for me!

I get questions like this one a lot. People trying to decide between an APM, IPMA, PMI, or PRINCE2 certification. Believe it or not my answer to this question is always the same.

It depends. :-P

Seriously dude. Let me explain.

Target Organizations

Organizations are as different as anything else in our world. They all have different cultures, needs, and backgrounds. Some of them may absolutely HATE the PRINCE2 certification. Perhaps the founder had a bad experience, maybe the culture has no respect for these industry certifications. Whatever.

Some may have drank the kool-aide of a particular certification and have based all of their processes around that particular framework and/or methodology.

You Need To Find Out

Do some research and find 3-5 organizations you want to go work for. For most of you that will be local you where you are currently living, for others who don’t mind moving you can expand your search.

There are many things you can look for as sign posts of a culture you’ll enjoy and be able to grow with. But it starts with your own goals.

If you want to be in a free-wheeling environment that is unstructured where you can make many changes and have a lot of influence even as someone new to the company, try a start-up.

If you want to land in an environment filled with mentors and established career paths in project management, try a larger established company who has these things in place.

Network Like A Maniac

Networking is a process, not an event. You should always be engaged in networking, not just when you are looking for a job. That’s actually the worst thing you could do, only network when you are hungry for a job. You are going to turn off a lot of people that way.

Networking is an ongoing process of building relationships and trust over time with people who you like and who like you. You share common interests. In the case of targeting organizations, you may share the interest of a particular company. Perhaps they work for that organization already.

The strategies and tactics involved with good networking are too exhaustive to cover in a blog post. If you want to go deeper into the rabbit hole with me, you can.

I can tell you the primary approach however.

Be Helpful, Add Value For Other People

Me! Me! Me!

This is the wrong approach. When you reach out to people only to ask them if they know of a job, you are going to turn them off. It doesn’t work unless you’ve built a relationship and trust over time.

Instead, do your best to help them. Ask them insightful questions about the work they do. Don’t just ask what you can do to help them, get to know them well enough that you can come up with an idea of how to help them and make it so all they have to do is say yes.

Oh yeah, and you can ask them if their company gives a rip about certifications somewhere in there.