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The Search Is On
| For project managers out of work or just looking to change gigs, the recession and job cutbacks have made the competition tough. John Thorpe, managing director of Arras People, a project management recruiting firm in London, England, offers some tips for landing your dream job. 1. Focus on you, not your projects. Many people make the mistake of ticking off all their successful projects rather than talking about how they contributed to that success. "People are interested in what you did," he says. "You could have been serving coffee on that project. But if you made the difference in a project's outcome, be loud and proud about it." 2. Experience trumps training. Hiring managers are most interested in a proven track record. Mr. Thorpe suggests you put project experience front and center. 3. Market yourself. Your résumé is your sales literature and you have to sell your experience and education in a way that speaks to the person doing the hiring. "A generic CV is not going give you the best chance, particularly in this economy when hiring is tighter and roles are much more specific," Mr. Thorpe says. He suggests tweaking your résumé for each job, emphasizing your experience in a way that specifically relates to the position you are applying for. 4. Keep it short and sweet. Recruiters have hundreds of résumés to sort through. If yours is 17 pages long, they're likely to pass it by. "You have to grab their attention in the first half of the page or you are not going to make the cut," he says. 5. Consider contract work. Many companies are opting for temporary employees to fill gaps in staff without making a long-term commitment. For those with the right skills, contract gigs can garner decent wages and help you get your foot in the door. 6. Go to networking events. A lot of jobs never even get advertised, so it pays to network. It's a time-consuming but necessary part of the search, he says. "Finding a job is a job. You need to work hard at it and commit yourself full time." Want to know where the hotspots are even in a down market? We've got it covered PMI's Career Track in the May issue of PM Network. We will also have stories on making time for training and moving up the career ladder. And in the 10 April issue of Community Post, PMI members can check out an article on how to highlight your credential when you are jobhunting. |
The McGreen Mindset
Categories:
Social Responsibility
Categories: Social Responsibility
| Let's face it, McDonald's doesn't exactly scream sustainability. Yet the fast food chain has shown a fierce determination to demonstrate its green cred that goes back to way before it became so cool. In the late '80s and early '90s, McDonald's focused on reducing its packaging--eliminating 300 million pounds of the stuff. Granted, there was plenty of packaging to get rid of, but still ... Since then, the company has tackled sustainability projects on multiple levels, everything from collaborating with Greenpeace on a soy moratorium aimed at protecting the Amazon to rolling out an environmental scorecard for its suppliers. The company also recently opened a green version of the Golden Arches on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, USA. And now others are under construction in France, Brazil, Canada and Costa Rica. Of course with the global economic crisis, the big question for McDonald's and every other company out there is whether the commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects will last. Bob Langert, McDonald's vice president, says CSR can't be a standalone. On his blog, he writes: "CSR must be part of the way we think and act every single day. It is this type of mindset and way of doing business that does not waiver in the face of economic instability." The struggle to balance sustainability and the bottom line isn't likely to end anytime soon. Check out the February issue of PM Network for an in-depth look at how the crunch may turn out to have a "cleansing effect" on sustainability. |
The Talent Value
Categories:
Researching the Value of Project Management
Categories: Researching the Value of Project Management
| Okay, after lots of discussion around the preliminary results of PMI's Researching the Value of Project Management, I think we can all agree that project management does indeed bring value to the organization. But we haven't really talked about the people delivering that value--and where companies are going to find them. Developing economies like India and Latin America are struggling to find enough people while established economies like Europe and the United States are struggling to find the right people. Indonesia, for example, is expected to be 12,000 project managers short in the oil and gas, mining, IT and telecommunications industries over the next five years. At PMI's recent Latin America Congress in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Ricardo Viana Vargas, PMP, gave a great example that pretty much summed it all up. He recalled getting an e-mail from an Australian colleague with only three sentences: "I need a specialist in iron ore projects to work here. I need it now. Don't worry about the cost." So what's a company to do? "The Great Talent Shortage," a January 2008 article in PM Network, provided some solutions. Here are a few: "Call it sharing, stealing, enticing--we all have to go to the same pool to get people. You have to raid your competition, and they do the same." --Yahya Khader, CEO, Clough Zuhair Fayez Partnership, Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia "It's extremely important to hire a certain proportion of new project managers from outside your industry. It's the only way you can get fresh thinking and a new look at how you do business. Yet, human resource departments tend to always advertise in the same place and look for the same characteristics as the previous employee." --Uma Gupta, Ph.D., PMP, senior advisor to the provost at the State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USA "Organizations are being more responsive to offering longer leave periods, better parental-leave provisions and a far greater proportion of performance-based payments. Measuring workplace satisfaction is becoming more common, with companies looking at their main employment brand attributes and developing programs to address gaps through benefits, mentoring, or training and development." --Paul Bell, managing director, Fanselow Bell, Nelson, New Zealand Of course, all of those things are often easier said than done. Companies have to make the commitment to not only recruit and retain the cream of the crop, but also to groom the next generation of project management leaders. |