I wish I had me when I was you...

What’s in a name?

When it comes to PMOs, a lot! Have you been paying attention to the PMO space recently? I have. More and more organizations are moving away from the title PMO for the organization that facilitates the planning and execution of business strategy. I’ve seen Business Transformation Office, Strategic Planning Office, Strategy Execution Office, Enterprise Strategy Execution team, and on and on…anything but PMO, please!

Why?

PMOs have gotten a bad reputation.

Why?

Because many of them haven’t been delivering in a high impact way. Sorry, guys. I hate to break it to you. I really do. I’m a 17 year PMO veteran.

There are some out there that are amazing rock stars! I know I’ve seen them, myself.

And then there are the rest of them…too much time, money and resources spent on building templates and process or running through the steps of a project without actually delivering maximal impact for the organization’s investment. In the eyes of the business leadership, they take too long to get setup and start seeing value. The business gets bored/impatient/frustrated and moves on.

This is where doing things “right” conflicts with getting results. I talked about process getting in the way of progress in this post that I encourage you to read. I dive deeply into the specifics of that problem we create for ourselves when we put getting the tools and templates created before we start having an impact.

Now, I want to go beyond that.

Let’s say we are delivering our projects on time and within budget, even meeting the business requirements. Great! Now why isn’t the business happy?

We need to turn our heads to an even bigger differentiator between those that will survive the next several years and those that won’t. Actually, I don’t think it’s going to even take that long. The data is there…the PMO isn’t about project management anymore. It’s about delivering the maximal impact possible based on the investment. In other words, return on investment (ROI). It’s not just how we are doing the work or even that most of it is getting delivered. It’s also about focus. Focusing our energy on the right things.

Imagine this. You have a project portfolio dashboard and 80% of the projects on that dashboard are green or going as planned. We are rocking and rolling! Feeling good. But what if the 20% that aren’t moving forward are the ones that have the biggest impact on the organization’s bottom line or ability to meet strategic objectives? 80% of the impact your PMO could be having on the company is tied up in 20% of the projects and they aren’t getting done. Not looking so hot now, huh?

We need to focus our energy on the most important projects to the organization. That 20% that can move the company forward should get first dibs on focus from the organization (money, time, effort, etc.)

And guess what?

It’s YOUR job as a PMO leader to help make that happen. You have to make sure that the right conversations are taking place to facilitate getting resources realigned, information where it needs to go and decisions made. It’s also your job to make sure that you handle the “don’t touch my project” conversations and behaviors that are prevalent whenever you have limited funds and resources – so always. The ones where project managers are fighting each other for resources when the priorities are clear.

You know what I’m talking about…they make it look like resources that they need look fully utilized even if they aren’t just so that they don’t lose them when they need them…and who could blame them? A good project manager will fight to the death to make sure their project gets all the resources they need to make sure their project gets done. Of course! Their job performance is judged on whether or not their projects are performing, right?

Maybe being a good project manager is not enough. Maybe we need more in our PMOs of the future.

What if, instead, we allowed project managers to be in a safe collaborative place?  A place where the PMO has their back. A place where the PMO could decide that PMs are judged on their ability to help the entire portfolio perform optimally, even if it means their own project gets shuffled lower on the priority list.

Crazy idea, I know.

You have a role in determining where PMOs go from here. We’ve seen that they aren’t getting much love from the business community. But we’ve also seen this rebirth in titles for these organizations so as to make it even clearer that this is about the business and delivering business value. But I would like to go even further. It’s not about what you call it. It’s about being as impactful as possible on the business. It’s about maximizing return on investment.

Or, as my friend Mike Hannan has suggested, maybe the next iteration of PMOs should be called RMEs: ROI Maximization Engines.

What you call it doesn’t matter. What it delivers, better.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

If I read one more PMO article or book that tells me to focus my energy on process first if I want my PMO to be successful, I’m going to be sick. Process is NOT the answer (well, at least it’s not the first answer)! I’ve seen many PMO leaders spend a year or more putting in place tons of process, plenty of templates, several tools, and a hire a bunch of methodology zealots to come execute it all. You know what happens to those PMOs? They are extinct within two years.

Why? No one cares about process but you. Of course, you should care. That’s not the issue. It’s how much you care and prioritize it in advance of other business priorities that will hurt you. Show me the CEO who says he prefers that you follow every step in a process over getting high impact results. Good luck finding them. If you do, they aren’t likely to be around long.

Why? Because all of the process in the world won’t make your PMO successful. In fact, too much process, especially too early, will almost guarantee failure.

It’s not about the process, people! It’s is about how you Get. It. Done. It’s about outcomes and impact, not tools and templates.

OK, before all of you awesome process people have a heart attack, let me explain.

It takes time to roll out process, just right process, that will be effective in an organization. I’m not suggesting you don’t do it at all, just do it incrementally and thoughtfully while learning your business and helping your business solve problems. Give yourself time to conduct an assessment of the business needs, the culture, the organization, the norms, the current processes and practices. Once you know what you are dealing with, you can recommend a solution that best meets the needs of that organization. You can right-size your process…to achieve greatest impact.

What’s the best way to assess an organization? By helping them solve immediate business challenges they are having today. “What?” you say, “but I don’t have all of my templates in place, yet!” Who cares? Your business isn’t going to say, “Come back when you have a full set of documents you are going to force me to complete before I can get work done.” No, that’s not a thing business leaders generally say. They are more likely to say (and your job is to position them to do so), “Great! Let’s get moving on solving this problem!” I don’t care if you build your project schedule on a napkin, a flip chart or in a tool, it’s about getting that schedule built, understanding your stakeholders and their requirements, and mobilizing people to drive strategy realization.

By doing this, you earn their respect and trust while getting some wins under your belt. Success breeds more success. It’s the rich get richer philosophy. Once you have success, you are more likely to be the one they come to when they really need help. The trust grows. Your success grows. Everyone wins.

Trust me on this one, I know. The times I’ve spent too much time building out process and not enough time focused on my business, their needs, and solving their problems, it’s put my PMO on the brink of extinction. I had great advisors and mentors (all business people) that helped me figure out what I was doing wrong. It’s not that my heart wasn’t in the right place, they’d say. They understood what I was trying to do and even the purpose and value of it. However, I hadn’t built trust with those business folks yet, so they were just seeing me throw a bunch of roadblocks in their way instead of solving their problems. That was NOT at all my intent. I knew the value of a good template and process to help standardize and get to repeatable successful outcomes. That’s all fine, they’d say, but I hadn’t proven I knew what I was doing first. I hadn’t proven that I could help them have impact. I hadn’t proven they could trust me, yet. I was telling them instead of showing them. I was doing it to them instead of doing it with them.

Use the Jedi Mind Trick. One of my favorite Program Managers used to do this to stakeholders all of the time and they loved him for it! He’d gently guide them through a simple process to get unstuck and get their business objectives accomplished to keep the project moving forward. Then, once they were all excited and patting themselves on the back, he’d let them know that he was using the Jedi Mind Trick on them and that it was really a pretty standard project management process he had just guided them through. Next time, they could just follow that same process to get to the same results. He didn’t shove terminology or templates or process at them. He just stood by them and walked them through a simple framework, using business terms and focusing on outcomes.

I’m going to assume that the vast majority of the people reading this post can do basic project management in their sleep. If that’s the case, then you can easily use your common sense and common practice to subtly bring your stakeholders through a very simple framework without shoving it in their face.

I run two companies right now and in both, my staff knows that I am about accountability and results. One of the companies, Project Management for Change, is run by a large team of almost all project management volunteers. Now, that’s a process oriented group! I am continually reminding them that we have outcomes we need to show and results we need to get on timelines that aren’t going to move. The minute we get too focused on process without getting to outcomes, I pull them back and refocus them on getting to results to build credibility with our stakeholders (volunteers, sponsors, PM organizations, nonprofits, etc.) First, let’s show results (a.k.a. PMDoS 2015), then let’s document what we did to share with others (a.k.a. PMDoS 2016 and our PMDoS Playbook), now we can run everything from a repeatable and replicable process that we KNOW works (a.k.a. expansion of PMDoS globally in 2016-17). We proved it by having wild successes thus far. It’s a real thing. It’s now worthy of standardization. We had impact.

In my other company, PMO Strategies, my slogan is Get. It. Done. I take that very seriously. That does not mean we are fire fighters. We are certainly fire preventers. But we earn trust by solving problems and delivering results and then say, “Let’s work together to make sure we prevent this from happening next time.” We apply this internally, as well. We are doing an incredible amount of value generating work for our clients and want to be as process efficient and repeatable as possible, but we are learning not to boil the ocean when it comes to process. Let’s figure out what works in our environment (and that of our clients) and then we can standardize it.

Did you read that? Figure out what works FIRST, then you KNOW what you are standardizing is going to work in that particular environment. Make sense? You still get to standardize, just after you’ve built trust and delivered results with your stakeholders. Now they trust you. Now they will listen.

Once they trust you, once you have helped them, once you have had a positive impact on their organization or business, then is the time to talk about adding process. That’s the perfect time to strike. Their guard is down and they are primed for you. You say, “I’m

glad to have helped. I have some ideas on how we can do even better, next time.” Bam! Now they are listening.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

What does it mean when you call someone a difficult stakeholder? No, back up. What does it mean to be a stakeholder and how do you engage them effectively?

My definition of a stakeholder is anyone that can positively or negatively influence, or is affected by, the outcomes of a project. It’s about cause and affect (not effect). Meaning, if their actions can affect a change on your project or your project will (or they think it will) affect them, then you better be paying attention to them and actively managing their engagement (or lack thereof).

Here are my simple steps for managing stakeholders, even the difficult ones:

1. Find them

Look for them everywhere using the above definition. There are obvious groups of stakeholders like the business unit or company you are doing the work for, the project team, sponsor, etc. The ones you may not think about are those that can affect the project outside of that core group. Look at it from a risk perspective and anyone that could influence broader direction. For example, any other stakeholder on any other project that is in a position to shift resources from your project to theirs is a stakeholder of yours.

2. Get to know them

Everyone has a WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Know theirs. Ask questions, engage, and understand how they benefit when your project is successful (or fails).

3. Categorize them (so you can manage them)

I’m a Myers-Briggs ISTJ (yes, I know, no one that ever meets me believes that, but it’s true). That means I like to categorize things, people, projects, everything really, so that I can make order of the chaos and figure out how to act. I like to figure out how to engage stakeholders properly, so ordering them into a system helps me do so. I have two systems for this. First, assessing them on a capability scale: Do they understand, are they motivated, and do they know how.

• Understand – Do they understand their role (or lack thereof) on the project and what is expected of them?
• Motivated – Do they know their “what is in it for me” (WIIFM)? Is that WIIFM strong enough to inspire them to act in the ways necessary to support the project?
• Know How – Do they know how to engage/help/be a part of the project success?

Know this information so that you can figure out how to fill the gaps from where they are to where you need them to be on your project.

4. Understand their power and interest (ability to influence)

The second technique I use to categorize people is to understand their level of influence over your project. Two factors to consider here: Do they care and do they have the ability to do anything about that? Knowing this will help you figure out how actively you need to manage them and if they are where they “should” be for your project. You need to make sure those that ARE supposed to be engaged, are engaged. Use this quick checklist.

• High interest and high power (well positioned to influence outcomes) – Manage closely. If their interest is positive, great, keep them engaged. Leverage their power for good, like getting necessary resources for your project. Your sponsor needs to be in this category, for example, to be most helpful to you. If their interest is negative, and they have a lot of power, they could use that power for evil and derail you project.
• High interest and low power (moderately positioned to influence outcomes) – Keep them informed. They want to know what’s going on. If you don’t keep them informed, they could find someone with the power to derail you.
• Low interest and high power (moderately positioned to influence outcomes even unintentionally) – Keep this group happy. If they aren’t really interested in your project, but have high influence, you want to keep them informed and happy with progress. They may become interested fast and impact your project if you are not keeping them happy. OR, they could have a high interest in other projects and since they don’t care much about yours, they could easily derail it by shifting resources or focus to those other projects, thereby leaving your project in the dust. That is why it’s important to give them a reason to have a WIIFM regarding your project. Give them a reason to care and then use those powers to support you.
• Low interest and low power (lowest likelihood of influencing outcomes) – Monitor them and maintain a relationship, but don’t focus most of your energy here. UNLESS, they SHOULD be in the high/high category. Then, it’s all about finding their WIIFM and engaging them properly.

5. Engage them

Use what you learned by assessing them using the techniques above to figure out how to get them from where they are to where you need them to be. One great way to engage them is to focus on your communications with them. Secondly, show that you actually care about them. When they tell you what they care about regarding your project or what they care about generally (that can impact your project), pay attention and then do something about it. This is especially effective if you find a stakeholder that is concerned about something going on with your project. Be clear and transparent with them and hold them accountable for the level of engagement they are expected to have, but you better be doing your part too.

6. Handle resistance

What happens when a stakeholder isn’t engaged and we need them to be? Or they are actively or passively resisting your project or the change expected from that project? We start talking. We try to convince them. We try to tell them why they should care. Stop. That. Immediately.

Has anyone ever grabbed your hand and started pulling you? What’s the first thing you do? You pull back. It’s our natural instinct. Before we have ever given it any thought, we are already resisting. Then, when our brains catch up to the resistance, we determine if we are interested in the direction we are being taken and then let up on the resistance or if we don’t like where things are headed, we pull back even harder.

Instead, you might want to try going to stand next to that person you want to come with you and telling them you are going to go through the change/project together. You walk beside them and hold their hand. You bring them along with you. They are far more likely to come with you now. You are doing it together. You are doing change with them, not to them.

7. And finally…Manage the difficult personalities

I’m a really, really, really big fan of the Serenity Prayer. Nothing that has proven to be a better tool for me in managing difficult stakeholders.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

Regardless of your religious preferences, I encourage you to say this to yourself on a regular basis when dealing with difficult stakeholders and see how saying these words remind you where you have power and where you don’t. To me, the difference is clear. You cannot control others. I’ve tried. Boy, have I tried! Unsuccessfully….

Attempting to control others is futile and will exhaust you. Every time I have a tough time with stakeholders, I realize I’ve forgotten this simple fact. The only behaviors you can control are your own. Every parent, despite our best efforts, eventually realizes this! It’s no different with your stakeholders on your project. (Hmm…I see another blog post on the similarities between the two coming soon.)

So what do you do? Do things differently if you want a different result (the opposite of insanity). Change the game. If the way you are communicating with your stakeholder isn’t working, do it differently.

Notice your own behaviors, how you act or react to them. Can you change how you respond when they aren’t engaging the way you want?

For example, are they acting out in meetings and making it difficult for you to keep the project moving? I know it requires much patience when a stakeholder is misbehaving to stay calm and in control of your own actions, but you must.  If you blow up, you look like the fool and others lose a little bit of respect for you. You become the center of their attention instead of the person that caused the chaos in the first place.

Pull them aside and show them how their behaviors are derailing the project. Calmly explain your position, what you expect of them and then hold them accountable. You need to know their WIIFM and where they fit in those categories above to figure out how to use that information to bring them back into the fold and help them help you move forward.

What about those that are constantly negative or telling you why everything the team is doing is flawed and headed straight for doom? Leverage that energy for good. Put them on the risk management committee responsible for coming up with everything that won’t work on the project. They will love that! Then, give them the whiteboard marker and ask them to help come up with ways to address each of those risks they identified. You can say, “OK! This is really helpful (even when you are thinking “I really hate working with you”)! Now what do you think the best way would be to manage (transfer, mitigate, accept, avoid) this risk you identified?” Help them see how being a part of the solution is of greater interest and benefit to the team than just being the naysayer.

Determine what you can control (since it isn’t the stakeholder) to benefit the situation and improve it for the better. Then, do that. You will have less headaches if you focus all of your mental energy into what you need to do differently to encourage or discourage certain behavior than trying to directly tell them, control them, or expect stakeholders to act differently all on their own.

8. Actually do the work

The biggest reason best practices don’t work is because you didn’t do the work. It takes time to do things well and get to the outcomes you want. There is no easy button for effectively managing stakeholders. Leverage resources to assess them and put a real plan in place to engage them in the right way. Then execute that plan!!

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

I was listening to two of my friends on a podcast last week and there were so many stories and lessons in there that I just had to share with you.

One of the lessons brought up was tied to an interview my friend Carl Pritchard did many years ago with Mr. Rogers, the American television personality that many of us fondly remember from our childhood. He asked Carl how he wanted the world to look different after the interview was finished and by knowing that, he promised Carl that the interview would be a success.

That got me thinking about stakeholder management and how we ought to be speaking in terms that our stakeholders understand to help them engage with the project.  We have to make it about them!

What does that mean? Have you ever heard anyone say you are a great conversationalist when you barely got a word in? Sure! Maybe you asked some questions and then the other person just talked and talked. You made it about them. People love that…and it helps them see YOU in a better light, even though they did all the talking!

So, now let’s apply that to everyday situations we face in working with stakeholders.

Have you ever been in a status meeting reporting on your project and you notice that the stakeholders’ eyes start to glaze over? I’m willing to bet you are showing them a bunch of data and facts about the project, but not in terms that are being connected directly to their WIIFM – what’s in it for me. Of course, the data is important. It’s used to inform decisions you are trying to get them to make to help you move forward. It matters A LOT to you. It actually matters a lot to them, the stakeholders, but they just don’t know it. Why? Because you haven’t connected that information to their WIIFM, why they care.

People are self-focused. It’s in our nature and it’s crucial to survival. We all look at things through our own lens. So, knowing that, if we want to be successful as project managers, change agents, PMO leaders, etc., we need to know how to communicate our messages in the terms that our stakeholders can understand and connect to. Their lack of engagement doesn’t mean the customer/stakeholder/sponsor doesn’t care, but it does mean that if you talk to them in their terms, in their language, you are likely to get better results.

So, how do you do that?

At the beginning of the project or whenever new stakeholders come on board, ask them all the same question and then listen to their answer. How do you want the world to look different when we finish this project? Keep digging until you get enough to hold onto and use for later.

Then, write it down and do some homework to start connecting what they said to what your project is going to accomplish. As you learn their personal interests and reasons for wanting this project to happen, you can then tie your conversations to that. Start thinking about the scope of the project as the enabler for their vision. Think about every piece of code as a step toward accomplishing their goals. Talk in terms of testing as a measure of getting the high impact quality outcomes they want.

Let’s take risk as an example. No one seems to like having the risk conversations, but if you can show how proactively discussing the risks and then building a plan to manage them will get them closer to achieving their outcomes – their future state world of happiness, you can usually get them to talk to you about it.

How about budget or resources? Same thing. If you frame every conversation in terms of the outcomes you expect to achieve that get the stakeholders closer to their goal future state, you will at least have their attention.

So what does that look like?

Let’s say your sponsor wants to improve efficiency in operations by implementing a new system. You are the project manager for this implementation and you ask him what he wants the world to look different when you are done. He explains that people are working long hours now and in addition to the long hours not really increasing productivity, they are making mistakes in their work. This new system will reduce errors, increase productivity, and help streamline this work to create an opportunity to grow in other operational areas.

OK, so we know what this sponsor cares about. Check.

As you go through the project, and need to provide updates to the sponsor, think about ways you can tie the work you are doing to the goals they want to achieve. If you need more budget to hire an additional resource which could speed the project up, think about how you can tell the story of the increased efficiency gains for the year by implementing early. Explain how instead of 5 months of improved efficiency, the sponsor can expect 6 months. Or if you need budget to complete the scope, talk in terms of ROI (return on investment) of money saved through fewer mistakes when the project is completed, which reduces costs to the organization.

Talking in terms that the stakeholders can understand makes you increasingly more valuable to them. They stop seeing you as administrative overhead unfortunately unnecessary for the project to get done or a box checker that just moves people through a checklist of tasks. They start seeing you as an invaluable resource that understands the value of their business needs, can speak to them intelligently about their business, and helps them solve business problems. You are no longer doing project management, you are now a business problem solver. THAT is valuable. THAT is the kind of resource that business people want to work with…someone that can help them get things done in the business.

If you are building or running a PMO, this is becoming increasingly more important. You want to run a high-IMPACT PMO, not an administrative overhead organization that can be cut the minute the organization needs to do some belt tightening. You become the voice for the business. You become the go-to resource when they need to make sure their projects get done the right way the first time, by a team that understands their needs and enables them to get the results reliably. That’s powerful.

No more complicated charts or complicated data that isn’t easy for your stakeholders to follow. Just some simple conversation where you connect the dots for them from what you are asking for to what they care about. I’m not saying throw all reporting out the window. Of course, those reports can be handy to provide backup information, but nothing replaces good old fashioned conversation – where they get to listen to and talk about what they care about.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

Resumes, I’ve seen a few…

Over the last many years, I would often stand on stage at speaking engagements in the D.C. area and say, “If you’ve been in the job market in the last 15 years, I’ve seen your resume!” I was speaking to project and program managers and PMO leaders, but this applies to ANYONE and EVERYONE that has a resume. Don’t have one? Uh, build one fast! You may need it at any time. It’s best to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, right?

I spent a LONG time building and running PMOs in the D.C. area, and that meant a lot of staffing. I felt like I constantly had a pile of resumes on my desk and was forever trying to find project and program managers that knew how to Get. It. Done. Recently, I attended an event hosted by the D.C. PMI chapter and helped out by reviewing resumes of candidates looking to meet potential employers. What I saw ranged from outstanding to not so great.

Remember that your resume is often the first introduction you are making to someone, often coming before you get the chance to meet someone face to face and shake their hand. Many people say that the first impression is the one that sticks, so you want to put your best possible first impression forward. Here are some tips to consider when writing or updating your resume:

1. You have 6 seconds to make an impression. What? Are you kidding me? Apparently not! According to The Ladders, recruiters are making decisions in about 6 seconds on which pile your resume will go into. That’s not long to make an impression; don’t you want it to be a good one? Remember that recruiters and headhunters have about one minute each for a resume first pass screening, especially when they are under a lot of pressure to fill spots. Hand someone your resume and time how fast they need to make a decision on what they read. Did they take away the most important points or were they stuck in your long paragraphs?
2.  Two pages, no more. I automatically toss out resumes that are more than 2 pages. No, you do not need a five page resume. No one cares as much as you do about all of the details of your experience. I know, you worked hard to get where you are, but that doesn’t mean you have to take the reader on the entire journey of your career. Just cover the highlights and see below for what to include and exclude to help you slim it down. (And for all of you saying, “Yeah, but the government wants every painstaking detail,” fine – keep a longer version, but be very careful where you put it! The rest of the world doesn’t want to read it and I’m fairly certain the recruiters in the government aren’t really reading all of those details anyway.)
3. Avoid paragraphs. Yuck. No one wants to read those. When I look at a resume, I am looking to see if this person has the ability to communicate effectively and clearly in writing so that I can put them in front of senior executives. If they have the bottom line up front, if they have the ability to tell me the story of their career in short and succinct sentences and bullets, if they can summarize by keeping it to two pages, if they can keep the formatting simple and point me where they want me to look, and if they can present their best self quickly and easily through words, then they are likely to be able to do that with executives.
4. Include your email, phone number, LinkedIn profile and website (if appropriate). They are going to cyber stalk you. Make it easy for them to do so and point them to the places you want them to learn more about you.
5. Google yourself. Speaking of cyber stalking, make sure to google yourself and make sure you get anything cleaned up you don’t want seen by a recruiter or hiring manager.
6. Don’t put your home address. This should be obvious to you by now, but your home address is completely unnecessary on a resume. You can provide the city if you are location specific on your search, but no one needs your home address. If you are not concerned about location, having an address on there could immediately disqualify you because you aren’t local. Remember, once you send that resume out or post it online, it could get anywhere and everywhere. I still have people contacting me that have a resume that is at least a decade old and I have no idea how they got it! It’s an unnecessary safety risk to have your home address easily accessible to others.
7. Don’t include an objective. Frankly, most recruiters and hiring managers are far more interested in their objectives than yours. You should start with a short few sentence description of yourself, which will tell them “why” they should hire you. Not in a salesy way, but in a way that shows your best you right up front.
8. Stay away from overused buzz words. Some words have lost their meaning for many recruiters because they are overused. I know, I know, but they are accurate for you. Of course you are results-oriented team player, but so is everyone else according to their resumes. Look for words that uniquely describe you.
9. Put keywords front and center. These should be above the fold (top half of the page or toward the middle) where people’s eyes will naturally fall. This should include a summary of your certifications and main areas of expertise like business process management, agile project management, PMOs, change management, etc. I like to call this section Areas of proven expertise.
10. Professional profile. This can be career highlights of what your brand has become in the industry, a summary of how you have benefited organizations through revenue generation.
11. Volunteer service. If you have board service, definitely list that on the first page. At least make sure it’s on the two pages somewhere. More and more hiring managers seem to be interested in the well-rounded hire that has a life outside of work and gives back to the community.
12. Use one line only for older, but still relevant positions. I have many PMO positions going back 15 years. I don’t put the details of all of them, but the older ones have a line that lists the title, company, dates, etc. like you would with the first line of your more detailed positions.
13. Keep the position info to one line. You don’t need one line for the title, one for the company, and one for the dates or location. Just put all that stuff on one line to keep things cleaner. Use bold for the titles and regular text for the rest so that your title stands out on the line.
14. Unless you don’t have enough work experience, put the education last. Again, I know you worked hard for your various degrees, but they don’t need to be front and center. Nothing beats relevant work experience, so that should be first. You can also save space by putting your certifications with your degrees.
15. Copy it to your LinkedIn profile. If you don’t have one, get one. Your resume that you’ve cleaned up should be copied over to LinkedIn in that newer format of bullets instead of long paragraphs. LinkedIn has become the most popular resource for recruiters now and it’s where you want to be seen by potential recruiters. It’s the way I’ve gotten my last several jobs and many new clients. Remember all of your activity is there for them to find, so clean up anything you may have added or posted that may not present you in the best light.
16. Get a good head shot. Since recruiters are often going to LinkedIn first to stalk you, make sure you have a nice professional head shot to present your best and most professional face to them.
17. Customize the resume for the job. This doesn’t mean you fake it. Your experience should be real. However, you can choose to highlight certain strengths or expertise to fit the specific position you are applying for.
18. Have someone proofread it. Having another set of eyes on it is always a good idea. You will read it 100 times and keep missing the same word that is either the incorrect spelling or incorrect usage and not even see it. Ask someone to go over it in great detail. You should also let it sit for a day and come back to it to see how it reads once you’ve taken a break.

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Warmly,