I'm finding that most project management opportunities come with a specific side dish - niche requirement.
Albert MorosinSenior Program Project Manager | Enterprise Transformation | Financial Services| Independent Consultant Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada
JD Examples: PM required with cyber security experience or salesforce experience or SAP experience or ERP experience or cloud mobility experience or lean six sigma experience... you get the gist.
Tools, technology & product knowledge can be learned very quickly. However, soft skills like managing people, stakeholders, vendors, clients, cross-functional collaboration, staffing teams with the appropriate skill sets, facilitating, vetting & assessing business initiatives, working & reporting / presenting to senior management, budgeting , negotiating / securing funding for projects, tailoring communications to audience specific stakeholders, ensuring governance framework is aligned, change & risk management, etc... is the foundation / DNA that makes a PM successful.
Question:
How do we as PM's deal with the missing niche piece when applying for a new PM position? It's not realistic to know or have product knowledge, certifications on everything out there but we do have the necessary core skills to manage & drive any type of project to success.
You need to tailor your resume and cover letter to the specific job role. Demonstrate how your job fits their needs. This may require some research on your part to understand what they need beyond what it says in the job posting.
Once I think I have a fair understanding of what the job is asking for, I will re-write my resume to highlight the skills I used in prior experience in a new assignment. I may not have used Lean 6 Sigma itself specifically but I've used many elements of it in various projects for example.
Another thing I highlight is my adaptability and how I can use my prior knowledge to come quickly up to speed on new domains. Like you said yourself, software can be easy to learn, so in your cover letter you might include how you have successful projects where you had to quickly adapt to new tools and processes.
You will probably never find a job where they do it exactly like the new position, so often what you are selling is not what detail level knowledge you already have, but your ability to quickly learn and adapt to the new position, and how you may enhance their current skillset with related knowledge you bring from other technical domains.
...
1 reply by Albert Morosin
Aug 11, 2020 5:14 PM
Albert Morosin
...
Great advice, Keith - thanks a bunch!
Saving Changes...
Albert MorosinSenior Program Project Manager | Enterprise Transformation | Financial Services| Independent Consultant Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada
Aug 11, 2020 5:07 PM
Replying to Keith Novak
...
You need to tailor your resume and cover letter to the specific job role. Demonstrate how your job fits their needs. This may require some research on your part to understand what they need beyond what it says in the job posting.
Once I think I have a fair understanding of what the job is asking for, I will re-write my resume to highlight the skills I used in prior experience in a new assignment. I may not have used Lean 6 Sigma itself specifically but I've used many elements of it in various projects for example.
Another thing I highlight is my adaptability and how I can use my prior knowledge to come quickly up to speed on new domains. Like you said yourself, software can be easy to learn, so in your cover letter you might include how you have successful projects where you had to quickly adapt to new tools and processes.
You will probably never find a job where they do it exactly like the new position, so often what you are selling is not what detail level knowledge you already have, but your ability to quickly learn and adapt to the new position, and how you may enhance their current skillset with related knowledge you bring from other technical domains.
Great advice, Keith - thanks a bunch! Saving Changes...
George FreemanThought Leader | Author | Architect| Florida, United States
Hi Albert,
In your question, the foundational pieces that you listed appear to be more aligned with the “Leadership” and “Technical” legs of the PMI Talent Triangle. The missing niche pieces appear to be part of the “Strategic & Business Management” skills.
There will almost always be gaps between what is technically asked for in a position and the one-to-one mapping with a candidate’s background - that is expected. Your technical and leadership skills are what you said, “foundational.” So, you need to highlight your well rounded “Strategic and Business Management” skills, as that is what makes you stand out above all the rest.
It doesn’t matter too much if there is not a one-to-one mapping, for instance, if they are asking for “salesforce.com” experience and you lack that specifically, then highlight your strategic business lifecycle knowledge. After quickly looking at your resume, I would say that you have “leader-to-offer (e.g. CRM),” offer-to-Order (e.g. ”presales, RFP), Service Delivery, Procedure-to-Pay, etc.
It’s easy for an organization to find specific product knowledge resources; it is hard to find cross-domain/functional business knowledge resources that understand the end-to-end view of an enterprise. When someone understands the 30k foot view of an enterprise and can speak to how all the life-cycles work together, all of a sudden, the “specific product” knowledge becomes inconsequential.
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Albert
My fellow colleagues provided solid advise. These days, with the diversity and increase in the number of specializations, a side dish is almost a mandatory requirement in most job listings.
One thing I advise my clients to do and I do myself is continuous professional development. It's true you can't take all certifications and be familair with everything but you can tackle certifications and learning opportunities for fields that are of high demand of which Datae Analytics and Cyber Security are some. You don't need to be an expert in the field but working knowledge should suffice in addion to your transferrable soft and managerial skills.
For example, my main expertise is in Real Estate Development besides moderate expertise in other industries like Healthcare and IT. To complement my moderate expertise, I pursued the Scrum Certifications, IIBA Cyber Security Certification and IIBA Business Data Analytics - I learned a lot, and I mean a lot and reinforced my expertise in those domains.
In this rapidly evolving world these day, we have to be generalizing specialists.
RK
...
1 reply by Susan Marangos
Aug 14, 2020 12:02 PM
Susan Marangos
...
I did something similiar except I come from a pharmaceutical background so I have certificates in clinical research, CSM and CSPO.
To bulk up my tech side, I'm also learning R on the side.
My fellow colleagues provided solid advise. These days, with the diversity and increase in the number of specializations, a side dish is almost a mandatory requirement in most job listings.
One thing I advise my clients to do and I do myself is continuous professional development. It's true you can't take all certifications and be familair with everything but you can tackle certifications and learning opportunities for fields that are of high demand of which Datae Analytics and Cyber Security are some. You don't need to be an expert in the field but working knowledge should suffice in addion to your transferrable soft and managerial skills.
For example, my main expertise is in Real Estate Development besides moderate expertise in other industries like Healthcare and IT. To complement my moderate expertise, I pursued the Scrum Certifications, IIBA Cyber Security Certification and IIBA Business Data Analytics - I learned a lot, and I mean a lot and reinforced my expertise in those domains.
In this rapidly evolving world these day, we have to be generalizing specialists.
RK
I did something similiar except I come from a pharmaceutical background so I have certificates in clinical research, CSM and CSPO.
To bulk up my tech side, I'm also learning R on the side. Saving Changes...
Community Champion
