Julius RaineyIT Project Manager| City YearJackson, Ms, United States
I am starting to get a lot of inquiries from recruiters about PM jobs throughout the country. As I have worked for a nonprofit organization for several years, I've had experience with planning, implementing, and managing several projects. The organization has only about 20-30 people which means that my level of managing projects that will affect 100s maybe 1,000s of people is nonexistent.
How do you recommend approaching an interview when the hiring manager shows their concern about not having experience managing a project that will impact over 1,000s possibly 10,000s of users? Saving Changes...
The key is how you manage a project team and your experience with stakeholder management, not the impact of the project results to the mentioned number of users. However important to mention is in this case to have also experience with transition management to operations and your experience with parallel organizational change management during the project execution (independent from number of people impacted). Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
If you have solid experience in project management then it doesn't matter if you manage 100 or 1000's. It's just like swimming: If you know how to swim, you can swim in a 10 Meter Deep Lake or 100 Meter Deep one as long as you have the right skills. What increases is your Risk and no matter how much experience PM's have, we learn new things everyday and that's what makes Project Management unique because most of the time, every day is a different day. Saving Changes...
Julius RaineyIT Project Manager| City YearJackson, Ms, United States
This is awesome. I really didn't expect results so quickly. Thank you all so much. I am grateful for this community. Saving Changes...
I don't look at volume when I consider stakeholder groups, I look at complexity. You can have a project with 1000 low-influence, low-impact, low-interest stakeholders which is a slam dunk, but face numerous challenges with 1-2 high-influence & high-impact, negative ones.
When invited to an interview, show that you are disciplined in your approach to stakeholder engagement (i.e. identification, analysis and response throughout a project lifecycle) and present real-life examples where you successfully moved challenging stakeholders to where you wanted them to be in order to help your projects.
Working in the non-profit sector may present greater challenges, albeit, on a lesser scale than what your current "recruitment umbrella" may presuppose. Significantly-scaled, differentiated organizations consisting of many levels of professional, technical and administrative expertise, (and other project resources) may allow for greater latitude and focus on project management proper, while letting the composite elements of the greater team do what they do best according to project plan and goals. For no other reason than potential resources base, defined as both budget and personnel, you may find this a smooth transition to your surprise and I am confident you will do very well. Saving Changes...
Be honest with the interviewer and tell him exactly what you have achieved in the past and tell him you like to overcome challenges. Watch out your body language while answering his questions. I mean don't cross your hands over your chess look in his eyes but don't stares at him, miroir his own style of communication (if he uses his hands while speaking then do the same when answering). I hope that will help. I wish you the best. Saving Changes...
Community Champion
