Category Archives: Job Applications

Careers Advice, CV Tips, Job Applications, PMO, Project Management, Project management CV, project management resume, Starting out in Project Management, Transferable Skills

Let’s talk about transferable skills – starting out in Project Management

3 Comments

There’s always a lot of talk about skill-sets and particularly transferable skills; however if you want to transfer your career into the project management field then it is important to highlight the right skills which will be of greatest benefit to you and your potential employer. Now we all know there are differing types of project management roles from support through to managing and there are also more technical PM roles too – not just IT, they may be construction / engineering etc where you need to have a good knowledge of the field as well as PM methods to be successful in delivering benefits. So I am going to cover some key transferable skills for the PM aspect not any specific industry based element, here are a few to consider:

  • Investigating – Researching and questioning why? Key components to any good PM professional, being able to push back with quantifiable evidence is required even more now that funding is tight and projects benefits really do need to be explored thoroughly before starting off another project.
  • Planning – Planning / scheduling projects, predicting outcomes / scenarios, organising events and preparing for tasks – it’s a must!
  • Leadership – Core requirement for any good Project Manager and comes in very handy for Programme Support professionals too.
  • Influencing – The ability to gain buy-in is a big requirement for PM professionals, whether it’s from senior management, external (or internal stakeholders), sponsors or suppliers – you need to be able to persuade and encourage others.
  • Teamwork – Proving you can bond with others and build a strong force which produces results is key to successful project delivery.
  • Problem solving – Taking different viewpoints and exploring solutions is a big part of PM, from understanding workstream leads other commitments to supplier issues.
  • Budgeting – At some point you with be either managing your own budget or monitoring budgets on projects in a support element.
  • Decision making – The ability to look at your options and actually pick a way forward is crucial especially in a critical situation.
  • Training – Working with others either as a manager (PM) to mentor and train people in the project team or as a support person (PMO) to train others in various aspects of the project lifecycle such as risk management etc through workshops and 1 2 1 engagement.
  • Organising – From coordinating teams and individuals, arranging meetings and resources to scheduling.
  • Time management – Meeting deadlines and setting priorities are the core factors of project management and being on time is a given.
  • Creating – Not always highlighted as a core skill for PMs but in my experience of delivering projects, inventing, originating, designing or composing play a big part to success.

Now you can use this as a starting guide to performing a skills audit – once you have a list of transferable skills, you then need to provide some good examples of each skill (where you have used them / how / outcomes etc). These will help you form a basis for applications to project management jobs.

 

Job Applications, Project Management Careers Advice, project management jobs

Organising your Project Management job search

1 Comment

Project management is all about being organised and disciplined – it makes us more efficient, however as prepared as we are in the office / about our projects, some of us are less organised outside office hours. Now that is not to say in everything we do as we still need structure to function, getting the kids ready for school, walking the dog and making sure we all eat at the right times etc. but when it comes to applying for jobs. It can be a case of go online, find a few project management jobs, adjust CV accordingly, apply and then forget all about them until you (hopefully) receive a call.

Creating a good impression with HR and recruiters is a must – they are the gate keepers, if you mess up with them, then your application goes no further and all the work you put in to writing a cover letter or reshaping your CV has gone to waste. Therefore it is important to make sure you keep a note of what you are applying for, a simply excel spreadsheet will suffice. Create a few headers for the columns such as job title, salary or day rate, location, reference number, agency/business applied to, date applied, version of CV sent (make sure you name your CVs so you can track what went where), where you found the advert/role (this may be a particular search term or website) and date to follow up application.

Once you have this document you can print it off or email to your phone (screen shot it for Apple products) and then you are ready to take calls from recruiters and employers on the go – when you receive a call, ask who is calling and the job title they are calling about. Ask them to hold the line (say you are taking a private room) and scan through your document for the role. You will sound far more organised and professional as you talk through the job and are more likely to gain success with the “gatekeeper” to actually get your CV put forward to the hiring manager for the position.

You can use the spreadsheet to collate details about where you are finding relevant jobs from which will assist you moving forward in deciding which websites you should be spending more time / less time on, noting dates for applications and setting follow up dates to call employers / recruiters is great practice. All the good project management people are always following up actions!

I cannot emphasise enough, the need for a professional approach to job applications – remember first impressions. Don’t blow it with an agency by answering the phone unprepared and sounding disinterested, there are plenty of other great candidates out there who are happy to take your place and will do so if you fall at the first hurdle – excuse the Olympic themed idiom!

CV Tips, CV Writing, Job Applications, Project management CV, project management resume

Off the shelf CV advice

Leave a comment

Having spoken with a great deal of job seekers both over my recruitment years and more recently as a careers adviser, I have been both surprised and concerned about the type of help out there for those wanting to improve their CV in the hope of achieving better prospects moving forward. One client I spoke to recently had previously engaged in a professional CV writing service with a large name in the industry – he sent his CV in with a payment and received a document which just didn’t make sense. The leading CV writer had reshaped each of the bullets with very poor English and clearly had never dealt with a project management CV before. Having sent back his CV 4 times for changes to be made, he was met with a response that the leading CV writer had worked on it this time so it should be perfect. I saw the CV after it had been reworked and I am still in shock, he did receive a full refund and was very cautious about seeking assistance moving forward.

Another client of mine had sought assistance through downloadable advice documents from PM specific websites and found that the documents were useful to a point but really missed what she needed in terms of information specific to her. I sympathised, and also have documents which are a guide but cannot address everything / everybody as it would have to be a very long document – maybe there’s a book in it!

The fact of the matter is that as much help and guidance there is available online and in published pieces of work on professional CV writing; there isn’t something which is specific to you. This is one of the key drivers for The CV Righter – we work with you every step of the way to ensure we keep your CV reading like you but relevant to what employers want to see. No off the shelf work is undertaken as this takes away the value of the service, we have clients who prefer to write their own CV and have scheduled feedback / consultancy meetings to ensure they are keeping on track and keeping to the point etc. And we have clients who use us in a more traditional sense and have us write their CV and we have regular meetings to discuss progress and ensure the CV is true to them. We are flexible because we are not off the shelf! For a free CV review, send over your CV today – let’s talk about what can work for you.

Careers Advice, Interviews, Job Applications, Project Management, Project management career progression, project management jobs

Demonstrating you want the job – Interview tips

Leave a comment

With the double dip recession the market has certainly come around full swing and interviews are not in abundance – they certainly haven’t disappeared but there are less roles being advertised and for those who are less active at searching for new openings then it does feel like there are less opportunities and as a knock on effect less interviews. Therefore it is important to make sure you are doing all you can to make sure you harvest success in the interviews you are being invited to.

One of the key areas employers check for in interviews is your buy-in to the organisation, interviewers are expecting a good level of enthusiasm and are happy to throw prospective employees back into the vast sea of job seekers as it is perceived as an employer’s market. This isn’t entirely the case – yes there are a great deal of job seekers out there at the moment but there are only a few which closely meet the employers’ expectations in terms of experience and skills. Most of the good candidates have already secured work or have been in work for some time and would rather not risk a move into a company whilst we sit in unknown territory with the global recession.

Here are a few tips to ensuring you grab the interviewers’ attention for the right reasons by demonstrating your buy-in to the business:

  1. Make an effort – how you present yourself is very important, think first impressions – putting on a suit and clean shoes (boys & girls) is a must, no matter how casual the workplace is.
  2. Noting down names – seems like a stupid thing to even mention but I have lost count of the amount of people who forget or just don’t take notice of my name when I am interviewing them. Don’t overuse names either – it sounds wrong and almost patronising if you keep repeating someone’s name when you are talking to them.
  3. Research the business, again it seems ridiculous to even mention this but over and over again I have come across people who really should make more effort to understand what an organisation does / produces etc as a bare minimum. However you could actually shine in the subject of buy-in by learning more about competitors and what’s happening in recent news for the company.
  4. Presentations – sometimes you will be asked to prepare a presentation to take along to the interview, make sure you put the work in. I would expect you to ask what presentation facilities will be available on the day and make use of the best ones. i.e. a projector and Powerpoint is ideal, it’s what most use in everyday life at work and helps the interviewer imagine you in a regular meeting (how you fit in, can they actually sit through an entire meeting listening to you etc.). I cannot emphasise enough that “just jotting down some notes to talk through and maybe a handout” is not good enough.
  5. Take examples of work – you may be asked to do this, such as a plan or something similar but you can always take some examples even if you have not been asked to. Try to keep to documentation which is closely aligned to the role you are being interviewed for and don’t force it on them if they are not keen.