Tag Archives: Advice

Job adverts, Job Applications, Job Hunting, project management recruitment

The seven deadly sins of job applications

Leave a comment

 

  1. Lust – Lusting after a job doesn’t come across as attractive, everyone needs to demonstrate keenness and dare I say a little passion. These qualities are attractive and can really persuade a recruiter to put you forward for a role, sometimes the challenge of a potential new role over the remuneration package may truly be the case (not just a spiel out of desperation to get any job). But make sure you keep yourself in check, don’t hound recruiters/HR until they concede (it is highly unlikely they won’t), keep professional and don’t argue decisions made unless you really do have a valid point and even then you must be diplomatic in how you approach the subject.
  2. Gluttony – don’t apply for every job which vaguely looks familiar to your skill set, quality not quantity every time, applying for everything will soon get you put in the rejection pile as recruiters will keep seeing you name popping up for roles completely irrelevant and as they recognise your name they stop even opening your application.
  3. Greed – we all have a mortgage or rent to pay, however grabbing at the roles offering most money isn’t the ideal route, what else is being offered? Will the role enhance your career portfolio or do the company offer valuable training?times are changing
  4. Sloth – don’t be lazy with your applications, go the extra mile – tweak your CV and write a fresh cover letter for each application. Lazy applicants often highlight themselves for all the wrong reasons to employers and recruiters alike.
  5. Wrath – sitting very close with Lust this; keep your cool when making applications for a job. It can be frustrating and daunting – you feel like you are putting all the effort in and not yielding any results. Coming across aggressive and crabby isn’t professional and will quickly ensure you are not considered for any roles moving forward.
  6. Envy – others make seem to reaping results from their applications, securing interviews and job offers, rather than sitting there wondering what they have that you don’t, ask for some feedback. Speak to them, ask to see their CV, ask them to review your CV and also ask the people who you apply to, understand why it is you didn’t make the short list.
  7. Pride – your CV may have been perfectly sufficient in the past, but times change and employers expect to see so much more on a CV these days, stop being so proud and ask everyone for a critique – all feedback is good feedback, understand how others view your CV. Is it really saying all the right things?
Job adverts, Job Applications, Job Hunting, project management recruitment, Recruitment

7 step guide to job application – PM Career tips

Leave a comment

Here’s your 7 step guide to reaching success when looking for a new job:

  1. Research – when you take the decision to start looking for a new role you really need to understand the industry and the roles you are applying for, make a start by looking at the types of roles you wish to apply for. Job descriptions and adverts are widely available online, by reading through them and understanding what is involved you will quickly identify the roles most relevant to you. Also spend some time researching the industries you wish to work in. Look at some of the larger corporate websites to gain a greater knowledge of what is hot at the moment as these will likely be the growth areas in that field. Start to match up your skill-set and exposure to relevant projects, make a note of these and use them as examples in your CV.
  2. Make a list – gather a list of the relevant role titles to your skill, and place in a spreadsheet to keep track of websites which yield good search results for them. As well as searching job boards, think about placing random searches into search engines as you will also bring up roles with direct employers too which you may have otherwise missed – a lot of employers will only advertise on their own websites.
  3. Focus – Ensure you are spending time on roles which you can meet a minimum of 90% of the criteria listed, this saves you wasting time on roles which you are unlikely to get into the short-list for and keeps your list down to a manageable size. It is important to streamline your applications so you can spend more time tweaking your CV and writing a cover letter for so you can yield more results. It is quality not quantity!7
  4. Make another list – create another spreadsheet of roles you have applied to and through which websites, when etc. you need to be organised when you start receiving calls from HR / recruiters etc. it does make all the difference when you sound on the ball during these calls.
  5. Follow up – leave it a day or two after you make an application then call up the person handling your application. Check it has been received and offer to clarify anything further they may need to know. Round up the call by asking when you can expect to hear a response regarding your application – remain professional throughout, this includes speaking to receptionists etc. be friendly, clear, helpful and don’t let frustrations show. The person handling your application makes the decision whether to pass on your CV to clients/hiring managers so keep in mind they are testing you from the first point of application. Put yourself in their shoes – if you come across abrupt or desperate then they are highly unlikely to put your forward through fear of having their reputation soiled. 
Agile Project Management, guest blogger, Project Management

Doing Agile Project Management With Scrum

Leave a comment

“What does the game of rugby and modern management techniques have in common?” one may ask! If you are into ‘Agile Project Management’ and use ‘Scrum,’ you already know the answer. It is interesting to see, how rugby has inspired one of the most time-effective and cost-efficient management techniques of the day. Agile Project Management, is a specialized area of project management. Here, the resources and budgets are fixed variables; however, it is a more open ended approach compared to regular project management. It enables managers to optimally utilize resources and create products and services, which meet customer requirements, more satisfactorily and profitably.

A Brief History

First conceptualized in 1986, by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, Agile Project Management, is based on the approach rugby players’ use. Just like rugby players constantly assess and reassess situations, altering their strategies and responses at different points of time during a game, to score against the opponent team; likewise, managers through this highly collaborative method – use repetitive deliveries and customer feedback at different stages of a project, to reassess and rework on ‘a product or service being developed.’ The process is repeated until the product is improved, refined and becomes completely market ready.

‘Scrum,’ a software development framework, is used in Agile Project Management, to manage projects where software related products or applications are being designed. It allows the formation of self-organizing teams by enabling co-location of all team members, and promotes verbal communication across team members and disciplines in a project. The term ‘Scrum’ again owes its origin to the game of rugby, in which, it is the shorter version of the word –‘scrummage;’ and refers to the manner of restarting play in rugby football. It is popular especially in the IT industry, where the nature of projects or ‘products being developed’ – is comparatively newer, more innovative and highly complex. Since these are too difficult to comprehend before being tested out, they are allowed to evolve gradually.

Scrum Terminologies

There exists in Agile Project Management, an interdependence of a sequence of activities, where one set of activities is affected by the other. The final product is the outcome of a series of repetitive deliveries with short deadlines. Delivery cycles are referred to in ‘Scrum’ lingo, as ‘sprints’ and each ‘sprint’ varies from a week to a month, though usually a fortnight is its normal duration. “…reviewing each sprint before moving to the next means that testing is conducted throughout the process, which allows teams to change the scope or direction of the project at any point,” states Daria Kelly Uhlig, emphasizing on the advantage of using this technique.

Peculiar as it sounds, the different levels of project stakeholders in Agile Project Management using Scrum, are referred to as –‘pigs’ and ‘chickens!’ Here ‘pigs’ represent the ‘Scrum team’ who perform core functions like producing the product. The Scrum team generally has a Product Owner, a Development team and a Scrum Master. On the other hand ‘chickens’ represent the ‘Supplementary team,’ whose roles are not that important but are never the less, necessary.

The usage of both these terms is derived from ‘The Chicken and the Pig’ fable, in which different levels of commitment are shown, through the examples of a pig and a chicken. “When producing a dish made of ham and eggs, the pig provides the ham which requires his sacrifice and the chicken provides the eggs which are not difficult to produce. Thus the pig is really committed in that dish while the chicken is only involved, yet both are needed to produce the dish,” the Wikipedia page on the story, notes.

Agile Project Management with Scrum, is a more flexible approach to project management. It uses open, instant and regular communication and focuses on greater team involvement and client participation. Here, having a knack for problem solving, negotiation and communication is necessary and precedence is given to common sense over written policy. “Scrum is designed to optimize team satisfaction and productivity, product quality, responsiveness to customers, and transparency for stakeholders. The key practices that enable these benefits include de-emphasizing work on non-deliverable items, implementing and finishing each Story in a Sprint Backlog in rank order, working in short Sprints of 2-4 weeks, and making past, present, and future project information available to all stakeholders,” concludes Kevin Thompson on cPrime.com.  

Featured images:

This article was written by Hugh Swift a management expert and corporate trainer, who conducts workshops on Agile Project Management.

Careers Advice, CV Tips, Project management CV

Not getting a good response from your job applications – PM CV Tips

Leave a comment

Taking that step back into the UK job market can feel like a lonely place at times, applying for roles and waiting for calls. But how do you know if you are being seriously considered for the roles you really want. We’ve all applied for jobs we’re not entirely bought into; often this is done whilst we are applying for roles we really want. Therefore if we look at the volume of applications being made versus the call backs and subsequent interviews being secured we will have a good indication of whether your CV is working for you or not. Proof is in the pudding so to speak, so you should be seeing a healthy response from your efforts – if you aren’t then it is probably time to revisit your CV. Of course it could also be that you are not applying for the right roles, you must be realistic in your aspirations, matching roles to your skill set and ensuring your CV reflects your seniority.

Scores on the door

All common issues and all easily tested through seeking feedback from your applications, recruiters can be difficult to get a hold of admittedly but you should be making the effort to speak with them about your applications; asking for feedback is a good idea. Be careful of those recruiters trying to engage you into training or paying for thorough feedback and also those who will say anything to get you off the phone. A good reputable agency will take time to speak to you about your CV with some constructive feedback. If you haven’t been considered for a role, ask why? What is missing from your CV which would have you be considered for the role. Remember recruiters see hundreds of CVs per day and some feedback isn’t asking too much. It is in a recruiter’s interest to help you, the better your CV is, the easier you are to place. Do not assume that agencies rewrite or tweak your CV for applications – this is deemed as too time consuming and writing CVs is a honed skill set which doesn’t naturally correlate for all in the recruitment profession. Make sure you gain some feedback from your peers, do you know anyone in HR who might be willing to look at it for you? All feedback is good feedback, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time – learning how others translate your CV is very important, once you have the feedback, be constructive and make changes – it could be the difference between getting interviews or endlessly applying for jobs with no response.