Josh Nankivel, BSc PM, PMP

Don’t act like you know it all

When you’re new to a role, it’s natural to cover up your own ignorance. You want to earn respect, [...]

….I appreciated the education much more than before. When I was 18, I took out loans and didn’t really feel like I was paying for it. I skipped classes sometimes, etc. This time around…I applied myself to the material as much as I could.

You got the call.

They want you to come in for an interview. After the elation wears off, you start sweating.

What are they going to ask? How can I best prepare for this? What if I prepare for the wrong things?

What can you do when you feel like you’ve hit a bump on your project manager career path? Here are my thoughts, and I invite you to add your own comments with advice for this professional.

A business student recently interviewed me via email. She is interested in project management and this was part of an assignment to reach out to people via Twitter to interview about what they do and the state of their industry/role. (My kudos to the professor for encouraging students to use new media to interact with people who are already in the field!)

I asked her permission to share the interview with you, I hope you find it helpful. Leave comments on what you agree and do not agree with!

I received a great question from a subscriber to my PMP Guide newsletter about methodologies and frameworks.

He cited a bountiful list with a question of whether he needs to know all of these in and out:

I and the rest of the PMI New Media council had the opportunity to interview the editors of “Project Management Circa 2025;” David I. Cleland, PhD, PMI Fellow, and Bopaya Bidanda, PhD. This is a collaborative effort by 41 authors to predict the state of various parts of the project management discipline and how it will be implemented 15 years in the future.

I had a great time in Orlando recently for the 2009 PMI North America Global Congress. The PMI New Media Council did a presentation titled “Why Should You Care About Social Media?”.
Bas De Baar (ProjectShrink), Cornelius Fitchner (PMPodcast), and I (pmStudent) collaborated for our segment of the presentation, focused on demonstrating the use of [...]

Trying to get your foot in the door in project management?
Projectize your resume.
A project manager resume is similar to other resumes, except for one key difference I can recommend. This is one key thing I changed when I began trying to get specifically into the project management field, and did not have enough formal [...]

Is anyone up in arms yet?
Good.
From a Reader
Anne from the US is a recent subscriber to the Project Management Career Newsletter.
She hit reply to one of my messages to pose a question and get my take.  Thank you Anne, for permitting me to share some of our exchange to benefit others!
The following is [...]

I love it when people contact me to ask a question. It helps me to know that real people are out there somewhere behind the screen of my laptop.
I can’t believe you all fit in there. Technology is amazing.
How do you break into project management when you have been running your own business [...]

I am passionate about project management in general, and helping people new to the field more specifically.
But let’s be honest. We’re all nuts.
Not Everyone is Crazy Enough to be a Project Manager
There is a specific form of gluttony for punishment that comes with the territory (some consider it a clinical condition). The decision [...]

The dangers of multi tasking to project teams has never been more so. Now we have additional online services and mobile devices to deal with. What I wrote about back in January 2007 about Multi-tasking, Covey, and TOC is even more applicable now. Your project schedule should drive priorities, not a [...]

As can be expected, much of the feedback pointed towards a cutback in new investment and thus projects.  Another significant portion of the comments discussed another inevitable trend in hard times…increased scrutiny of current projects and focus on the dollars.
Cutbacks

North America – Although layoffs have occurred in the Canadian oil patch in recent weeks, the [...]

Today I would like to cover two categories in the survey that are nearly opposite.  The first is Reduced Quality. The second is what I classified as an Increased Demand for Good Project Management.
Fire
Most of these actions appear to me to be short-sighted ones that solve a current financial problem at the expense of long-term [...]

Moving up through the categories, I’ll discuss three now:

Project Manager Layoffs
Project Staff Reductions
Reduced PM rates.

Reading through the responses, may of them were not surprising. One thing I noted in a few posts was that some companies are shedding senior PMs and opting for less experienced ones. Of course I have no idea about [...]

Status Quo
Ah, it is nice to hear that some people are not feeling any impacts due to economic recession. 8% of the respondents noted that they have not seen any impacts. Half of those were from the North America, other responses came from Australia, India, and Africa.
I noticed 2 similarities from what I [...]

I recently conducted a survey on pmStudent.com asking for anecdotal stories about how the economy is currently impacting project management. This week I would like to share the results with you.
The survey was 100% anonymous, and I even removed any identifying information that a few responders put into the answer. Note that this survey [...]

I passed the PMP Exam recently, and wanted to share my experience in general.  For those opposed to the PMP exam, please read before commenting, you may be surprised at my take on it.

In general:

Many questions involved picking the best of several correct answers
The technique of eliminating 2 answers first didn’t work in some cases: [...]

I get many questions from people who want to enter into project management as a profession. After all, my blog is pmStudent. One of the most common questions is “how do I get started”? I received an email from a reader recently with this question, and so I would like to share [...]

By Hal Macomber, Project Reformer
10 Adopt practices for exploring a variety of perspectives.
We think we see what we see, but we don’t. We really see what we think. Remember the blind men and the elephant. Make it your habit to inquire what others see. You’ll see more together.

Technorati Tags: building_relationships, collaboration, perspectives, project-management, project-manager, team_members