Should I Pursue A Career As A Project Manager?

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What, exactly, is a Project Manager? It’s a professional who manages a project!

Projects and programs are such integral features of normal business operations that project managers are frequently in high demand across many professional disciplines, both in-house and on a freelance basis.

If you’ve ever been responsible for an initiative from beginning to end, you already have project management experience, but maybe not under the official job title of Project Manager. If you want to assume that title with all its representations and required skills, step one is to mine your work history for projects you led or in which you participated and revise your resume to highlight them. You may consider searching for opportunities to assist current certified Project Managers to get a true foothold in that career path. Note the word “certified”. If you want a Project Management job you will compete with certified Project Management Professionals (PMP).

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has been cranking out PMPs for 50 years. The non-profit association provides a common language and globally recognized framework for its three million worldwide members, 100 million of whom are the “global gold standard” PMPs. A PMP certification requires a minimum of:

1.    A four-year degree / high school degree.

2.    36 months leading projects / 60 months leading projects.

3.    35 “contact” hours of project management education, specifically completion of the PMI’s PMP PrepCast is 40 lessons spread over 180 videos with topics like, “Aligning Projects with Organizational Strategy”.

4.    Reading and utilizing the 750-page PMBOK Guide & Standards.

5.    Passing a 200 question, multiple choice final exam.

6.    After earning the PMP, periodic credential renewal requiring continuing education.

While having a PMP certification as a project manager is absolutely helpful – it demonstrates discipline and achievement in your field – not every employer or project management role demands it. That said, it can certainly help provide a leg up in a competitive job market. And according to the PMI, certified PMPs earn up to 25% more than non-certified project management professionals.

Here are some pros and cons of careers as a project manager (PM):

Pros 

• PM are in high demand across all fields. Wherever there is business there are projects and project managers. The demand is always there.

• PMs are responsible for critical initiatives. The work has a direct impact on the company’s success.

• Due to the nature of the profession, project managers touch a wide range of areas of knowledge and specialization. A PM’s professional development and ever-expanding toolbox is built into the job.

• Through the course of working for different companies on a constant rotation of varying projects, PMs are exposed to new career opportunities while simultaneously learning the skills to qualify for them.

• The compensation can be quite competitive. According to PayScale, project managers earn a range of $49K - $113K per year, with an average of $74,420.

Cons

• Project managers have responsibility without authority. While the PM may be steering the ship, he or she does not get to chart the course. If that course is into an iceberg, the PM’s job is to flawlessly steer the ship into the iceberg on time and on budget as specified in the project  charter. It’s about convincing everyone that’s the correct course, and keeping them on track.

• The PM operates outside of normal structures that can be likened to an envoy sent to the Middle East to broker peace. The PM must be an expert leader, moderator, negotiator, diplomat, and influencer without having any direct power over the participants or way to enforce agreements. A steady temperament is required.

• The PM is most often responsible for executing other people’s ideas. The company has not hired you to solve your own problems; usually, the company has hired you to execute something that has already been decided. In this way, the PM is restricted to his or her marching orders.

• Get out the antacids. As a Project Manager, you are responsible for success and failure. If you’re an outside hire, you’re also the eternal scapegoat. This is a high-pressure job. If you do not thrive under those conditions, you may not enjoy it.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Should I List That Short-Term Job On My Resume?

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Remember that short-term gig you had last year with the company down the street? It wasn’t a great job, and it didn’t last too long. Should you even bother including on your resume?

At the end of the day, decisions like these aren’t easy. They’re judgement calls, which by nature can be difficult to navigate.

In situations like this, I tend to encourage including the job on the resume. In general, honesty is a good policy. You might think that it’s a no-brainer to leave a stinky, short-term job off your resume. Who cares? But here’s the thing - there will always be people who know about that job, and it could raise questions about personal integrity. Keep in mind, your resume is a marketing brochure – and the product is you. At the same time, that job application you have to fill out is a legal document subject to background checks; even if you do not include a job on your resume, you should include it on a job application. Wherever you list it, be prepared to talk about it.

And consider your reader. Recruiters and hiring managers have read so many resumes that informed professional formulations are made at a glance. If you leave a job off your resume and it’s on your application (which it is!), there will be questions and perhaps the perception may be that you are hiding something. If you include a short-term job, it’s just as true that it should mean something, otherwise the perception may be that you’re padding your resume.

Also, keep in mind, very few situations are black and white. Let’s say you worked for four months at a prestigious financial services company on a high visibility project that was successfully completed and you were singled out as being instrumental to its completion. Maybe the company name has marquee value, and in the brief time you worked there you made the kind of impact that is fantastic when you’re telling your professional story through your resume.

Other factors to consider:

• Although the average worker’s tenure in a role is steadily decreasing, it’s usually in your favor not to appear like a job hopper. Unless you’re in a career that is expected to have many short-term positions for different companies (such as an IT consultant), or have a highly specialized skill, a resume that is a laundry list of jobs packed into a brief time-frame, employers can get nervous that the investment they will make to recruit and hire you will quickly become the most recent line item on your resume. Also, if inclusion of a job seems incongruent with the rest of your professional experience, it may send up red flags.

• Closing a gap can help. For example, perhaps you were terminated from Impressive Job #1 for reasons beyond your control but before you were hired for Impressive Job #2 you did a four month stretch at a job for which you were overqualified. If it’s temporary, label it such. If it was a permanent role you left quickly, try to have the resume set up the story accordingly and be prepared to talk about it in the interview.

• It can help to consolidate individual freelance roles during a period of time under a single job heading, such as “Freelance Consultant,” followed by bullets describing the roles and/or company names.

• Your career universe needs to be consistent. People can find out about you via your resume, LinkedIn profile, online portfolio, and job application. It seems exhausting because it is, and this judgement call is no different. An inconsistency will raise questions.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

The Case Against Lying on Your Resume

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You may be thinking about lying on your resume.

Don’t do it. The risk and consequences far outweigh any minor short-term boost your candidacy may receive.

That seems simple enough, but it’s worth thinking about what constitutes a “lie” on your resume and how misrepresentations can unduly affect your future.

Here are just a few examples of ways people alter their resumes:

·      Fudging dates

·      Making up or inflating job titles

·      Listing job duties and responsibilities that were never part of your position

·      Education you never received or completed

·      Taking credit for professional achievements that weren’t yours, were far beyond the scope you played, or simply never happened

·      Awards you didn’t win

Here are the top reasons to make sure your resume is as honest as the day is long:

Reason #1 – It’s dishonest. That should be incentive enough. Lying on your resume demonstrates a lack of ethics and integrity. It is not that great of a leap for an employer to believe that someone who lies on their resume will repeat that behavior during the course of his or her employment.

Reason #2 – A great deal of information on your resume is subject to background checks that are routinely conducted by employers prior to making a job offer (“The Skinny on Pre-Employment Background Checks”). Any misrepresentations are likely to be discovered and an offer will never come. This is the most insidious result. You may never know that you’ve been caught in a lie and that your resume is now a poison pill.

Reason #3 – Word travels. You don’t live or work in a vacuum. If there is a major issue with your resume, its discovery will potentially move through your professional web in record time and your future will be ensnared in it. It will reflect poorly on any colleagues who gave references. Like a mark on your credit report, it will follow you until it’s corrected, and even then, damage has been done.

Reason #4 – There are even more humiliating ways to be caught in a lie on your resume than through a background check. During the course of interviewing, you may actually have to prove you know what you claim to know. This is sometimes referred to as a “Whiteboard Test,” as you will be asked to demonstrate a skill or solve a problem on the whiteboard in the interviewer’s office, on the spot. If your resume says one of your skills is “database administration,” you better be able to walk up to the whiteboard and solve a common and routine database problem. If not, not only will that specific skill be called into question, but you will invite a more in depth and skeptical review of all of your resume’s contents.

Reason #5 – It is entirely possible that misrepresentations on your resume will be discovered after the fact and you will be fired. Let’s say you do get that dream job and life is good. Then, somehow, they figure out that you were less than truthful in the interview. You will likely be fired. It will become a nice and heavy ball and chain you get to carry around to every one of your future job interviews.

Reason #6 – If a set of facts on your resume looks too good to be true, it probably is. Consider the sheer number of resumes that recruiters, hiring managers, and HR departments review. When something on your resume isn’t congruent with the rest of its contents, it stands out to the trained eye and may raise suspicion. Why risk it?

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.