Project Managers Wanted - Only those with War Wounds need apply

As some of you may know I've recently taken some time out of consulting and managing to concentrate and support an elderly member of the family including turning my hand to building a self contained annexe at the farm for them to have a safe and warm environment - even doing that though, it seems project governance and management was never far away - see Projects - Getting Your House in Order.

Anyway thats all done and finished and being lived in - its been a great success and its been enjoyable seeing another project through to completion, even though we had a couple of cost overruns and minor delays to go-live!

So its time to get back to the real world though, and so its time to start ringing around the usual trusted recruiters and meet a few new ones along the way to line up the next bit of work. I've met a couple of really great new recruiters and bumped into a few of the usual not-so good ones - you know - the ones who never respond!

Its a really important part of your business, hiring the right people. Why leave it in the hands of someone who isn't even concerned about the reputation of your business by not responding to someone who has taken the time to respond to your vacancy. The person the recruiter has screened out might have been the best person available - who might ensure your project succeeds or doubles your sales, or creates that new product that takes your business to the next level?

Recently though back in the summer when I was still building I saw an opportunity that really matched my skills and expertise in a good location and I thought why not - so I duly sent my CV and wrote a covering letter that addressed the skills required. About 2 weeks later came an informal email from the recruiter sent to multiple applicants explaining that he only had 2 days left to draw up a shortlist for his client so could we answer the 10 questions in the email he had written so he wouldn't have to review all the CV's. One of those questions even asked for reference names and contact details! This was before he had even taken the time to call and speak to me, explain the role, talk about the skills. Slightly irked, I answered all the questions and explained about the fact that as a professional consultant I have good references and I would share them at the appropriate time in the recruitment cycle and sent it off.

You know what happened next already don't you? Nothing, zip, nada. No acknowledgement or response. In fact I've heard nothing since sending that email and that was several weeks ago. There could be a good reason for that - maybe the company saw my CV and decided no, or there were better qualified candidates, but still, would it take too much time to send a thanks, but no thanks note? And if you hired that particular recruitment consultant and that particular company to fulfil what is probably a business critical role do you want to be sure that you are seeing the best candidates? I wonder how many of the other applicants had their references contacted by the recruitment company asking if they had any positions they needed filled though.

Which brings me round to the title of the article. Last week I saw a brilliantly worded vacancy looking for a Project Manager. Nothing spectacular about that but half way through the advert was the following line:-

"The candidate must show 'war wound's' of previous 'ugly' projects and be able to highlight examples of where they have worked under similar pressures and successfully delivered the targets set."

Utterly superb! These days no one likes to admit to projects can turn ugly but as someone who is hiring those are the interesting insights into a candidate - its as much about how you deal with and handle projects which are turning ugly and how you, as an individual, steer the project and the organisation through the turbulence. I've got ugly projects in my past and I'm not afraid to talk about them because ultimately they are as much experience, if not more, than the ones which went smoothly.

In a previous position I had to hire a PM - one of my favourite questions was - tell me about a project you've been involved with which was failing and how you turned it around? I think of the 6 candidates I asked that, only one answered the question with a good story stating what they and the team did to recover it - the other 5 told me that they had never been involved in a project which had had potential failure points.

Guess who was higher up in the consideration for the role then?

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