Career Planning

How's the career? Are you doing what you should be doing? Are you learning and developing your abilities or simply 'turning the handle?'

It's one or the other.

What's next? If you don't decide, someone else will - and are you content with that? Do you know what your preferences are for the next step and have you assessed your options?

Project management can easily lead down a cul-de-sac. The career track for project managers in a business organisation is, more often than not, unclear. But the world of projects and programmes offers professional stimulation, real promise and satisfaction. You are your most important project and it has to be nurtured. Like any project; it won't take care of itself.

Read on to learn about Career Pointers. This is PMSelect's own service to help professionals stay on track.

"Career Pointers - A confidential professional Review"

Project Management is a primary engine for driving performance and change in most businesses today. While everyone must acquire some proficiency, the more complex and critical projects need to be led by people who are committed to this work and have acquired a particular capability for the execution of projects.

Managing change, differentiating product offerings from competitors, delivering to time/cost/quality and improving business organisation are where projects are found. Care and skill are needed as well as pace. Career Pointers serves the needs of professionals wishing to enter the mainstream of project management as well as for those already practising and wishing to review their options at a more mature stage of their career. It provides an opportunity for a systematic, objective and impartial review of career to date and a focus on options, actions and next steps.

Perhaps because of the rapid development of project management, new possibilities are opening and career patterns are becoming more salient. These developments are often not obvious to busy project professionals. Simply thinking about this issue is not enough. Professionals need to take a broader view and they find this difficult to achieve without the help of a mentor.

An objective assessment of project management knowledge, work preferences and a personal profile using recognised inventories that are Web-accessed, prior to the one-day session
A review of personal and career development as a project manager
Identification of the 'pointers' that sign-post career direction
Evaluation and choices of options
A Career Strategy and …the next step
Communicating with the market
Performance at the Interview.

Career Pointers provides an opportunity to examine the challenges and achievements of a career so far, together with personal goals. We consider this, together with an understanding of work preferences, to recognise the options now available, to make some choices and thereby to develop a strategy.

Career Pointers takes this strategy and develops a plan to achieve the desired goals. This includes examination of the written material needed (including the CV) and a discussion about selection methods, including the interview. Within this framework, the programme is tailored to people's particular needs. Before meeting, a client is invited to complete two instruments to uncover their work preferences and to indicate their level of project management knowledge (against recognised professional PMBoKs).

Following the event, the consultant submits a report under the headings

For more about career development and Career Pointers, please email Martin Price, Managing Consultant, directly and in confidence.